Category: poetry

Immersed

via Daily Prompt: Immerse

We immerse ourselves in what we love

and find a love there waiting.

A love of all we see and learn while falling

Into a light that’s magnetic and never abating.

We fall forever and gather momentum

never once thinking of halting or breaking

when beckoning the courageous and curious and brave

Immersion too often convinces through magic

A belief that deeper and deeper, fathoms upon fathoms

can somehow broaden your knowledge

can give a light to wisdom that travels

at speeds your fathoms can’t fathom.

Until you believe your deeper knowledge

the knowledge that gives you meaning

is somehow the secret to all that is wanted

by all those who don’t study your journey.

Without warning and only in hindsight

do we recognize all that has brought us

to proselytize, believing our wisdom is better than yours

and seeking others who follow.

The same footsteps and thinking

experiences not thinking or asking or seeking or wishing

to learn of an others earned wisdom.

For nothing not swimming in which I had sought

can have knowledge that equals what my search had wroguht

Balance is not what the holy demands

but wisdom arrived at by only my path

and only by those who are near me.

Our tribe has found the one lonely truth

and your path is filled with deniers.

Not wanting salvation for simply committing

to that which is so bloody, so simple

Immersion in me is fealty to thee

and the only true way from damnation

Summers, Cities, Lucy, Diamonds

I danced without thinking or knowing or asking

Spoonfuls of Beatles fueling the frenzy

Summers, cities,Lucy, diamonds

I saw Wonders when Stevie sung to me

In his words but the voice of my mother

Who wrapped me and calmed me and held me

In the warmth of her arms while she borrowed

His words but their awe at such a creation

From an apple residing along with her visions

I saw fire alight in the crescendo of voices

On stages and altars and living room theaters

Words reached out and found me on landings

Compelled me and tempted me slowly

First I whispered stories while reading

Not knowing a sound was even escaping

From mothers and fathers and Hammerstein and Rodgers

And the books those men made me look for

I found shelter for years when I could not find footing

In words and ideas that I never surrendered

Tween covers of stories I carried in backpacks

Of journeys glorious and reverent and abysmal

Sewn into the fabric of many a traveler

By writers and poets commanding attention

Despite never knowing who listened

Who but me, perhaps knew their meaning

The weight of such words beat out on the keys

On Benny’s and scrolls strung together

Cross countries and boundaries times unimagined

Explorers, the greates minds of a generation

Or later while starving in cold water flats

Living just enough for a city of wonder

To rhythms and whims that would have broken

The heart of an apple in an eye

Less buoyed by Beatles, Beats, Wonders and I

To see art in the suffering and wish to collide

And grind and mash my way through the classics

I have come to the time when I must commit to

Try to create and express and learn to be

Less guarded, more trusting that others will see

A simple expression of thought and of feeling

Given through songs and stories and colors

In my life I’ve learned to be and to breathe

Through works of others more gifted than me

Now I try and I struggle and I say I’m happy

Just busy and thinking and fully connected

To art and to life and to all that may be

On the path that stretches forever behind me.

Latent Warrior

I can’t predict my tragedies
I can’t defend proclivities
I may be able to say what is
That which I may never give
Over to those who wish to seize
The broken and battered memories
Of times remembered forgivingly
And dreams abandoned hastily
I don’t suppose it all is fate
But neither do I presume it ain’t
My whiteness lives outside of me
While I forever fail to see
Visions of those looking back at me
They fed my ego and took my most
Not for me said I and gazed
On such a life so filled and glazed
So much obscured the many signs
The world was tilted to me and mine
Now I wonder will I wage
The wars for justice I don’t engage

Fathers and Suns

You perform a rhapsody

Day in and out

Of love and pain and laughs and tears

And I fall for every prop

You look at me for all

As if I caused the sun to shine

Told the moon to rise and sparkle

Were it asked you’d say 

I was the one. The one.

Who dragged the moon to the sky 

Who put the sun to bed

Who rose at dawn to wake the world 

Shook it out of bed

I won’t abuse you of this thought

Or fail it while you carry

A necessary delusion that keeps us all merry

That makes me large enough to carry

The love and pride and fear  and worry

That you alone have brought

I warrant a giants space

A gods all knowing visage

With all the pride and love you give me

The illusion won’t stand forever 

Soon you will discern

That who you thought were mighty

Were little but concerned

And eager and bemused

Agobbed at what life wrought

As soon as you arrived we knew 

The gifts that weren’t yet bought

The truth that we disguise

Is evident to other eyes

To any looking at you and the grown ups who can’t catch up

While you labor in a lie

One we all must cling to

The truth, it’s you not I

That we all revolve and cling to

You are the sun and we the earth 

As much as we can figure

But if that’s wrong and you’re the earth

Than that should only figure 

Of all celestial bodies it’s the moon that we must be

As the sun that shines and alights us

Is all that we can see. 

Fallen

dismiss me I’m liberal
fault me for caring
about others and dreams
and nations and sparing
the lives of innocents
who fall below visions
of hawks and of monsters
and barkers of treason
you sling and slash
you shout of the demon
of fault that is falling
on those that don’t need it
you fire and fly
a flag of fallen heroes
but fail in your faith
never wanting for reasons to hate
alt white is leading
the nose of minor masses
to alt right leaders
contorting the language
to paint virtue of evil
and claim it is raining
the rain that is washing
their dominance away
not right not alt not white not all
but wanton and craven you hasten the fall
of fairness for looting
the souls of the groundlings
scraping and striving
learning and wheezing
your winning and failing
and pushing weighted ideas
that once fell to the flag
the long ago beat them
now spreads them and hides them
behind bars of blood
letting you rule but not fool
not even each other
spraying hate without heeding
those words you ain’t reading
that told of a notion
once dropped will no longer
unite us but bite us
by virtue of group think
shouts and screams and hollers for fealty
to nation not notion
defeating the meaning
of something we once knew
worth striving to perfect
now can’t even muster
the unity to protect

3AM

I’m sick of everyone 

and their crockpot recipes. 

I’m sick of their Midwest mockeries. 

I’m tired of the constant cacophony 

of pained but righteous melodies 

sung by sparrows feeling entitled to everything 

and assholes baring their baritones 

and all the others who can’t be alone. 

Who won’t atone. Who sling their wares 

through country roadsides and broader thoroughfares. 

All the noise feels redundant but looks resplendent. 

Feels remarkable. But sounds insolent. 

I’m tired of wanting and wishing and playing 

never missing a moment I’m convinced is so vital 

to find it arrives and passes with no residue, no lasting. 

I leave wanting not more, not less. 

All I ever want is next. 

This can’t be me. It can’t be what it seems. 

I’m filled and fly on wings of dreams 

but ever I know and ever I try there’s nothing left but next. 

Next year and sorrow. 

Next pity and wallow. 

Next thing to be earned next feeling to burn. 

Forgotten piles amount to a life well mined 

by others who don’t give mine the time 

or the mind.

%d bloggers like this: