Month: February 2011

To a Woman You Scarcely Know

Tell her of sunshine always

tell her of how you rushed to find the words

and put the book back on the shelf

and the vicious sanctimony that arose in that moment forever

darkened the shadows of yourself against the emblazoned tomb of the world

Tell her of sunshine and

the juxtaposition of those intrepid words will incite the violence of love within her.

tell her of sunshine

and she will hear within it the sorrowful moans of those in airplanes overhead

begging in silence to the stewardess for water.

tell her of the cracked pebbles beneath the shadows of crows overlooking the stoplights and of the those with the tongues blackened with the questions of tomorrow

tell her of sunshine

Fun With Frost!

“Occam’s Razor (The Road Most Taken)”

Two roads forked in a golden forest.

And of course, physics proving

One cannot at once be in two locations,

I stared up and down in my confusion,

Admitting to the wood’s whispering chorus

That I had no idea where I was going.

“You’re lost,” said she, looking rather coy.

“I am not,” I say with a smirk.

“North is that way,

If you check the moss upon that birch.”

So I ventured left with much courage,

Satisfied in my quick thinking and primordial knowledge.

But she, stubborn as a knotted root

Decided on the other.

For in her mind, the grass was springy

And would not muddy up the boot.

“And besides,” said she,

“On my path the weather is fairer.”

I shall be telling this with some dismay,

For an ancient instinct failed that day.

Whereas she traversed steadfast in her persistence

And made it home to a glass of warm liqueur

I stumbled under the stormy skies of October

Down the path of most resistance.

Spilt

This pen I hold is awful sore
At all the things I use it for
It wants, of course, to be a part
Of some fantastic work of art
Intently, exactly, dutifully made
To dance across a virgin page
Laying down its lines and arcs
To illuminate the light with dark

But, alas, I’m sad to say
It saw no purpose in today
In making lists and signing checks
This instrument was never flexed
The ink it spilled was martyred, thus
Without a cause, with no purpose
This human realm sure takes its toll
On me
My pen
Its liquid soul

~r

Midnight Reflections

Last call sends me home.

Hazy eyes that see my life

reflected at night.

Stumbling back through a miserable February frost, steam rises from the interstate overpass and permeates into my stinging lungs. The bridge’s unforgiving concrete ceiling serves as a home to the dregs, the junkies, and the discarded human waste lost in the bowels of an insatiable society. Walking past like faded ghosts in the fog, their faces reflect the horrors of being left behind. Scars scream the pain of being jumped in the park for a pair of shoes. Teeth cocaine-cracked and jagged from one too many run-ins with the cops. Their earthen shells creak rickety and unstable as they hobble on blistered feet and social paranoia. Hungry, anything helps, his cardboard sign suggests.

“Spare some change?” He asks through mumbled gums.

Parents, principals, and politicians insist he’ll only use it to score a fix or drink himself into a coma. Yet my cold, numb hands finger their way into the deepest corners of barren pockets.

What’s a few quarters

if it helps you through the night?

Who am I to judge?

— Jeff Englehart

Imagine Nation

15 billion years young,
15 billion light years wide,
I try to wrap my mind around…
…everything inside.

What was before?
What is outside?
Is this universe part of me?
Or simply part of my mind?

Metaphysical maybe?
Oscillating perhaps?
Do parrellel worlds?
Require detailed maps… ?