May 29, 2013

   This one was written very fast... sometimes things work out that they just come together enough to say, "Hey! This is a poem!" It's a conglomeration of a bunch of ideas, experiences that I really didn't take notice of when they happened. But I sat down to write this poem and they ALL came rushing out. So this poem is about a month worth of experiences... not ALL the experiences, but the ones that (for whatever reason) stuck to my mind:

 

 

Morning!

 

Wow! Up early! Outside already... hot, black coffee

and the insane sounds of morning birds...  almost awake.

Another cigarette, I guess, I know I NEED to quit. Yet,

there’s something quit comforting about nicotine

and smoke, lighting up, breathing in and hopefully

breathing out… not knowing all the while the difference

between the two.

 

The spring winds threaten rain… but not this early.

They just sigh a bit, tickling the fresh, green tops

of the parking lot’s trees, fiddling with the little stubs

of hair magically appearing from the inside of my ears.

I’m getting old… er and none the wise… r.

That’s why I smoke unfiltered Lucky Strikes,

drink the cheapest brand of coffee I can find

and waste my life away sitting on curb, in an ally

trying to reason with the mentally ill wildlife nested

above my head.

 

And poetry! What must I do? Is it really necessary

to climb on the back of Che Guevara’s motorbike

and go traipsing about through the Amazon jungle?

Must I stop at every mining camp and village hut

to preach the gospel according to Marx, Lenin, Ringo,

Paul and George?

 

Or is it enough to stretch my illiterate, long legs

out across the monochrome page and bitch about

that fucking one-eyed squirrel staring at me

from the tree across the way. Not sure who

is staring at who(m?). Not sure the squirrel

is really there… not sure I’m really here.

But I must be. Who else would write this

dumb-ass poem?

—rrw o5-28-13

 

 

 



May 27, 2o13

MEMORIAL DAY

   It's been an eventful MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND, but you'll need to go to my PAGES to read all about It. Here, you'll find my poem commemorating the occasion:

To The Dead

Memorial Day

Monday, May 27, 2013

 

Here’s a toast to the dead,

for the ones who never came back,
the ones who died in the blood and mud
of foreign lands, in the oceans  wide,
the jungles thick, the skies lit-up by tracer rounds.

 

Let’s raise our glasses for the lads and lasses

who made it back home without a scratch,
not a bloody wound  or festered sore to be seen.
Their scars do appear, but only in dreams.

 

And let us salute the absoluteness of war,

the life of death, domestic, abroad.
To the end of all bloodshed, a vow that we swore
so many, too many times before.

 

Let’s praise the corpse; hell, why not praise them all?               

Billy and Bobby, Sally and Sandy, Martin and Paul;
on withered legs escort them to their graves.

And when we’re through, jump start the good ol’ barbeque.
Yeah, let’s chug a few down for the glories of war.
“To the dead, the dead!”  We drink once more.
—rrw o5-26-13



 

Sunday, May 26, 2o13 (1)

I wrote this two poems at the same time. Both about the same thing and the us pretty much the same point of view and wording. The big difference, one is much shorter than the other. The shorter one was actually written from the other. here's the shorter one:

Moon Envy

 

Rough day today. Not sure why.

Did sing with the moon a bit,
took her pic, watched the clouds
surround her, hide her away
in their dark grey arms. Afraid
I'm a bit jealous. They can touch her;
I cannot. Even the Elm trees
are closer to her than I could ever be.
She's the only woman in my life
 that never left forever.
—rrw o5-25-13

Sunday, May 26, 2o13 (2)

Here's the second, longer poem:

 

 

 

Moon Lover

Hanging with the moon again tonight, taken her pic

when she’s not busy avoiding the bus load

of Paparazzi clouds the wind blew in;

they man handle her too much in my opinion

blushing her grey and white… then a brown-like yellow.

I guess I'm just jealous, never had a chance to get closer

than the extended lens setting on my camera… never close

enough to touch her the way those other strangers do. I can

only dream of running beer wet fingers along that sandy skin.

She's a bit of a flirt, a bit of a slut… sometimes.

Drawn to the wilder side of weather— thunderstorms,

lightning, flooding rains— I’ve even watched her dance

with hurricanes and the high and mighty, self-indulgent stars.

Once I caught her smoking weed with some low-life comet—

Man, I wish I had a hit right now.

