Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
There you are little wren,
Drawing my attention in,
To your looping, lonely, little psalm —
.
what devils can i get away with in words ?
like arranging mercury slinks              
to make a true thing    unbloated and blue
an honest note of mood
or  instead  floated finks of corpse              
vicious old swears                                
  with nasty rash of discrimination
hold still   it ain't pretty but              
         i can capture this picture
.
[original - approx 06/25 what devils can i get away with in words /like arranging mercury slinks/to make a true thing   unbloated and blue/hold still   i capture a picture/art you a fixture ?  get out the glue]
I remember your paws going from softly thundering up to crashing down the hallway,
and every game of chase you grew too old for.
I know about the ferocious but tender decision to set you down.
This time there is no need to struggle to get up.
Your wobbly memory survives in the rugs that were put down to help you walk again.
There are days
when the fat
rain beats the
tent like a snare
drum.
Sleep is impossible,
a distant
memory from youth.
Beautiful flowers die,
and green isn't quite
green enough.
It turns to olive brown,
then black.
People don't behave
and we can't make them.
I hope there is
rest when it's all
said and done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBAZoRBDD9k
Here is a link to my you tube channel where I read this poem and others from my recently published books, Sleep Always Calls, It's Just a Hop, Skip, and a Jump to the Madhouse and Sleep Always Calls.  They are all available on Amazon.
in some houses no one,
presses, steams and irons,
clothes, the inevitable linen,
no more.

busy days we are pressing words,
hanging out for all to see,
to disagree.

a private place, a box, there
are some you will never see.

secrets.
So many colorful shards,
so many scattered books,
my Father left behind.

He connected the dots
with me, in space and time,
listening to the wind
when it was raining.

Absent and so close,
he used to say:
“Listen to what’s on the ground.
See what lifts us at night
when the birds go silent.”

He gave me more unrest,
he was the left hand
forced to write
with the right.

He believed in me
when the system
sent me away,
dismissed me.

He had hope
without medals,
standing steadfast
in the last row.

Now the body crumbles.
There is a memory
full of holes.
A counting echo—
he remembers,
he doesn’t,
it’s fine,
still hard
but his voice lives…

Time is blending
into a rusted chain
of events.
Tenderness,
resistance
to the falling apart
of departure.

He won’t come back.
He won’t recover.
The body is warm,
life doesn’t want to escape
the shrinking shell.

Sharp words cut helplessness.
Many nights still come
until the final return
to the embryonic state,
to point zero.

I am here,
into this deep night
being the witness to breath,
awake in the dark gentleness.
In shallow water
Little fish nip at my toes
We bathe in the sun
Beach sand in my bathing suit
We have hot dogs on a bun
Next page