Posts for June 21, 2024 (page 6)

Sound: Birds, water, children, quiet

Obviously I have wasted my life
chasing poems rather than dollars,
and as any rugged man could guess,
I hold my copy of Above the River
in soft, effeminate hands.

Our Father who art in Heaven
let me hear his angels sing into
the distances of a long-ago afternoon,
and since then I haven’t cared
about anything but re-creating that tune
or starving in moth-eaten garb trying to,

a ridiculous hammerless Noah
building an ark out of words in a world
that doesn’t believe in words or the coming apocalypse.

Listen to the cowbells, I say,
and everyone thinks it’s a Christopher Walken reference.
They say poetry is horseshit, and I say yes,
but lit up by lightning so it blazes like gold.

It’s fool’s gold to them.
I can’t even buy a bronze butterfly
with my last royalty check,
but as Robert Graves said, “there is no money
in poetry, but neither is there poetry in money.”

the more we experience,
the more we know,
or so we think

the more times we do it,
the more certain we are,
even when we are wrong

the more we read,
the more our minds expand,
or so we tell ourselves

the more we study,
the more we know,
or so the unwise believe

the more we say it,
even just inside our heads,
the more we believe it true

but knowing is this–
your body, pressed to mine,
fingers exploring,
warm lips finding,
two becoming one

Not every day is a 
struggle.  Even if it’s 
hard to remember.

All I can do to move sometimes,
to stay on my feet.  Tunnel
vision grows long, limbs

leaden.  Feel the meds
battling this venom spreading.
Everyone says, “brush it off, it

can’t be that bad.”  Well, sometimes 
it is and I can’t help that.
Time takes the sting from memory.

Stinger sticks to skin,
pressure to grip, pull it out,
only injects more.

A person is a dream. To end
full of contagion, fear, and sick
smeared across the Book of Life
carbon black ink like ancient times.

Placed in a soul so it must know,
A person is a dream. To end
gasping and languid. Unsure of
what legacy may well survive?

Around which starlight vines embrace
carrying back which was given.
A person is a dream. To end
with void. No more than ideas.

A body grows like anything
else. No greater than blades of grass
sheared and returned to the Earth.
A person is a dream. To end.

I have no passion, 
to write something.
When I don’t,
want to feel anything.

Drove by my local fire station today solar panels line their roof.
every December I drop off toys for tots and treats for firefighters.
always young well mannered men answer the door. Wonder how
they bond spending hours together on 24/7 shifts. Saving homes
and lives, searching for family members, including pets left in the scuffle.
reviving overdoses, elder falls, finding Golden alerts, Amber alerts,
abandoned babes. On a, adrenaline alert 24 /7 to give a helping hand.
saving us from ourselves, including climate change.

Disturbance, ejection, emission 
from a grand magnetic storm, 
the sky spewing its worn wrath 
in a final tide of conspicuous color:
sage green for the eddying envy
and magenta for the bright hurt. 

Eyes widen, blinded by the hues:
the sage is the glint of the sea,
the blood-pink the tint of peonies. 

I have lived a life of silence

Solitude coexisting with worry

That I wouldn’t be good enough

That my ability

To be awake

Alert to all my senses

That cause a chaotic wave

Of power and heat

Was seen as too much

Too boastful

I clamped my mouth tight

Holding onto the secrets

Of a life so full of joy

To accommodate those

Who live a life of less

Of those who seek complacency

Instead of the many wonders

Of passion or pain

That fear of not knowing

Creating their own sollitude

But I wish to come forth

Wild and maddened

With all that I feel

All that I know

To love furiously

To dance wildly

To live freely

He looked down at me
And I wish his eyes held regret
Or even pity
But the dim gas station lighting
Only revealed boredom

And he said it so easily
Told me we couldn’t be together
The same way he’d say anything else
No stutters, no hesitation 
Just a shrug and a yawn, as he broke down my heart

He stood and stared for a little bit
At my shrunken state
Giving the girl in front of him a little bone, 
He sighed, “Maybe you’ll get another chance in the future,
Heck, you might get a chance tomorrow.”

I wrapped my whole body tightly together as he left
Making up for the lack of warmth

Staring at the back of his neck, getting smaller and smaller
Squeezing my feeble limbs, tighter and tighter
And when my veins were popping out of my skin I realized
There’s no second chance for me,
for it’s already tomorrow.

It’s already tomorrow in Japan.
It’s already tomorrow in Japan and
I haven’t gotten my second chance.
My second chance.
He promised me a second chance.

I giggled to myself at that fact,
I excitedly pulled the knife’s polished handle
Sticking slightly out of my pocket,
Knowing no one is allowed to break a promise. 

My alibi? Simple:
“But it was tomorrow. In Japan, at least.”