Moments

We share a secret laugh.
"Look at that ring," I start to whisper to you.
Your eyes silence me with an almost deafening
scream.
"but the ring," I start again. "It's like a seal."
You try not to laugh.
Stifling.
You lose the moment and hide it.
Cough, cough, cough.
And your eyes come to mine again,
only this time it's not a scream.
It's a smile.
Glinting.
A quiet belly laugh.
And the sun peeks out from behind the clouds for a
moment.
He's been tickled and wants to see who did it.
But the clock ticks forward, and the moment
ends.
So I sit in my corner and pretend to understand what's going on.
The sunlight gives way to the cold.
I step into the wind and hope the four pieces hold together a little longer.
A weight attaches to my leg, and the label reads failure.
Contemplation allows another parasite to attach. This one named compassion.
Willpower is not enough, and fear grows stronger.
The blue glow of hope fades.
As my knees hit the ice, you keep walking too fast.
"I'm here," I say. The scream is stifled like your laugh and comes out as a
whisper.

And when all is said and done, there is a small ember,
hiding,
in the personal hearth, and it will burn soul into tatters.

Patience

If I could hit rock bottom,
I could push off and start up toward the surface.
Weighed down by the twin stones of shame and anger
I struggle against the murky depths.
"Pointless," the first voice screams.
My hollow chest answers with an echo.
I attempt to pull up again.
"Fleeting," the next voice laughs.
My arms and legs burn with the last of life.
Thrashing.
Seven small rays of light shine through, but are unattainable, unreachable.
"Let go," the last voice whispers.
Still waters pull me to God's face.
And the infinite silence is my welcoming party.

Dream or nightmare? I don't know anymore.

Lesson Learned

Your hand in mine,
Like a gnat on a truck.
A snore as loud as a mewing kitten
Trickles in my ear and wakes me.

The hands are soft while enclosed in mine.

You are the proof good exists;
The answer to the question of why we are here.
Your time here is a fraction of mine, but you are stronger
And aptly named.

A moment, and my eyes are reflected back at me.
A knowing smile to say that all is well before returning to Nemo.
Fear grips me again as the full timeline plays out,
But a sigh and small hand alleviates this.

This is a journey taken with each other.
I will battle the monsters;
You will teach the lessons.
Together we will help her.

You move in a zig-zag and constantly call for catching.
The crowd bows to your charm and bends to your name.
But I thank you for your real lesson.
For the very essence of why you're here for me

Thank you for teaching me the three words,
of wisdom, of caring, and of existence:

I love you.

Now go to sleep.

Babble

Our words don't mesh.
Up is red,
Black is purple,
Right is blue,
Lies are gold.

Our views don't sync.
You see a hero,
I see a villain.
I see a good heart,
You see flaws.

Our ideals aren't met.
My ground is firm as rock,
Your sky is limitless.
Your soul sings like the sun streaking across the sky.
My soul no longer exists. A casualty of benign dictatorships.

And yet, we both are caretakers.
Me of you.
You of them.
We for those coming with us.
And the rest.

Words die off the vine, and I can no longer hold on.
You cut with the stronger sword and leave me vulnerable.
A bleeding stone, a sinking island, a dulled knife.

The mirror cracks, and I shatter.
With no glass, there is nothing there.
I'm on the wrong side of the skin.

What does it matter?
The words are not understood

And the tower is finished.
How can this be?

Inkling Wordled

The poem, "Inkling", put through Wordle.

Celluloid

The movies say two people fall in love and are
together forever.
But the movies always end before the real life begins.
Fighting.
Struggles.
Jealousy.
Bitterness.
Regret.
Sometimes.

The prince cannot be on a white horse if he's holding down a 9 to 5.
The princess can be a great beauty but only if she let's go of her insecurities.
The villain sometimes wins.

So the princess has an affair with the villain to regain the thrill,
and the prince dies when his horse throws him awkwardly.

But daddies don't tell their little girls these stories,
because hope is the only currency of youth.

So the painted prince and drawn princess constantly smile
the happy ending
for us.

Dull Edges

It takes a mere second

to end a happy moment.

