playground –
a popsicle wrapper
skips in the wind
.
Sep 3, 2012
Sep 3, 2012 at 8:15 PM UTC
In the night, in the darkness,
that old familiar steals around.
Emerging from corners of my room,
from the stillness and shadows
is a sad repository of memories
I can count on always to cheat
me of comfort and sleep.
–
Jan 20, 2012
Jan 20, 2012 at 11:17 PM UTC
I suppose the secret to happiness
as we grow older is living to enjoy
each day, not the sum of all our days.
If we tally the days, the years, it becomes
a cumbersome affair and we begin
to labor under its unyielding weight.
--
Jan 11, 2012
Jan 11, 2012 at 12:17 PM UTC
It's a difficult thing, admitting I've
grown old, no longer denying the truth
and feeling mortality's cold breath which
until now I've not wanted to accept.
In those flourishing days of my youth
I often felt as if I could outgrow my skin,
heaving and throbbing with life's lust,
but now I feel I am shrinking back,
too far back into this aging shell,
finally seeing how I'm at the autumn
of my life while it gathers about me
as brittle leaves swirl about a lamppost.
--
Jan 9, 2012
Jan 9, 2012 at 4:41 PM UTC
Your words, like razorblades,
lacerate and penetrate
this grasping heart.
I've cried out many times in pain,
pleading with you, asking why
you can't simply walk away
and leave with me a portion
of my heart to lose elsewhere.
--
Dec 21, 2011
Dec 21, 2011 at 4:36 PM UTC
There is no night like a bayou night,
the air pregnant with expectancy and
mystery, mingling scents of wisteria,
trumpet honeysuckle and gumbo mud -
a Dark Ages alchemist seeking an elusive
golden fragrance. It's a night dark despite
the nearly full moon, a night in which
fireflies pulsate as so many flickering
neon bulbs and the cacophony of insects
reaches toward an unattainable crescendo.
Mammoth cypress trees line the bayous,
letting fall Spanish moss as strands of ghostly
gray-green hair, and the oppression of dark
is waiting just beyond the searching lantern.
At times the wind moans like a sated lover,
at other times it howls wildly, but it's always
present and always vocal to those who
would listen. There could be fear in such nights,
or there can be a love of the mysteries inherent
with the bayous - I choose the love of the bayous.
*I lived in Louisiana about nine years,
and there are many things about that
state I still love - bayous being one of them.*
--
Dec 18, 2011
Dec 18, 2011 at 4:45 PM UTC
a lone leaf
clings to the winter aspen –
my child's grasp
--
blizzard –
the snow goose
there . . .
or not
--
seaside . . .
the moon pulls away
from its reflection
--
winter forage –
the crow pecking
at its shadow
.
Dec 13, 2011
Dec 13, 2011 at 10:14 PM UTC
Sometimes it is, poor Sylvia,
that we cannot find the answers. They're
not to be found clinking about in the stars,
blowing about in the August wind,
or blooming among the tea flowers, no matter
how scented. No charlatan soothsayer discerns.
No pull of the cards deciphers. If answers come
at all they'll be found deep within yourself, only.
Don't we all prove that countless, wretched
times? But know this, dear Sylvia, even though it's too
late for your sanity and your life, your daddy didn't
die because of you, for you, by you. Death simply
drew the line and pulled him across.
What were you to do when life puzzled you
to the limit, when all poems disappointed,
when the ink failed to flow smoothly,
the pen tore at the paper and the paper
turned to ash before a line could be written down?
What to do when your child's smile failed to ignite
motherhood, when Daddy's image floated in and out, when
emotional pain dragged you terrified under its
black cerement, that cold, wet, smothering grave cloth?
Fear, oh my God, fear, and the doubt that you had,
the whirling about of a shattered mind, bouncing
from this trap to the other - your muted, stifled inner
screams unheard, or worse, unexpressed. Yes,
you found a solution, poor Sylvia, but suicide
doesn't always equate with an answer. You found a
sad poem, a dirge to be exact, something that moves
us, but there is no rhyme to it and the ending is an
enigma, a great puzzle yet to be invoked, understood.
----
Dec 8, 2011
Dec 8, 2011 at 4:51 PM UTC
We'd laugh at life
if it weren't so serious;
we'd laugh at death
if we weren't afraid;
we'd laugh at pain
if it didn't hurt so much;
we'd laugh at circumstances
but we'd get nowhere.
I suppose, truth be known,
we'd laugh if only we
hadn't forgotten how.
--
Dec 8, 2011
Dec 8, 2011 at 4:40 PM UTC
A drink isn't hard to swallow,
but a divorce, a lost child, death, they are.
The wind comes up, blows away dreams,
ends marriages, sifts through plans,
hopes, throws out what it wants.
A drink isn't hard to swallow,
but growing old, pain, dying dogs, they are.
The wind comes up, tears our garments,
exposes our frailties, our nakedness,
thoughtlessly shreds our defenses.
At times like these
A drink isn't hard to swallow.
---
Dec 2, 2011
Dec 2, 2011 at 12:23 PM UTC