Slip time from your wrist.
Feel the pulse of the day become your heartbeat.
Curl into the nutshell of this moment.
Float on a sea-glass sky.
Breathe July’s green sweat.
Bathe your eyes in shadows.
Grow deaf to the thrumming of bees.
Watch a breeze stir ripples in your nether-mind.
Wait
Silent screams echoing throughout my soul,
turn to white noise after a while,
constructing impenetrable walls,
yet unable to crack a smile.
Happiness such a memory,
if it was ever attained at all,
lied to by heart and brain,
as the trust leaves during the fall.
Genres: Depression, Divorce, Alone, Hurt, Emotional, Strength in Vulnerability
Driving is a skill; it requires math, and reading.
Being a motorist is not skilled because math and reading are not performed.
If you block an intersection, you lack brain function.
This is kindergarten level geometry.
You don’t fit don’t be a twit.
Engage your eyeballs before your feet to not be an ass.
Left is not right
One is not two
The only people who turn wrong are motorists without an IQ.
You don’t have 18 wheels, you don’t get two lanes, taking them is proof of no brains.
That’s how moron came to be, because they don’t know the difference between one and three.
The zipper merge is a fantasy of great proportions.
Your rectangular car does not fit in a triangular space simply because you ignored the diamond shaped road sign.
The hundred feet behind me are easier to merge than the ten feet in front of me. Learn geometry.
No lights at night are no brains in sight.
No lights in rain are not using brain.
Snow is the worst motorist problem because it creates the highest amount of stupidity. Morons with a complete inability to see.
They are the Three Forces of Evil:
Mobile Snow banks, Defroster Dunces, and the Wipers Only Brigade.
Wipers are not a snow removal device.
Elbow grease is.
Brush and Scrape and stop being impaired by stupidity, ice and snow.
Your filled wheel wells will not allow you to go.
Clean your roof, before it kills somebody when it slides off as a sheet of ice.
Drivers are more skilled, and far more nice.
Nobody dies from patience, only impatience.
Impatience is stupidity.
Stupidity is bad for mobility.
Be a driver, read and do math.
If you don’t, you’ll hear my wrath.
“You’ve broken heart syndrome,”
the doctor says.
Such a poetic title
for a sickness that can’t be cured.
Little veins break,
around your heart, you don’t see the blood,
but you feel the burn.
The cells die, then,
they revive when you breathe.
***
Years ago, he left home
without a word,
leaving me with a broken heart.
I’m traveling on a train,
but the images travel with me,
the sleepless nights
when his fever reached the roof,
the first day of school,
his prom night, his college years.
***
I get off the train & go home;
some one has painted his face
on the pane of the windows,
on the wall,
on my pillow.
I put my hand on my chest,
feel the heartbeat and wonder:
how much more broken can it get?
Why don’t you let go?
***
I look at the closed door of his room,
I can still hear his voice.
I miss his laughter,
his jokes…
The dreams I had
die one by one;
I won’t be seeing his wedding,
I won’t be watching his child grow,
instead, I’ll be asking why forever.
A louder wind fanned through a coppice gate.
Above the crypt hung a cloudy canopy
And in mysterious form,
There you stood unveiled,
Whispering dark caresses.
A sky scored of specter gray
Belched angry storms
That rang clear with madness-
The pleasure of chaos.
Mute spirits summoned the black festival;
The four squared altar and roughly hewn
Held intolerable desires.
Your body lay in flames of infernal fashion,
A labyrinth passion fed.
Your petals bloom the scented flower of death.
Assailing from your pure and perfect eyes,
And bending from your fervid lips,
A slow sweet breath of yearning,
As a celebration of your birth swept the skies.
Oh lord, oh lord,
what has befallen me?
That which I hoped to make straight
becomes more twisted.
That which I should understand
only becomes more strange.
How did I land on this unexpected shore?
What am I to make of the walking wreck of myself?
I can still think, still work,
still speak in poems
in the sleepless time of the night.
It is a mixed gift, this life, it is hard
to feel so completely lost
in complexity I don’t know how I made.
I wanted to be a radiance
but I am more like a garbage can
tipped by a starving animal in predawn hours.
I pick myself up,
I sweep my contents
into a tidy pile,
but each time I think to rest,
I am again overturned.
I speak to you, o lord,
like the wounded Jew,
like the baffled bloodied prophet,
like the broken fated sage.
I take help from any quarter,
even those with dangerous denizens.
I take comfort with the scorpion,
I sleep with diseases,
I’m astonished that I’m alive.
Oh lord, what has befallen me?
You see, I have nothing but questions.
It could be much worse, I freely admit.
It could be much better,
I ruefully entreat.
Pieces of me have gone numb.
Whole continents of my psyche are submerged,
drowned, forgotten.
I am the world I have made.
I am a man, dreadfully incomplete,
unwilling to meet the terror,
reluctant to behold the fire,
shrinking always from the worst case,
taking the hand of any wiser being,
like a lost child who needs to be led home.
I shall try now to snatch a bit of sleep
from the bottom of the night’s cup.
I’m glad we had this little talk.
I thank you, awkwardly,
like one who has opened the wrong gift
at the wrong party.
Oh, is this for ME?
I’m not quite sure it fits,
I’m not sure how to use it.