She knows me will, and has (begrudgingly) for all the years

listened to my drunken songs, watched me making love—

On the seat of a motorcycle one time... my white ass

shinning up at her the same way she shines down on me.

And when I was too drunk to ride, she’d light the way home

for my wobbly feet.

Yeah, the Moon, she’s been nice to me, kinder to me

than all the other imaginary lovers I have known.

—rrw o5-26-13



Happy Birthday to ME!

 Yep! 65 years old! This is my birthday poem to ME! I've been writing these personal celebration poems for... Hmmm... 10 years! I think... Maybe more. here's the new one. If you look close, you can learn a lot about me... if you wish to.

… At 65

I count the change inside my pocket with my left hand,

my fingers know instinctively the weight and size            
of quarters, nickels, dimes… a delinquent penny
that tries so hard to mask its absolute unworthiness.
But it can’t fool me; Lincoln’s beard is far too prominent.

With eyes half closed I watch the sparrows picking

through the spring-green lawns outside the window.
An extended winter for them; famine and cold,
a darkness so thick the barn owl refused
to hunt at night. Even the sturdy crow refused—
Well, that’s not quite right, no, not true at all.
Crows would never miss an opportunity to stir-up trouble,
taking what they want without a thought for
self-inflicted harms, surviving one worm at a time.
But they hope, crows do, and they pray and so
often they sing when they  really shouldn’t… off key,
most times… boy, how we wish that they wouldn’t.

I once believed myself a crow. A dark, black creature with

enormous kite like wings, sculpting brutal midnight
from the skin of the sky with my ferocious Ginsu beak.
All the while Her Moon-ship screamed at me, “Stop that!”
But I ignored her, didn’t care to hear, never notice all the tears
forming on her cratered face, dissolving into desperate stars.
Selfish little girls are crows, oh, yes, that’s what we are.

According to my fingers there’s exactly sixty-five cents lost somewhere

within the gravitational folds of my black-hole pocket. Should I take
their word for it or count it myself? No. Not once have they lied to me.
Well… Except that one time when I desperately begged them to do so.

Written for Robert R. Woods

on his 65th birthday

May 23rd, 2013

May 19, 2013

   As promised on the Daily Write  here is the revised version of Beyond the Pale.

 



Beyond the Pale

I am troubled by malicious minions shouting whispers in my ears.

Come cast your scented spell against their tortured taunts and jeers.
I’ll watch them scurry out the bedroom door and disappear
as your bare feet stomp there little bodies into jelly.
And while you’re at it, toss a glance of steel blue gall
upon the ghostly shadows dancing in the hall.
They chant and rant in Scottish gibberish about            
poor Willie’s blood-stained sonnets. Throw them out,
chuck them in the closet, strike them with your knout.

Then come to bed beyond these pale-skin dreams,

stop and bend, I love to watch you readjust your seams.
We are castaways, propelled into a mystery
from birth and left to roam unconsciously
without the luxury of moomie’s five-star womb.
Let’s hop upon her martyr’s tomb, hum that rustic tune
whistled by the drunken sailors drowning in the moon.

We’ll take our time, wet suckle kiss each other, linger longer
there than all those withered memories we mother,
those crippled thoughts that scar our pockmarked temples.

I've had my fill of preachy preachers preaching godly sermons,
idolatry, debauchery, the prophylactic rhetoric of demons.
I would rather go a sniffing ‘bout your bramble regions,
questing for a reason deeper, wider, wilder, shorter
than the blond  hair I grip in knotted fists. Our final gasp a roar,
all that we are, all that we were, left dying on the floor.
—rrw  o3-o2-o7 (major rewrites o5-18-13)

 

May 14, 2o113

I have so many poems yet to post. Like I said, I've been a way awhile. This one has a rhyme scheme:

a. b. a. b. b. c. c. d. c. d.

Andromeda

There’s a stream alive beneath her fine hair

which conjures up a tyrannical fret

that pounds to mud the human living there.

With bitter tides and mossy-green regret,

death’s thought she cannot or will not forget.

Upon the shore of her dyspeptic coast

I cleanse the sorrow I bleed, cherish most,

remove the cloth and dive into her sea.

Cetus, you old millstone, protect our host,

forever we drown Love’s black memory.

