If I was to write you a story, I don’t think it’d be very happy, because happy’s hard to find, like the tilde on this keyboard of mine. If I tried to write you a poem, I don’t believe it’d very pretty, since the pretty words left home just after Christmas this year. If I did write you something, though, it’d be from a heart blind to what you believe isn’t pretty — but is so. That’s because you’ve touched me and I’ve felt you in a way senses cannot. I hope that’d make you feel happy ~ ~ ~ even if I can’t. Hi, remember me? The usual struggle for words got worse over the past month or so. Then I sensed I wasn’t being myself in what I was trying to say. So I went as basic as I could, letting my blind heart lead me here, where you’re beautiful and I’m just the me you don’t need to see ~ you just need. Simple.
artist
When Every Night’s the Longest Night of the Year
They say tonight’s the longest night of the year. But I’ve already had at least a dozen dozens longer since January. That makes this the year’s shortest day, too. But days, no matter how long, go by in just a blink when you live from one sleepless night to the next. Each day’s just another little box full of meds, each with a lid wearing a 3-letter signifier that it’s WED or SUN, which is the one where I refill them for another seven blinks without a thought and seven more dead-bodied stares while my mind’s milling around about you and them and sometimes me. That’s when I compose my best work - the stuff that never gets written. But actually, that best’s more like like a drunk’s singing voice or his irresistible charm. Except a drunk’ll fall asleep at some point.
Telling You A Lot Since I’ve Nothing to Say
The words won’t come to me today, at least ones that make any sense. Forgotten their rules, too, that is to say, except, perhaps, number and tense. But what do I know? I’m just a man, who daily hooks his heart to his sleeve and hopes what he says you’ll understand and keep you near and never leave. But I’ve no control over what you feel, only Hope and Faith I might give you pleasure. I pray a little of your heart I can heal, or maybe steal, what I regard as a great treasure. I’ve rattled on here much too long, especially for someone with nothing to say. With Faith and Hope I’ll send this along, but (again) looks like I’m sending my Love today. This truly started out as a free write this afternoon. Couldn’t get any words to knit together, so I just wrote what came to me when I wasn’t trying.
I Believe In You Because You Believe In Me
I tried to believe there is no such thing as a muse to incite some kind of art. But now I’m empty and the birds don’t sing, the leaves have all fallen and so’s my heart. I have no words with which a net I’d knit that I might capture your dear heart and soul. And now for two hours I’ve done naught but sit, with a net not made of words, just all hole. But how do I catch what I cannot hold, my hands stuck in these holed pockets so deep? My fingers empty of all but the cold, with no words I can sew, so none shall I reap. Please touch me with a whisper, my muse, old friend. remind my imagination how I’ve been wrong. Together we’ll fill autumn’s trees again, lift my heart, and the birds’ voices in song.
So Tell Me
So tell me one secret I’d wish to hear from you. Something you’re sorry that you always hid from view. Lord knows, I’ve given up more than a sane man should. Probably tell more but it hasn’t done me good. So tell me the secret, you don’t have to name names. Come as close as I do, you won’t burst into flames. Like a moth I’ve been drawn to candles all my days. You might be my brightest, or so the poetry says. On second thought, just shush, your secret keep concealed. Your eyes just up and told me what your lips never revealed. For Day 21 of Poem-A-Day April, here's a poem I wrote from Robert Lee Brewer's prompt calling for a piece titled "(Blank) Me." I was sorely tempted to not fill in that blank and go with a naughty poem (sorry, Julie O'C.) but I chose to go with whatever flowed. Hence...
This Kiss On This Page
I used to wonder if love was something only lonely souls like mine make art about. Obsession squeezing drops of hope out of my imagination as palettes and blank pages primed with passion wait for their touch. Then life always shoved the table or kicked the door, allowing reality to blow in and scatter my expressions of unspoken love floorward. But I don’t worry about reality’s role in my pictures anymore. When I wish to express myself about you and me and what might pass for love, hope fills my pen and I touch its kiss to the page myself. Hi! Back from a 700-mile trip to North Carolina to visit my own. So I didn't have the opportunity to keep up with my poem-a-day quest. But if I blew it up, I at least did it for the best cause. It's been 16 months since I got a chance to give them real hugs. Nevertheless, I intend to make up the days I miss and give us 30 poems over April's 30 days. But first, Day 20, a Love/Anti-love poem. I'll leave it to you to figure out which.
Still Trying to Find Myself
Can you help show me the way to find myself? Who or where I might be I’m never sure. Am I a destination or a denizen? A thought or a thinker? Or maybe I’m an island, alone in the sea, or in a river waiting for you to float by and wave hello or goodbye. So tell me about your quest to find who you may have become on the road from who you’ve been. Or are you still lost as me, just standing here, knowing you’ve chosen what’s left but hardly ever what was right in all those forks on life's one-way road. Perhaps I’ll never find myself because never have I ever been able to arrive at the who I wanted to be. Except for these quiet times when can I sit here with you, knowing I’m no longer lost. Day 14 of NaPoWriMo and another promptless poem sprung from my quest to understand who I might be and why. Something I'm fairly certain about, though. Sometimes, I feel that while I'm writing these, I'm speaking to you and while you're reading them, you're listening to me. Together. Spiritually simultaneous. And I don't feel as lost and lonely sitting at this keyboard anymore.
The Scars We Share
Would you let me see your scars
like I let you see mine?
May I run my fingers softly over
your wounds writ in bas-relief
on places I can see and those
you haven’t shared?
Do I reveal too much or would you
accept another glimpse at some I
forgot until they show themselves
when I recall you and that and then?
If we bared them together, 3,2,1,
don’t be surprised to find we wear
the marks of matching wounds.
Those I would touch gently and
with a certain veneration, since
this is where once we shared our pain.
In Case You Wondered ~ A Shadorma
The answer is complicated; it's not a black or white. In truth, it lies ‘tween the two. garbed in gray shadow. I won't lie to you. But in poems I write of my dreams in black and white, with you, in color, I'm lying For Day 6 of my poem-a-day April, I've followed NaPoWriMo's suggestion of using the poetic form called a shadorma. A shadorma is a six-line poem with a specific number of syllables -- 3-5-3-3-7-5 -- assigned to each line. I chose to make mine a mirror image version, which adds six more lines of 5-7-3-3-5-3 syllables, respectively.
The Apple Won’t Fall Until the Mango Does
I thought I could do it, sit and roll thoughts and feelings down a page like chocolate syrup runs down a sundae-eating kid’s chin. You know, simple as gravity. But Newton’s apple doesn’t fall on my head anymore. No, my dome is too full of mango now, an orange ovoid I’ve never swallowed, and yet of which I am gorged, sated, sickened, obsessed. So I just typed, letting nature take its course onto the page. But all I’ve accomplished over this quadrennial is dry heaves that leave me with nothing but tears falling down onto my empty hands. I hope someday soon, the emetic of time will allow more colors their space back in my head, instead of that vomitous orange. But at least I’ll be shed of it. Then I hope to find new rainbows in the black I’ll once more bleed, down into your once- open heart. You figure it out. I've about given up.
A Thing for Words 