I’ve broken it a little
but it still works. See?
I’ve tried, I’ve hopped on one foot,
I’ve danced insanely.
I’m still here,
waiting for your soft voice
to bring me peace.
A lil Country girl was she
Her skin was smooth and chocolatey
She would walked to preschool with her Daddy right by her side
Ummm she remembers the smell of the early morning breeze
Oh my that was a good memory
Pretty black Girl didn’t have a care in the world
In Girl Scouts she was the only lil black girl
Pretty black didn’t give it much thought like most would
She was happy she got to go to an upper-class neighborhood
She was called the N word at school
By a white girl
The word rolled off her tongue so effortlessly but it shattered Pretty black’s world
Although Pretty black didn’t know what the word meant at such a young age
It seem to be powerful because the white girl said it with such rage
What a dreadful memory
Umph! Pretty black really didn’t pay it no mine
Because it was very few there of her kind
The Teacher would say, “repeat the pledge of allegiance after me”
Pretty black didn’t have a clue she wasn’t in the land of free
Although mama & nem had limited education
They made sure pretty black went to school everyday without hesitation
Pretty black would go to work with her mother whom she adored
Only to watch her clean white people houses and scrub their floors
Pretty Black vowed that she would never be nobody’s maid
The image of her mother cleaning houses have never strayed
Pretty Black felt the need
to do what her Parent’s couldn’t do and that’s go to school and succeed
PRETTY BLACK GIRL
Too Young, written 11/2/79
I was too young to ever see
How good you would have been for me
To see you grow from day to day
I wish they didn’t take you away
I try to forget but I never will
There is always that void to fill
Everyone said it was better this way
I never could have made him stay
Of us, he didn’t want no part
This truly broke my loving heart
I hope you’ll forgive me for what I’ve done
Without you baby, I never really won.
I am home alone in my chair in the dark
The clock strikes twelve and I wonder where the time has gone.
I decide to go to bed, and so I begin to get up
But to my surprise I hear a knocking at my door.
I decide to ignore it and continue onto bed
Who in their right mind comes knocking at midnight?
So I climb the stairs as quietly as I can
But creaking sounds emerge from the wood.
I walk down the hall and gently open my room door
And to my surprise I still hear the knocking.
I walk across the floor and reach my bed
And climb in between the sheets to finally get some sleep.
I slowly fall deep into a slumber
Falling deeper and deeper until I am about to begin a dream.
But then there is a slam, and so I spring upright in fear
For someone has entered the front door in a wild furry.
I jump out of bed half disoriented and grab my gun
This crazy person has got to get out now!
I slowly creep towards the door and slip out of my room.
I move down the hall with Remington rifle.
I hear creaking footsteps coming up the stairs
Slowly, I hear them enclosing with my own.
I’ve got him now; he won’t even know what had hit him
And so I round the corner to face the intruder.
A loud bang rings through the house
And a loud thumping down the stairs falls afterwards.
I know blood is everywhere, splattered all the way down the stairs
It will be a huge mess to clean up in the morning.
I decide to call for help to get this situation over with
But I hear nothing; I see nothing from the darkness
I smell nothing, I taste nothing
But I do feel something.
I feel liquid and it is warm and thick
I notice my eyes are closed and I look at what had become.
Blood, it was everywhere like I had expected
But what I didn’t was a hole through my chest.
The blood gushed out from my heart and through my chest
I laid there at the bottom of the stairs unable to move.
I was out of breath and desperately trying to figure out how to find more.
I saw my eyes begin to close as my attacker walked down the stairs.
He walked down the stairs and up to the front door.
He had grabbed my gun just in case I wasn’t gone yet
But I was completely unable to breathe even one breath.
Then he opened the door and turned back towards me and made a noise like the clock.
I am home alone in my chair in the dark
The clock strikes twelve and I wonder where the time has gone.
I decide to go to bed, and so I begin to get up
But to my surprise I hear a knocking at my door.
I am home alone in my chair in the dark
The clock strikes twelve and I wonder where the time has gone.
I decide to go to bed, and so I begin to get up
But to my surprise I hear a knocking at my door.
When all dust and talk has settled down
Smoke and smokescreens withered away;
When passions and tempers have waned (somewhat)
And shields and swords stand no more in way;
Search deep within your soul then –
And find the steel to ink another way.
When tide and hunger have both been quelled
Grief and anger hold no more sway;
When joy and pain bring equal solace
And the wheel of fate toils your way;
Search deep within your soul then –
And find the clay to mould another way.
When you find yourself at crossroads
And care neither for the trail nor how you fare;
When fame and fortune smile upon you,
And blades of grass to serrated peaks, all
Bask contended in your caressing care;
Search deep within your soul then –
And find the whim to color another way.
When searing melody has vented notes,
How littlest levity is with irony fraught
And the gladdened beauty of the lonesome heart;
When lilting verses tell not just your tale
But hoary tomes in the Story of Man;
When gasping breath has not just laurels wrought
But sprung hope in the Song of Life;
Search deep within your soul then –
And find the fire to sing another way.
But whilst you delve into the yawning chasm,
And be you of great humility and gentler cheer
Profound revelations become yours to keep;
Reach into the world far and wide then –
And bend eternity to your humble way ….
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