Category: poetry

Fireside Chat

I never doubted

Though surely I feared

That all I’d earned

Might disappear

The spigot can’t stop

‘But it can’ says fear

Who inches closer

As I hold hope near

Though silent she waits

Tucked under my arm

Assuring and wasting

My gifts and her charms

So parry and feint

I say to myself

Fear goes first

And offers her help

‘What matters my dear

What you surely must know

That here where you sit

Is easy and slow’

Nestled securely

Hope at my side

Fear made sense

Silent was pride

Though wisdom is surely

Fears winsome tone

Something inside

Grew restless and moaned

‘Fear, you old fart

What tricks you belie

Speaking of ease

As if she divine’

Ease is a fretful

And leery companion

Easy to welcome

Hard to abandon

‘Fear you must think

Me silly and twee

I surely know you

But you hardly know me’

‘Ease is a wasteful

Wanton old fool

But slow has none

Of her restful appeal’

‘Slow’ I laughed

‘Sparks nothing you heel’

Fear reeled back

Hope grew in my lap

The balance was shifting

But that wouldn’t last

Desperate fear gathered

Her strength on the ledge

Found logs for the fire

And rested her head

Finding her balance

She lazily said

‘You almost got me

But I still see your dread’

‘Your dreams are not real

Your not up to the task

Whatever you dream

It won’t come to pass’

Using my weakness

She scored such a blow

Hope hid behind me

I stared at my toes

Defeat settled in

And made a quick home

Shoulder foundations

Dimming the gloam

What confidence appeared

Left in an instant

I forgot that my fear

Knew my greatest weakness

Quiet I sat

for weeks it seemed

Feinting and faking

What I’d always been

A valid and winking

Preposterous self

Who faked his way to

The top middle shelf

Who only need fear

To settle, abate

Dragging self doubt

To add to the weight

But though she hid

Hope never was absent

Though silent she surely

Wanted for presence

But quiet I waited

Til fear took a nap

Finally betraying

Her weak, gentle grasp

Quiet I whispered

To my partner hope

I knew she was stronger

Than fears loosened ropes

So I fed her and nursed her

And quietly whispered

To hope all the dreams

My fear had withered

Hope found a ledge

Toes found purchase

In stoking my dreams

While fear lie useless

We worked and proved

Our dreams to ourselves

Plotting and planning

Like off season elves

But as we grew strong

We started to stumble

Would fear bring with her

Our final tumble

Feeding and building

And growing in strength

We finally committed

And slowly embraced

Our fear as she lie

Dormant by slumber

Embraced by the arms

Who needed her thunder

I drew her closer building courage

‘Fear’ I quietly spoke in her ear

‘Don’t worry, it’s hope and I

Who draw you near’

‘We will not release you

That you must know.

But worry not

You’ll come where we go.’

Fear jerked and jumped

Writhed in our grasp

Not knowing what strength

We’d built while she napped

‘Unhand me you slob

You ungrateful jerk.

I was trying to help

Your inevitable work.’

‘How do you figure?’

I started to blurt

But hope held my hand

And helped me divert

The rage that fear

Could bring to my bile

Reminded me of

Fears useful desire

‘You aren’t whoever

You think you are fear.

Hope has taught me

To limit and steer’

‘How can hope know

Fears mighty purpose?’

She blurted

Exposing her delicate surface

‘Fear you aren’t a driver here.

Now listen to me and sit in the rear.

I’ll call you to service when it is heeded

For now your presence is all that is needed’

So hope and I turned our eyes to the road

While fear settled in and shared the load

A tool that is useful to stoke the fire

That hope shall tend with me as the driver

Used

We were lying prone and sleeping 

In a bed that wasn’t ours

The fog that had encircled us 

Hid us from the stars

 I’m not one to think out loud

Neither do I drink it proud

But never should you confuse this

With any of your unearned bliss

Chances are my thoughts aren’t deep

Lying crying while you sleep

So shallow laid you in my palm 

Enticing stupor renouncing calm

Had I gathered all your kisses

Collected tears, called you Mrs. 