It takes a small movement

to create the ripple in the pond.

A dark shadow

hidden

behind a pretty mask.

I stood there to hold your world.

A small trick, and the world tilted.

I reached out to catch, to hold, to save.

As ripened fruit

Plummeting.

Not fast enough.

A glance of your face passing by into nothingness.

Not nearly fast enough.

Hercules winks, and I cannot move.

Fire burns deep within and cannot be satiated or quenched.

You leave me here, a failure, to hold up the others.

And the only reality is the pain of your absence.


The world keeps spinning, the sands of time keep flowing,

but the color is drained.

So am I.

Not an Artist

This is a poem about nothing.
There is no point.
There is no hidden meaning.

This is a poem about nothing.
There is no allusion of silence and sadness.
This is no simile like the clipped wings of an Eagle.

This is a poem about nothing.
The art of words is lost.
It's just words flattened out on a page.

This is a poem about nothing.
Don't read deeply because you won't get lost.
A meaning is nothing without heartless words.

This is a poem about nothing.
Is est a poema super nusquam.
Nothing about this is a poem.

This....

Now do you understand?

Rules

A quiver.
A moment.
Like a needle being pressed to the flesh, the muscles spasm.
The bow is plucked.
A heart soars with an arrow.
Plunging toward an empty soul.
Nowhere.
Someone.
A strike that is felt within me.
Awash.
I feel your tension within release
and stand naked to intentions.
Darkness masks the desires that are unleashed alone.
Forgoing a punch-drunk love and scoop the pieces back.
Proper places.

And the still life remains perfect to the discerning eye.

Dichotomy

What is passion?

What is lust?

A necessary part of a relationship?

An act of nothing more than primal nature?

An emotional desire.

A physical longing.

To connect at the center of being.

To make two become one.

Love.

Desire.

Her heart.

Her body.

Yet which is stronger?

A relationship needs both.

But one will inevitably win out.

The heart?

The body?

The soul?

Her being.

But these two rule the gender to which I belong,

And they make us stupid.

Necessary

I wish to release this skin.
For my heart and mind to separate and go their own way
like the man moving off the overburdened horse and finding
a new path.

I wish to not be trapped.
Choices abound that hurt someone no matter what
like walking on miles of hot coals.

4,000 hooks dig into my soul,
pulling me in different directions.
Do this, no this, no this.
What is right? What is just? What is fair?

Make this person happy
Make this person ready
Make this person yours

A list that grows with each day.

A hook pulls, and I am at peace.
Another pull and a choice for my soul is to be made.
A third tug, and I am the keeper of secrets.
Another yank. Time to prepare my replacement.

With each hook removed, another takes its place.
No rest
No weariness
Ignore the pain, just move.

So I stand over the clear water and stare deep into the life's mystery.
Faces waver and disappear. Ripples moves along like goosebumps on the skin.
I start to plunge toward that silence and movement,
but hook 2,623 yanks me back to reality.

I wish to be free, but real freedom must wait because I am needed.
I am loved.
Loved.
And that means I keep swaying in the breeze as the hooks become chains
and the chains cover my mouth.

Slipping

The hardest part about writing whilst drunk
is keeping

everything

in

line.

Your mind begins to drift through fog.
Might be red,
white
her hair so brown
dark amber like the whisky that sits on the bar.
Time slips away
with gravity.
And the pen slides
down.
Her legs
The empty bottle slips to the floor and shatters like into
pieces of me.
Lost happiness drips on the side of the glass.
And the room
moves nearer and nearer

quicker

and to her

quicker.

Spinning into butter that seems to be helping my stomach climb.
Higher and higher he rises, until he knocks against my teeth and
SCREAMS.
"Let me out!"
He lets his children join the glass in a menagerie of sorrow and regret.
Beautiful when fractured.
In daylight not so needed.
Her poor judgment...or is it mine?
But the radio tells me love is all I need, and the walls echo the solitary.

So I sit, the intellectual, the poet, the lover, the loner, with a Fat Bastard Hippo,
and we share stories of what should be, what could be, what never was, and
what never will be.

