Tag Archives: Poetry

Rote

Thirty-eight today,
And the days are kind.
But I feel them- blind
Words accumulating-
Which need saying?

You write from a different state,
And my love still smolders,
But no longer can these shoulders
Carry the heavy weight:
Admission to your spinning fête.

A carnival empire
Bleeding heirs
Begging to be spared
From a survival-bent liar:
Unwitting victim and victimizer.

You stand as your own narrator
Proclaiming all you’ve accomplished
I’m a forced-accomplice
And sometimes-spectator,
But what do you say to your Creator?

Do you say to the Lord
”Look at all I’ve done in Your name?”
We both know that refrain
Strikes the wrong chord,
And costs more than you can afford.

So why do you fill these days
Practicing it in rote?
A demanding gloat
Or an empty craze:
An entry-fee of praise.

I’m worried sick about you.
You’re old, and you’re ill,
And you’re unchanged still.
With all time put us both through,
You will not be subdued-

Thirty-eight years askew,
But I do care, and I will,
Because I love you still.


On Calling Out and Crawling Off

I measure these frailties
Against the scale
Of Your majesty:
My fears are a travesty.

An accumulation of tragedies
Becomes a bag of excuses,
A candy jar of delusions
Dampening the effusive,

Dwelling in exclusions.
The conclusion to trust
Won’t make it so, but
Baby steps make forward thrusts

In my guts
I believe and I resist
I escape and I enlist
I surrender, I sulk, I subsist

I speak and, sometimes, I listen.
Protect me in my frailties, and even in my sin,
Guard what even I can’t defend,
For You are The God, and my friend.


Resurrection Serenade

She sent me her soul,
Her song, and I sing it
In the dark I linger
Ancient sparks flowing

Lost years crooning
The vibrato rythyms we all
Tapped out on our prison walls
Our stretched voices in tune

Sing.
Sing these lost years,
Like velvet green leaves
Ripped from spring trees
The storms appear,
And we dissipate, but

We do not disappear.
We suffer loss, yes, and torn limbs,
But we live again, and
Our song is here.


Implausible Deniability

All my life I’ve heard
Who I ought to be,
What I must deserve,
And how I should believe

And believe, I do
From the core of who I am
Whatever facets I eschew
Change not the slightest gram

Of the rock that won’t erode,
And the hand that can’t release-
I know that I know that I know;
I believe what I believe.

Then why don’t I conform?
This I cannot say.
The world, to me, feels worn-
And an infantile display

Of youthful promenading
Feathers flaunting wide
Perpetual self-serenading:
A ballad of blinded pride.

I don’t have the energy,
Nor the desire,
To bow to pop-liturgy
Or lift myself higher-

All my oddities abound,
I see they keep me alone.
I wander the hard ground
Ever out of home-

Even these I speak of plainly
I do not dream as accusation
The lone state that pains me
Is of my own creation

Unwilling, or else unable,
To put aside where I am bent-
I don’t fit into the label-
Does that mean I can’t be sent?

Yet in my diminished condition-
Here am I.
Beyond trend or tradition,
I ever testify.

It all boils down to these:
I am, I exist as I, and I believe.
Whatever else they may say of me
Cannot negate these three.


She Sings

Precious little moments
Strung together, one by one
Like popcorn chains on Christmas trees,
Like dress-up beads,
Or bubbles dancing in the sun.

They need little exposition
Just an inhale, a pause, a smile
There’s no simpler machine of insight
Than the filter of pure delight-
Joy is forthright
In all her wiles.

How quietly she rises-
No posterity screaming off the dark
She listens more than she speaks
I listen to her: I seek
Her beauty in the broken bleak
Waiting to embark

On popcorn strings
And the harmonies
Of love, and hope, and now.


Let It Be

He loves you.
Quietly I came these many miles,
In the dark and nameless,
Wringing out my smiles
In shameless complacency
To hear someone say to me,
“He loves you.”

He’s been saying it for years.
Too good to be true some days,
But that can’t undo His decision
Who am I to appraise
His vision of devotion
Or the ocean of His patience
I’ve been swimming in for years,

Treading through
For the glimpse, the whisper,
“He loves you.”


Fear

Fear is the beast that ever gnaws
A gaping, jagged throat
Churning and swallowing,
In salivating gloat

Over the next meal.


Swimming Downstream

Walking again in the familiar skin
Of my own isolation.
I commence lobbing Hail Marys over the fence
Against my own common sense.
I can’t be sure what crosses over, or
What falls to the floor.
I’ve tried to resist, but I subsist
On this persistence.

Maybe I was never meant to oppose this
Maybe this silence composes
Some clarity of purpose.


Sprung

New Life, so seemingly fragile,
Blooms, stretches, yawns into existence
Her entire cycle ahead still,
As she tries on her persistence,

And sleeps off her resistance.

The beauty in the fresh blossom
Sings of hope and resurrection,
Winter left us solid, solemn,
Frozen in derelict dejection,

Seeking warmer affections.

New Life breaks like sunrise,
Like a thief into the strongman’s purse,
Bringing a swift demise
To the fallow curse:

The icy hearse.


Remembrances

When the fog was lightly lifting,
And the sun came stretching through,
Like some ancient seed of hope
Breaking ground and blooming new,
The fresh life in my arms
Brought back forgotten days with you

I yearned to answer light with light,
To lift the mist atop your years
Returning kindness, even joy,
As the confident victor over fear
And in the silence of my words,
I reached to pull you near.

Three days past:
Remembrances of why we sever ties.
Three days past,
You sent the threats and lies
The creeping fog
Which has capsized us.

How can any sunrise break
Into the fog that takes you?