You would still be gone you see

While I’m right here alone with me

I still know that you were real

And hope that you have learned to feel

The pain you poured so thoughtlessly

Inside a man you’d set to sea

Death and dying will encroach

Us left upon this orbits brooch

 When I assign my life it’s meaning

 Ours won’t have been worth repeating

When I look back on our mistake

I’ll be relieved that all it takes

Is soft and sunny love repaired

By one that never used my cares

While Ye May

  Underneath this heavy coat
Beneath the screams held in my throat

Behind the vail through which I spy

I pray the lord I do not cry

I do not believe in him

Or her or me or those or them

But anything to shun the weight 

Of lifes impostor in my gait

I don’t know how others do it

Can’t believe they ever knew it

What heavy lifting life would be

For if they knew we’d never be

Not the sort to rise and wander

Or gaze and raise a glass to wonder

The world is more than we can blunder

With tiny little lives to ponder

A load made heavy by sly synapses

Convincing us to push through lapses

In faith and trust and common valor

That lets us carry petals gathered

Desire 


I won’t rest, I won’t stand still
I’ll do my part and say my fill 
Turn my deed away you’ll see

Though how can you have faith in me

I wasn’t won’t and can’t break free

From fraught and fated history 

A reckoning has come to be

A fate that I shall never see

Too just ain’t for Me you see

No borrowed oppression fantasies

And no one should have sympathy 

For what it is I’ll never see 

never meant and shouldn’t be

Still there is something never told

Bout me from one who wouldn’t know

See parts of me are heaven bound

Trust they are just what you’ve found

But true still is the wanting weed

Turnt easy to the pleading reed

Nature changed in a subtle breeze

To something I can never seize

A light internal burning fire 

Unleashed amidst a burning pyre

Combustion sparked from glint of these

To a guiding wanting leading me

One truth that none can ever tell

For words a gentlemen ever quells

That spoken by the craven beast 

Leave truth unburdened from the least

Though gentleman I surely am

No gentle ten can sooth a man

Whose truest measure is the choir 

That sings to put out the raging fire

Of this good men speak all in jest 

Subverting diverting a mortal quest

Compelled by nature to conspire

The worst we are to quench desire

Civility misunderstood 

By those that wish to know what good

Would come from slinking ever low

Deceiving those they wish to own

It is not so simple for good men

Goodness comes from deep within

Where it fights with thoughtless wonder

To beat out that which divines hunger

Wish the willow you may scream

Hollering in endless fields serene

My body is not mine to drive

Nor is vital and alive

A steady steam releasing pressure

That nothing I can do can measure

I see and hear and respect your pleasure

And hope I win this war forever 

Floating Fleeing 

Now I’m not one to drink it proud

And neither do I think out loud

But never you should confuse this
With any of the unearned bliss
Chances are my thoughts aren’t deep
Sitting  staring at the deep
So shallow laid upon my palm 
Entice my stupor renounce my calm
Cause volumes all that’s left in hand
Controlled by feats of former men
Who once were something vain and dumb
When then again are brought among
I still know that you and me
May always hope but never see
The future that we fear for thee
And act as if its born to be
Death and dying will encroach
What left upon this orbits brooch
For us to lay on life a meaning
That wasn’t sent and isn’t leaning 
Toward you or me or she or them
Just bouncing floating in a hem
Of god that’s never meant to be
Connecting all from you to me