The hardest part about writing whilst drunk is keeping everything in line.
And keeping your soul off the page.

Twice

Photo via

A phantom.
A ghost two times over.
Letters on the page as footprints in the snow.
"C'est la vie."
A return when lined walls are the only ears.
Twice.
Two times twinight tryst.
Once on Heaven's cold ceiling. The other with The Raven's master watching.
Twice.
A heartbreak that spreads across the nerves.
Lights a fire that burns, smolders, and destroys the hope dwelling within.
Twice.
The sun rises and illuminates a charred landscape.
Alone.
Quiet footsteps through blackened grass leads me to sanctuary.
A glass house resplendent in false light.
And I stand here waiting for her to return.
Twice.
And as the light plunges into the ground, a short breath escapes into the ether.
Once.

Three Men

"What should I do?" the brown nymph asks me.
And the three men begin to go to work.
On my left, a man with harrowing eyes and a kid-skin briefcase hisses into my ear:
"Tell her to leave him. Tell her to go. It may be a bad idea, but...how would she know?"
His tongue is forked and filled with honey fire.
I must listen as his argument is compelling and makes my heart swell.
A cooling sensation runs over my nerves as I look over to the right.
A tye-dyed hippie in blue jeans sits with a guitar. A halo over his head.
"Man," he begins, "You have to help this girl's soul."
Desire burns white hot through me and then fades with cold reality.
The right, the left. The truth, the lie. The correct, the false.
But of the three men, the choice belongs to the man in the middle.
Me.
Alone, even with a voice on each shoulder.
So the man in the middle speaks:
"You have to leave him," he says.
And the Nymph bows to the wind and listens.
but...but....There's always a damned but.
She strides away from her former and clueless beau, but...
she goes to the red bastard.
Worse than the first man on my left, the red bastard taunts and tantalizes.
His words are hollow, but the nymph is deaf.
His actions are empty, but the nymph is blind.
She is enraptured.
In creating my own failing, the three men stare in disbelief.
The man on the left wipes his glasses in envy of the red bastard.
The man on the right pulls his halo down and whispers a silent prayer for her soul.
The man in the middle is unable to move.
He asks, "What about me? I love you too...."
He is met with a silence, a stare, and a touch.
The nymph says, "The time is not right. You are my rock, but he has my heart."
A hole.
Darkness,
and the man on my left laughs.
A cackle that reaches into my soul and cuts my heart string.
The man on the right merely states, "This will happen again."
The red bastard has his way and breaks the nymph. And when she returns,
the man in the middle puts her together again...and watches her leave
for a second time.
The wheel spins.
The three men move on to the next choices.
The man on the right strums his guitar,
and the man on the left adds to his briefcase.
The man in the middle collapses under their weight.

How sad that this story is mine and yours.

Lillies

When love dies, it usually gives birth to hate.
A twisted desire of joyous pain, of delicious torture.

When hate dies, it usually gives birth to understanding.
A stark view of the whole picture and the whys and wherefores of actions.

But when romance dies, there is a hole that cannot be filled.
Not by flowers, chocolate, or good intentions that pave the road some of us are on.

Inkling

Some people never feel fear,
Never know the darkness that can envelop the heart and the mind.
They see the sun shining and ignore the smiling snakes at their feet.
Me? I let it wash over me like a cleansing rain that anoints a clear pattern of life.
It soaks in through the pores and powers the machine to rise,
To move in delicate footsteps, and teaches humility.

Some people never embrace sadness,
Never tremble with loss of jubilee.
They wish the good times to go on forever.
For the Lost Boys to be their inspiration.
Because funny and happy makes you loved.
Me? I revel in my depression. Like a second skin,
It allows me to breathe.
It blocks the rope that my body hangs from.

Some people never feel numb.
Never lose the emotional stake in life.
They hold on to humanity and pray, fuss, scream...
For love, or happiness, or a dream.
Because emotions are what makes us human?
Me? I find numb to be safe. Numb makes confusion,
And confusion allows for perceptions to be built.
Like a puzzle built on a train track.

Some people never let go.
I feel sorry for those people.

They have never really lived.