In my poetic agriculture
crops often fail.

I sip joy from the tiny crevices
Of a colorless existence.
I search out small pockets
Of contentment in the dolor, and
I patch together ragged moments
Of almost fulfillment
To create an existance
That might resemble happiness.

I wear the smile that says I am OK
And speak the words of fabrication.
I do the things that ape a life worthwhile
And go to the places that back up the lie.
I tear the pages from my calendar
And wonder that there are so many more.
Still able to lift a heavy load,
I guess there’s nothing else for me
To do but carry on, so that is what I must.
ljm

I write poetry
and paint sunsets with those words
I lie on rooftops
until the sky's adorned with birds
I dream with music in my mind
and in colours you haven't heard of
To you,
I am beautiful
I am something different
I will fill the hole in you
your emptiness brimming with laughter
I will lift your feet off the earth and plant them into my heart
but you will keep digging -
trying to unbind my roots
But I am not gentle, as that flower
You cannot like what you see, and pluck me out of the water
I am not what I seem on the surface
I am a flood
and I leave destruction in my wake
I will wash away all the paths you've ever walked on
and I will leave you astray
Wondering
if you'll ever find your way back

He chopped my head off.
He wanted a son and I gave him a girl
I miscarried twice and one was a boy
It was an unforgivable sin.
So desperate for an heir was he
He evicted the Pope from England
And created his own kind of church
So he could get rid of Catherine,
The mother of his daughter,
And have me, against my own will.
My sister was not enough for him-
A mistress can not be a queen -
And the successor he so keenly longed for
Must be the issue of a queen.

With 2 daughters, Henry needed a son.
Catherine gave him Mary
And I bore him Elizabeth.
He didn’t know - nobody could know
How that rivalry would one day end.
When Henry looked to Jane Seymour,
Something told me I would die.
Hoping for kindness, it was brutality instead,
And Henry fell into a chain of desperation.
With seven murdered wives as links.

He chopped off my head to clear the way
For marriage number three
And buried me in a leaden box
In his ongoing quest for sons.
He thought that was the end of me
But my daughter was made of my same stuff
And through her battles over time
She claimed the throne that once was mine
And the Elizabethan era came to be.
ljm

he was a doctor

*******, they were looking at
a doctor
He came into the casino in a suit,
the same suit every day and night
dark gray
shiny with grease around the
elbows and lower back
smelly
patched up in places

he kinda forgot what it was like to be
sober

and lately he kinda forgot what
it was like to win at the slot machines

he forgot how to perform surgery
how to diagnose a patient

forgot what the company of a woman felt like

forgot what love was

he was a machine that consumed cheap
but strong alcohol
Rubbing alcohol filtered through bread
That stuff was 70% alcohol
his liver knew it

"Ah, pleaseeee, for the love of God, don't
make me work with this
stuff again," he would scream while
playing at the slot machine

and the bouncer would walk up to him
and say, "Hey, hey, doc. Everything all right, man?"

"Oh, sorry. That was my liver shouting
through my mouth. He's a *****."

They say companies that deliver food
get very suspicious when their
regular customers,
the people who order every day,
stop ordering all of a sudden
They even check on them

Well, we don't deliver food
but we got really concerned when
our favorite doctor stopped
showing up
all of a sudden

Maybe our managers would've checked
up on him but
there was no phone to call
and no door to knock on

Still, one of our boys went to the nearby
park and asked the homeless men around
for our favorite doctor
and the man handed him a
newspaper

****,
it wasn't even on the front page
there was some political **** on the
front page
Nobody gave a **** about that article

The real thing was a few pages
after, not even colored
HOMELESS MAN DIES AFTER TRYING TO
PERFORM SURGERY ON HIMSELF
IN PUBLIC RESTROOM

That was a doctor with guts
Guts pouring out of him
straight into the sink
and another cluster found in the toilet

We framed the article and pasted
it on a board in the back room
of the casino

our very own patron saint

There is a world that awaits
The wonders of new world

The world where the burdens of today
Are vanquished

Valiant warriors of peace
March forward and lead us into a world
So true
Anew

The world that awaits
A new world
Free
From the worldly prudence


🌿🌿

Language spoken at the roof of the world carries the same
feelings and emotions as the
Language spoken at the bottom
of the world.