—rrw o4-23-13



 

May 11-2013

   I'm writing a lot of silly stuff lately. Very light stuff. No, that's not quite right. More like getting back to basics. I think I some times try too hard to be a meaningful poet, you know, lots of fancy words, intellectually full of... well, bullshit, I guess. This stuff I'm writing now is really more my speed, I think. I'm a thinker for sure but not all that deep. Imaginative, yes, but not as... I don't know... grand? One of the things I like about writing poetry is there are no set rules to writing other than the rules and the structure and grammar that the poem itself insists on. Here's one of those pieces that told me how it wanted to be presented. S, if you don't like it, blame the poem not me:

My Shadow

My shadow
scratches
at the door.
It wants to go
out, but
I'm tired,
I'm in
for the night.
Whimper all
you want,
I’ll turn
off the light
and go to sleep,
 And you'll cease
 to exist...
until tomorrow,
that is,
when the sun
wakes me up.
If I wake up.
—rrw o5-11-13

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

May o9, 2o13

   I gotta a lot of catching up to do. Been a little slack on posting here. I know, I know, I said wouldn't do that... but hey, I'm only... almost human. Probably post poems that I just finished, and work backwards to the poems that I wrote earlier. Lately, I've been working with a rhyme scheme, abba that I've become quite addicted to. I like working with it. The form is a little looser than some might think it should be... but you can blame the poet Molly Peacock for that. She really showed me through her writings how to open up... Thanks, Molly.

Man’s Best Friend

And there was hope stuck to the bottom of his sole.

He grabbed the largest knife he had and tried to scrape
away the gooey mass… But, alas, there’s no escape;
hope has a way of clingin’ to a thing and never letting go.

He flung his shoe across the room and squashed it like a frog

against the kitchen wall. He was, of course, aiming for the trash
but missed it by a foot or more. He then did something rather rash.
He snatched hope up, reshaped it in the likeness of a dog.

And very unexpectedly (to himself and new found pet)
he grabbed a piece of string and tied it round the doggie’s neck,
flung the door open and took it for a walk! “What the heck,”
he thought, “ I’ll march you round the neighborhood and let

The neighbors see.” And did they see? Oh, yes indeed!

From their porches came the people (many whom he loathed)
they gathered round the master and his pet and patted both
upon the head and smiled and laughed and all agreed

that hope, yes, hope peeled off your kitchen wall,

transformed into a friendly beast ?
That’s much, much better, yes, to say the least,
than to have no hope, no hope at all.
—rrw o5-o9-13

May o4, 2o13

   Yes, it's been a while since the last post. A little busy writing... well, no, not so much that. More not feeling up to writing on the webpage... I should make it my TOP priority and leave the Facebook posting as secondary. maybe that's what I'll do.
  
   The following poem is what might be called a signature poem. Not sure what that means exactly, but it sounds cool... SIGNATURE POEM.  I guess it means that this poem in particular says more about ME than the others... Hmmm, not sure that's true exactly. But it feels to me to be a very close "description" of who I am...  most of the time. Nothing really profound in it. No Earth shaking revelations... it just feels "right."

My Life in Film

 

It’s way too early in the morning

for me to be up, but here I am

writing a poem, if I may call it such,
wondering exactly where I misplaced my life.

Funny, I thought I laid it on the night stand

next to my bed which I’m in the habit of doing,

but it’s not there…

Remember the  movie

The Incredible Shrinking Man!

how little by little he disappeared

becoming smaller and smaller,

his voice turning to a whisper,

then to an even smaller whimper

until no one could hear him at all?

That’s me lately…

Not sure why, but my friends

don’t seem to see me anymore, or

maybe they see too much of me or

maybe it’s all in my head…

I do imagine things sometimes

that aren’t very pleasant, like

being eaten alive by flesh hungry zombies

while everyone I know ignores my cries for help…

They just turn their backs whistling that tune

from Snow White… You know, that happy

one the dwarfs whistle… before

they met the title character…

Perhaps I watch too much television or

perhaps not enough…

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre!

Ah, now that was a movie!

A babe, a chainsaw, a psycho killer

wearing a mask made of human flesh!

Tears come to my eyes when I think about it!

I find it difficult to watch a movie

without a large coke and a medium

popcorn by my side…. I don’t know…

it comforts me while I sit in the dark…. alone.

Could that be a fault in my character?

—rrw o7-29-o8 (latest rewrites o5-o4-13)