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Tuesday, October 30, 2012

This Fog Called Time (For Rachel’s 20th Birthday)


This fog called time
tricks us into thinking
we’re safe on dry land
only to blow away 
and reveal we’re really
only standing
on a cliff.

Time sings an
impatient, demanding melody
that everything is urgent
and everything must be addressed
now!
but then time plays that record
backwards,
revealing a hidden message
that lulls us into
thinking
that more days will come,
just as easily and predictably
as all the days before,
as our very next breath.

Raechy, I know
I’m just your
old man,
so I while I know you
and love you,
my first instinct
is to watch out
for you,
and keep you safe.

So,
I’m just asking
that before you run out
into this profane and
pulsating world,

please,
look both ways. 

[Written for Rachel's 20th birthday and for #OpenLinkNight at www.dversepoets.com - my home away from home for poetry on the internet.]

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Keep Moving Forward

Hey!

I'm talking to you:

all of you
who spill their seed
onto expectant blank sheets
and then try to sop up
everything that isn't art,

and those of you
with the naive idiocy
to try and capture the
breathless admiration
upon seeing a sparrow
in its purposeful
fleeting escape

and to all those aching souls
in houses of darkened memories
huddled in corners
playing their earnest acoustic guitars
trying to deconstruct
and reconstruct
the past,
daring to imagine
a tomorrow,
any tomorrow.

Finally, to the few
who trod this sacred path
wearing oversized clown shoes
just to see
where it leads
for laughs,

I urge you:
keep moving forward.

Do not be swayed
by the reader count
still stuck at
001.

Do not think that
you are invisible
or that you suck
or that you are
a mere content provider.

You're the holder
of the puzzle piece
that belongs to
no one else

and if you die
with it still
in your possession
then all you've done
is tighten
the knot of confusion
around the rest of us.

Face it.
Sometimes people comment.
Sometimes people don't.

But you are not invisible.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Dreams, Like Tears


Keep your dreams
in that secret place
where you keep your tears.

Putting dreams onstage
forces a reaction
from audiences
more often prepared
for novelty
than transcendence.

Feed your dreams
in secret,
keep them close
to your heart

and let them out
every now and then,
just a little
to spark your imagination
on fire,
to keep that grayness
at bay.

Be forewarned:
someday
your dreams will
spill over and
spill out,
much like tears.

Steel yourself
for the laughter,

but if none is
forthcoming,
listen close
to your audience.

Listen for their tears,
their dreams,
and let them in.

[Written for #OpenLinkNight at http://www.dversepoets.com – my poetic watering hole on the internet.]

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

#twitterverse

To set the world afire
naively, was the dream.
Now my words merely aspire
to be a virulent internet meme.

[Posted for #OpenLinkNight at www.dversepoets.com - my favorite writers in the world meet there.]


Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Fighting with Anger

Anger hunts me down 

and sneaks up
behind me.

He drags me down
by the shoulders.

I try running
but he
pins me to the ground
and spits in my face,
taunting me
“Come on, do it. Do it!”

I‘m not going
to play his game.

“Get off me.”

His insect face laughs
at me
as he drools saliva.

I try ducking the dripping
slime but I feel it
in my hair
humiliating and inescapable.

I want to just be
free of it.

His laughter echoes
in my head.
“Come on, what are you,
a pussy? Are you gonna take
this shit from me?”

My body summons its strength
and I knee him in the groin
as he topples off me.

I can still hear his laughter.

I stand over him and
and start kicking his head.

It bobbles
somehow still connected
“is that all you got?”

I stomp my heel
on his heaving thorax
over and over
trying to put out this evil flame.

He’s almost dead.
I leap as high as I can
and with both feet
come down hard
and he splatters
into a stench-ridden puddle
of tissue.

Some of it has
splashed onto my shoes
and my pant leg
but I don’t care.
I’m convinced
that I’ve handled
the problem.

I don’t look back
as I walk away
but I hear that mocking laughter

and I know
I’ve just played his game again

and lost again.

[Posted for #OpenLinkNight at www.dversepoets.com the best site for poets on the whole damned Internet.] 

Thursday, October 04, 2012

Harvesting Lesson


Shake the word tree.
Again.

Again,
harder.

Peer up through
the branches,

“what’s sticking
them up there?”

Stop trying.

Take a seat
in its shade,

relax your gaze,


daydream…



bonk!

[Written for http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/2012/10/words-count-with-mama-zen.html - Thanks!]

Tuesday, October 02, 2012

Thank-You Notes Never Sent


Thank you to her father
for leaving immediately
thereby planting the seeds of self-doubt
and for the occasional tortured visits
that made you stay away even more
and an even bigger thank you now
for taking no responsibility
for your absence
when asked 35 years later.

Thank you to her mother
for forgetting about her while you
squandered the family purse
in search of end time prophecy
in the holy land
and for introducing her to
the man who would molest her
in the golf clubhouse
and an even bigger thank you now
for still ignoring to her
right to her face
with an empty smile at every holiday.

Thank you to her ex-husband
for being the life of the party
by making her his punchline
especially after all the time
she told you how much it hurt
and an even bigger thank you now
when you take her kids every other weekend
for their quality time of
videogames and sugary cereal
with their willfully illiterate father.

Thank you to her ex-in-laws
because she felt like she was
finally part of a family and
even though it wasn't paradise
she did feel loved
and an even bigger thank you for
completely shutting her
out of your lives when
she finally got up the courage
to leave your shitheel son
and break the cycle.

Thank you one and all
because you've made it a real challenge
for her to accept
her own lovability,
her own worth

(she's not even sure of
the love of her own children
much less her second husband),

so I say thank you
because your callous indifference,
your malignant neglect

has made me
necessary 
to her,

because I will always love her
and take care of her
and treasure her

because I know the value
of a good, decent person.

It takes one to know one.

[Posted for #OpenLinkNight at dversepoets.com - come and poem yourself into a tizzy!]