Poetry Drafts

A&E

My own sorrow, the reflected echo
Of a rusty spade beside the hole
I kept digging, never called forth
The rain; never left any hope of ever
Finding a door, an escape out into
The world of normal, into your world
Where A follows B and the light
Only comes on when buttons
Are pressed; dangling from above
The hole is not a hole, I could not
Call the spade a spade, the light
Is off and there are no buttons
To press, the whole alphabet
Is merrily dancing around a tree
Except A follows E, and there are
No tears to shed.

A Kiss / The Sweet Lips of Hybris

I need more hubris, less restraint
To comfortably channel
My God given gifts; compare myself
With the masters of blank verse,
Surpass all that came before
And any pretender subsequent.

I need to shed all fear, immerse
The self in a bath of philosophical
Foam, scrub my stained skin
Of any blemish: seek purity
And a native soul in residence
Where angels fear to tread.

I need a pen, paper, and unlimited
Supply of class A medicamentum.

No Beginning, No End

It never really begun I suggest,
Perhaps a child in time
I was born unwell, unfed, untrained
In all matters that matter in a world
Without instructions, without guide
Or printed manuals I was left to fear
All things, all times, in perpetuity.

It never really begun I suggest,
Perhaps the wind took hold
Of the sail she left behind,
Unknowingly or unwittingly
The whiff of love long lost
Was no anchor strong enough
To keep the dinghy from escaping.

It never really begun I suggest,
The child, the angry adolescent,
The man that grew out of no plant
And the old man contemplating,
Are all one and the same, the same
Thoughts and the same responses
To life and events best avoided.

A Dream in Three Acts

Three hours? Three hours!
Three hours of hell, then three blinks
And Death enters:
Pokes, asks, pokes again,
Asks further if I be ready to play,
I wheeze, caught tongue-tied
In the driest of deserts,
Petrified to play the game
Of one final hour;
I seek a safe haven, a shelter
From the stirring storm,
To lighten my load
As escape will unfold,
I wheeze,
Tongue tied to the tree of life
As bark meet virgin lips
In a silent lullaby,
I dream of dust and barren beaches
Hear a raven call, a summons
To a final feast; Then a poke,
And another lift the lids too tired
To fathom and fear the burning
Apparition floating up ahead,
I pray as I crawl closer and closer:
Be real, be real, you cheaply cut
Outline of a figure, like the last
Mannequin in a closed down store
Waiting in anticipation for anyone
To call โ€“ only to find it gone,
The salvation, solution to
The simple unthought truth
Of moisture, of tears, or rain
To reawaken for real this time
The tongue-tied tired mind
Of the dreamer.

A Slice of Life

A thin slice of life
Covered in whipped cream,
A silver spoon searching
For sponge finds only cream,
Cream,
Strawberry jam,
And hard-whipped
Cream.

A thin slice of life
Whitewashed as the walls,
Right hands reaching for bread
To dip and divide among the dead.

A thin slice of life
Partitioned.

Lives โ€“ severely severed.

Dusty Roads

Intemperate the soul that walks
Your skin along meridians blocked,
Along the remnants of a stagnant
Life once lived;
Eager the infant child to walk anew
The same paths unforgotten;
Intemperate the souls that roam
The eternal roads, in search of
Other victims, of other beasts
To tame;
Eager infant children walk anew
The dusty roads never ending.

More or Less

you beg me to say more with less;

scant the expression
of a pervasive void,

the princes of Serendip
served chilled without a die,

succumb to echoes
of a dawn time morning,

scourge to tame
the beast before you;

you beg me to say more with less
and this is it,

more or less.

Knitted Comforts

I sing my songs as muffled truths,
As knitted comforts in her presence;
With her nails like icicles beneath a
Shadow moon, I sing my sad songs
Alone by a fire long expired:
Like a hell that never came to be,
Yet a hell continuously begging:
Unleash me with your fire eye,
Thaw this frozen hell; but I sing
My songs through knitted socks,
I keep the aching feet frozen
As I sing my final hymn in joy;
Never again to ponder incineration,
Never more becoming less than
What I was sent here to be: free.

Tinsel

Snakes in the womb, in the forge
Of life; cold โ€“ abandoned it answers
No questions, no arguments sold
Of right or wrong, of pride or fall.
Worms in the wound, grim the pace
Of life; warm โ€“ pulsating, festering
Questions and flawed arguments:
We are masked, betrayed, tools
Of a master race; No! Merely tinsel
Shuddering in a cold winter wind,
Finding purposeless dreams
Along the way to meaning.

Compare and Contrast

I compare and contrast all things,
Every moment of every day
I place a self in relation to all
Others; every otherwise imagined
As a better, a taller, a thinner
Life in this snowstorm of raging rain.

I compare and contrast all words,
The attempted, the written,
Some silently spoken in torrents
While others howled in halcyon
Chambers; all better than a self
Expressing the unspoken.

I compare and contrast, and find
A self lacking.

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