Sprung from a gilded crib

The lies she told were pretty things

Built upon Gossamer wings 

A mother shielding you with fibs

That fell into your gilded cribs

For all that may or may not be

Those lies were signs so tenderly

Placed upon your waking conscience

Protecting both you and she

You sadly never learned the truth

Heard nothing that could change in youth

Neither did it come in time

Nothing could befoul the rime

That left you lonely in make believe

Given to faith in fairies

Never did you challenge these

Not you or all the maids in waiting 

Hired, acquired assisting the dream 

That lied to you and can’t come clean

For truth is not a binary thing

And yours is yours a solitary sing

What love was lost behind the lie

I’m certain were insistent whines

The love that gave you meaning when

The lie was given you instead

Is all the more regretted now

By all the people passing by

Through windows you have seen a world

Black painted, tainted with the swirl

Of never knowing or wanting or being

A thing that truly ever had meaning

But charming we are told you are

By you and 2 in 5 who parse

Your virtues and arrive askance

But certainty replaces chance

Never will you or them rely on

Virtue without spinning transaction

Neither will you cede your fitness

For you were once a golden child

Before time left and took you with it

There’s not a lot to go on here

I’m frankly feeding gaps with tears

A thing to which you seem to aspire

The feckless and phony false bravado

Unable or willing to let it slide by

For yours is important and all should know it

The west wing won’t ever forget  you owned it

transactional evil may render residual

But nothing you offer will ever fill 

The hole that fills with garden silt

That lies amid the heart you are sentenced

Not wielding to fitful efforts to patch it

The heart indeed is a lonely hunter

Somewhere a quiet man balances the bluster

That seeps from you now without soul or fire

Just the daily reminders that nothing gets higher

One day it will end and you will be dying

Not dead but not living

Surviving to search for 

The cameras and lights that left with our savior

Whose visage I can’t summon just yet

Who will emerge into spaces bereft

Of love, empathy, decency, respect

I don’t much know it matters much

I’ll do my part, work and give and such

To reap the plants our parents sowed

When yours were hiding from your throes

We all will have what you want most

A legacy built by all you boast

But never ever did you fathom 

The love you’ll leave in wreckage’s wake

We’ll pick it up and you’ll insist

That this was what you meant in jest 

But we will know that all you cling to

What’s left of the morsels you once would cling to

Is not exactly balanced genius

Yours is more a broken looper

Coming round a collective stupor

Its now just like it’s always been

Never what you thought you were when

You never left your gilded confines

Stayed to long inside the fault lines

Now truth is mixed with pleasant feelings 

Reality a simple thing to deal with

For just as long as it may take you

To fool yourself that this you meant to

Not ever bothered by your madness

Who knows how much you even fathom

For yours is not a dismissible life

Like Nero your name will linger

On tongues that wag long after you squander 

A life you coolly leveraged for waste

Convinced you hit a Birthday triple 

Still standing precisely on third base

In the end..

For me it won’t be a question 

I won’t consider our connection

The love I’ll feel will not be new

I’m the lucky one for knowing you

Close my eyes I’m standing on toes

Reaching for the hugs you gave me 

Striving for the love I’ve taken

Eventually I’ll know it in my bones 

That the love you gave was mine alone

So special did you make me feel

That never did I want or reel

From blows I fought that never came

And loves I lost for not a thing

In the end it won’t be like that

You have seen to giving me

A taut and tough security

No in the end I’ll never wonder

Of all the love I’ve thrown asunder 

No in the end what I’ll succumb to 

Is did you know how much I loved you.

Funktified 

Surely we have lost our way

Losing songs we used to play

Lost and looking for some balance

That some of us took for granted.

Hurlyburly. A stumbling mass.

Drunk, angry, fat from greed.

Not greed that ever stole from me

But looked me rather in the eye

While pumping furiously

Bleeding me dry

There she goes don’t ever look down

Nothing to see, no flag on the ground

Never forget we are the royal ‘me’

Don’t question your curated liberties

Don’t worry. No. Worry. It’s better for me

Keep drinking and striving forever ahead

Not sleeping, so tired and easily lead 

The danger in difference is never wrong

But don’t ever sing the different song

Don’t speak of union and harmony

Shout defiance and cradle the misery.

For you and me and them and us

Are born of swirling and sparkling dust

And to that dust we shall return

Pulverized by gears we built to burn

A Different View

My mothers voice is my native tongue 

And bells once broke cannot be rung

I’m told I’m forged of god and love

Though I never heard back from above
From games to names to tinder fell

Of angels that could never tell

Though sad and simple it remains

A fallen son in hope of claims 
Of missed and missing faith in thee

Not ever meant to turn the key 

That sowed a seed of fear in me

That love weren’t meant for you and thee
A bell twice broke again is rung

And truer now it sings its song

Not fleeing from the pain that mends

The cracks that forged a better man
Love is all I have for you

The pain that passed between is through

I’ll love you till your dying day

And to your god I’ll often pray
Cause love can bridge a different view

And words once spoke may still be true

That doesn’t mean a thing to me

Cause in your light I’ll always be

Wondering the Why

I may not believe in god

I believe that I am blessed 

The universe cannot listen

Though I pray nonetheless 

I hue not to a dogma

I live a life of trying

Ever to improve my station 

In the eye of no almighty

I feel the slings and arrows

From those that vow no pride

The ever present judgments 

From those who speak divine

I am forever seeking

Wondering the why

Searching through a forest

Lost in all that rise

I have come to find comfort

In the wisdom of always asking 

Never knowing is a needle’s eye

That curiosity finds and pierces

Whatever is your heaven

We all should consider

The vanity of knowing

What your god is bound to render

Heaven is a place on earth

And all of us are tenants

Gratitude so often falters

All of us owe penance

The flag you fly for your own god

It’s no brighter, only bigger

Wielded with a heavy stick

Perfecting damaged armor

The thing I fear is gross assurance

Belief lacking any pause

The kind that fits in ones own vision

Defending all that was

Doubt is not the enemy

It is beliefs most staunch defender

Rising every time to meet her

And never torn asunder

I can’t conceive a god I’d fathom

Nor one who’d care to wonder

If I believed in he or she

Then test me wielding thunder

I’d rather go on believing in me

And you and us and others

I’d rather tend to heaven right here

With all my sisters and brothers
  

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