Feeling lost sitting at home
I've been on autopilot so long
I'm making tracks in my carpet
Nothing but a figurative circle

I keep telling myself
It will be okay
It's only temporary
You are not alone

And I know
This is just how life is sometimes
But that doesn't take the pain away

Sometimes you don't even need a reason to hurt
Your brain just starts to send the wrong signals
I am writing right now and it doesn't matter if it *****
I am speaking to no one and to everyone
Just to not feel so alone

I'm not afraid to cry
But I'm tired of feeling like crying
It's a melancholy thing I suppose
And even if it doesn't feel good
I'm still appreciative of the ability to feel

This isn't a matter of actually being alone
I just feel like a stranger in my own skin
People are trying to help me
And I'm not denying it

It's only temporary, right?

Where the sunlight splashes through
The barely moving branches of the Magnolia tree
It makes a fascinating pattern on the patio.
Amy Lowell wrote of patterns in a lovely, angry verse
When she was writing about how she hated war.

I bend to trace the patterns with my toe
And focus on the possibilities of now
With monster canons rolling down the boulevards
And goose-step imitators marching by
While in the stands a devilishly evil Buddha smiles.

A zephyr gently stirs the leaves
And all the patterns rearrange again
I look at them with half closed eyes
And I can’t find the symmetry
That I saw just an hour ago.

The Kraken still is held by chains
And though he gushes fire and venom
The patterns on the wall contain him
As he thrashes to replace the sun
With a new one of his own creation.

Amy walked a peaceful garden path
In dappled sunlight long ago
Creating lines that live today.
I trundle down a brick-lined walk
And hope that I will have tomorrow.
                         ljm

See me
Find me in the crowd
And SEE me.

See who I am
See what I know
See what I do

See me

See what I stand for
See what I work towards
See what I’ve left behind me

See me

see why I care
See why I laugh
See why I cry

See me
          ljm

She walks out in the morning sunrise
And never notices the sky.
She sees the cracks across the blacktop
And the cigarette butts hiding there.

She see the runnel in the gutter
From overwatering the lawns
But never looks above her shoulder
to see the cloud-forms in the sky.

Her gaze is always pointed downward
As if there’s money on the ground
And she will be the one to find it,
Not caring that the sky is gold.

She maybe sees a flower blooming
In another neighbor’s yard
But doesn’t spot the humming bird
That darts among the blossoms.

A fog of gloom hangs over her
Obscuring every scene
She has no wish to brighten up
She is depression’s Queen.
                               ljm

A lump she is
A useless chunk
Of human protoplasm
A mind that can’t untie the knots,
Now neatly wrapped in silver duct tape
On a shelf just out of reach of devastated fingers.
Claw marks mar the surface of the tape
Evidence of effort spent in vain
To free the intellect
Now unplugged
And useless
As a rock.
ljm

As I begin another desultory day
In what will be the rest of my life
I search for a metaphoric nail
On which to hang my tattered hat of hope.

Some pile of needs disguised as leaves
That need for me to rake them up
And leave the yard a little better
Than it would have been before.

I look around and hope to see
Something more than yesterday
Reflected in the nimbus clouds
That hoard our badly needed rain.

No one has urgent need of me
Though I live to know I’m needed.
I couldn’t devise a shining goal
That would point me at tomorrow.

With eighteen years now looming large
I have to come up with a purpose
That’s gonna make it worth the trip
To reach my final destination.
                 ljm

it was a puppy sort of love
but we were young
so it felt much deeper

perhaps it was the reason
why we were so hesitant
to let go and move on

thus, i found myself cutting corners
so i could fit myself into your box
and in the painful process of loving you
i made myself become someone i knew i was not

.
”If you are to love,
love freely and unburdened
by the tombstones
of past miscalculated regrets.”

But the heart
inadvertently beats
to the mismatched rhythms
of a hundred
caged doves’ wings.

In you I left a little kiss
A speck on lip of lip.
Like a leaf may
On a leaf spring-coated
Before it slides off and off
And into the brown below.
Like a star may,
On the window of a house
Cold in houses cold.

I lingered by the shores of you
Dried, a bone,
Memorising the hues of
A sweet, sweet marrow—
In sun it glittered, in moon sang—
In you, in you, you.

This restless room—
And ants devour around
With their fast steps and abdomens angry
And a scene of us
Through deep, hardened dirt, I dig out:
You held a garland, of foliage weaved,
I smiled a kingdom
All alive and gold.

And the young leaf will forget
Of the rusty feather
That stumbled past it,
One young dawn—
And the house
In houses lone,
Will sublime
In the day’s pretty love, but

In the blue, a bottled letter—
Too small a gift
For an illiterate sea, but
Hold it it does still,
In its secretive embrace.

So, when you born
To an arid tree—
And in blood of stars I wade
As down descends
The sky we built,
Do not cut open the insects
In your frenzied search for me—
All the kingdoms
Could I smile
In you I left with their riches and green.

Dried, a bone, I
Remember the hues
Of a sweet, sweet fruit—
In blooms it blooms, in stars
On frosted windows
In you, in me, you.
So, when I sway
In this lovely quiet,

You sway too
In the dawn.
And born you
Then born you
And reborn on a spring—
In you lives a little kiss
And wilt you,
It wilts.