Tag: poetry

When we were 17

I’m beginning to fear the absence of feeling

Because we had it all right, when we were

seventeen years old, we would love so hard

let our hearts be pierced, like our lips and nose,

our love poems,

in all different types of prose,

the symbology of a simple cut out heart

from leftover fabric of a school project,

we’d carry around, as if it were a part of us,

but chided and disregarded,

“how could you possibly know love,

you all just started,

you’re like puppies playing,

pretending you feel,

but I’m older and wiser and

you should know it’s not real,

just wait ‘till you’re both older,

and then you will know,

you’ll look back on this,

and thank me for telling you so.”

But now that I’m older, twenty nine now,

the farther away this concept blooms,

exists in the past,

love is a construct, a word for ignited delusions,

that seethe and seep deep

as a life intrusion,

I’ve felt absolutely nothing for a long time

I sit in my room and I wish I could cry,

something, anything,

I just want to feel,

I pine for the days,

When I believed it was real.

Just Another Protest Poem

Sometimes I wonder who the hell I am.
Is this me? Or is this a person shaped,
Prodded, manipulated, and carved by
Every day bellicose symptoms of our
Chosen political system. Where slavery
To corporations is misconstrued as benign
And the irony of educational institutions as
Marxist in ideals, yet they congeal their
Pockets with coffee shop dimes and
Prostitutes dirty money, and sentence those
Without to twenty years hard labour.
Sometimes I wonder who the hell I am.
Is this me?

Just Your Luck

Navigating

With a compass that never pointed north.

 

Become encumbered with dread

Dredge—dredge—dredge

Overwhelming incoherence — the cotton brain effect.

 

Doctor has to cut the phone out

Of her hand,

 

“Its like a modern day rune,

you need it for luck” he snickers, for his

luck is his youth predates it.

 

the lonley man

who followed me to the next bar.

 

please disappear

 

I presume he was pre-conditioned too,

A life of a debilitating understanding of reality,

 

Sober and somber, only idiots call it pessimism

My inner voice speaks. I know its harsh–

 

comfort of a sharp glass of wine, to unmute

this day

where I’ll wonder how I got to be this way.

Geist Zine

I wonder if I’ve ever unknowingly walked passed them,

Down the streets of Georgia or Hastings;

I think I would get star struck if I ever intentionally

Strolled by, or at the very least I’d confidently stiffen

My allure and act like I didn’t care, not even bothering

To turn my head, but relying on reflections in windows and

Peripheral vision to give me a taste of what I desperately wanted to

Immerse myself into.

 

Geist, the small literary magazine I had

Come to idealize and idolize — to associate with

Blissful breezes that carried fresh spring scents

From petals softer than bottoms fresh from the wombs

Of mothers, who practiced natal yoga and nourished

Themselves with organic produce, reared in urban farming

Communities.

 

Art has a way of presenting perfection

In a world whose politics cannot agree on the

Definition. The steaming cup of coffee icon

Signals for all to meditate in the crafted collection

of words who’s mental imagery  is retrospective

of every moment in time before this second now.

 

Because as I keel into the mind of each

Swollen brained author, I feel a beating heart

that is not my own, with descriptors so rich,

they become indistinguishable from my own

Memories, so much so that it is impossible not

to take note of my own surroundings, in order

to repay the favour of a fervent rendition–And

thus a life lived relished in the small things where

Cups of dark chocolate coffee offer indispensable pleasure

in mornings, mid day, to post-dinner, accompanied with

stories of spirit, wit, intellect and mind.

 

 

 

Young people on old roads

Alix wipes her tears with the tea towel,

The one that’s seen better years. It was

Gifted as a Christmas present by the in-laws

And their ten-year anniversary had come and gone.

 

“Yea can’t stop workin’ just cuz someone dies yea know.”

Tough hands furiously dry the kitchy plates with

Ornate swirls etched around the edge. Lipstick

Shades mute when pressed together, a salty taste really is sour.

The view out the kitchen window offered needed comfort.

 

A pick up sputs across pot-hole dust roads, it grunts

Heavily as it works to keep up with demand, a foot on the pedal,

Like whips on the back of a Clydesdale, whose days in retired

Green pasture, were never to transpire.

 

John – a simple man- grips the wheel.

“When it’s intangible, people don’t understand it.

We say cousin Elsa died of a broken heart, because

It’s how we explain a sickness we can’t see, son.”

 

A well-read,

A well-spoken,

A well-beyond-his-vocation….

 

John came back from Princeton in the fall of ’79,

Left the middle of the third semester, back to

West Virginia in the colors of fall, it was not

Complete disenchantment to take over the farm after

Father passed. “Open fields and an open heart” he’d always say.

 

“Son, I want you to know some of the sickest people

have to work everyday, until they don’t.”

 

His son focused hard on the time on the dash,

 

3:14

 

“If your eyes stare long enough, the tears seem

to absorb back inside,” he thought as he swallowed

and didn’t dare take a breath.

 

3:15

 

‘Yea understand me?’ John pleaded, his voice wavering.

 

Nothing scares the shit out of you more than your father about to cry.

 

3:16

 

A spoken reply would have meant a certain detonation of tears,

It was the button to this time-bomb, to which explosion was his greatest fear.

 

Drones of wind past the pick up were the only breaths taken

Through each sunken pot-hole, their faces braver for town.

Assumptions

When it all catches up with you,

Withered looks of disappointment along with

Assumptions made on behalf

of your character.

 

The Royal Slut in porn

Star action

Slept with her clothes on,

The regular cold reaction.

 

Real man have no feeling,

They’re like a fish;

But both when hit — bleeding,

Still no one clarifies it.

 

Livers working the night shift

Leaves her listless on the couch

A wasted life

Dreams of funerals come unbeknownst.

 

He had to go out and do

What he thinks she did

When we try to balance out the queue

We only further de-scale it.

You’re not mine

The sound the machine makes

When all is  lost.

The hardline drone when the

Heart seizes to start it’s next

Motion.

The glass that screams out as it

Hits the floor, crawling, pointed

Fingers, desperate to grasp for

The warmth of your hand.

And I don’t know if these tears

Climax for me or for you; yet just

As well, my stomach dips as low

As peat bogs go, and I’ll withstand the

Eerie chill that solitude grows. It’s good

We own no guns, cuz with passion

No one ever really knows.

That Time

That Time

A mouse could have breathed

On the other side of the house and

I would have woke up.

Lattes and sugar swirls keep

Us breathing this time of year.

Artificial life with artificial intelligence.

All these notes we digest and

Snort into our brains like cocaine

Don’t show up on the drug test

A week later.

 

Christmas songs sound anachronistic

As the one from Rudolph injects memories

About when I was small, in my pajamas, all

Cozy inside from the snow.

Christmas time is like edging for a child.

Anticipation is half the allure.

We all still try to get that same high when we

All still believed in magick.

 

I sip on my sugar infused latte and think

About the first white hair I plucked from

My head this morning. This head that is no

Longer youthful enough for tender kisses

By parental lips.

 

Stages of life leave us, like lovers

In the morning. We reach for them

Across the bed, only to feel cold sheets;

Evidence they are gone

And have been gone for some time.