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  Dec 2019 abecedarian
Bus Poet Stop
~for those who will read this and weep~

the quiet ones,
the silent Job ones,
who quote not from the
Book of Lamentations,
but author their own,
based on-the-job experience

localized versions of cryptic elegiacs
accepting the wooden crosses borne,
stepping up to the
unrequested unforeseen,
then buried under, burnt alive,
yet never relieved by dying,
nailed by words, stronger than iron,
promises sworn, promises kept
with no ending date relief,
promises by and to themselves,
but not for themselves!


the wearers of crystal glass shackles,
adorned with decorative locks for which
no key did the maker make,
nor any divine creator
dare conceive an early release,
never no escape contemplated,
for the lock human, unrepentant unbreakable,
a decorative useless metaphor gesture,
a blunt “life *****” advertisement

I compose amidst a
bus pond of mismatched city folk,
a tapestry of ages colors and differing views on god/no god,
none would believe that as the bus sways me,
it’s in rhythm to holy choral music,
hundreds year old,
divinity masses and motets worships,
where one human can hide temporarily
a safe house,
to calm his questioning relentless
from the horrors of no answers,
for when the mind has no solution
to the rough and tumbling lives,
lived in glass shackled confinement,
the poets desperation equals theirs


summon eagles to transport these imprisoned,
but the shackled refuse,
I come to them but they wave me off,
I go crazy for once I was enslaved,
thirty years war that left devastation,
from which so many poems created

so I speak with heightened regard
of one who planned futures for others where his
non-existence was a founding father (ha!)


but the day came and
I was released by my own inactions,
but means nothing until a way to
away found
to release the yet bound early


got a couch, airline miles, hundred dollars
in my pocket and an unrelenting need
to save them, a consumption disease,
the glass shackled, at ease,
won’t rest till all are freed
this my creed
no one left behind

these cyber words do not mock
for they are unbounded, set free,
when
the flesh connects and the needs of the flesh
are stronger for they are in heart conceived
  Dec 2019 abecedarian
Nat Lipstadt
~for my poet friends who will understand exactly
the nature of our ailment/adventure~

it begins when once poem titled,
which, a first clue, nothing more, a mumbled prophesy,
an arrow to duration & direction home but unknown,
a one-way stop sign neatly lettered in the
smallest sized letters with the disclaimer above

you sojourn to an uncultivated land, not sown.

you travel to places “finding out what you
don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out,”
no guide, no well trodden path, no cultural prescribed woke diktats,
you are,
taken unwilling more than you lead, where endings
surprising, unforeseen, return tickets never offered for sale

pick words, more likely,
they pick you,
the only constant your rapid metabolism,
a winter snow blow, swirling churning, even midst
the most languid, sultry southern summer day

mind the mind.
mind the ground frozen until a tiny tickle trickle verse
becomes a full-on ground melt, wet and soggy,
******* you into a
rice-rock-hard pellet-poem thriving,
you observe your own drowning in a
6 inch deep wet paddy

the bottom line,
the net net, summary judgment
you commenced with urgent hesitancy for the
risks are great now, pen dagger chest pointed,
you, ******, in crosshairs, your own graven idol image

having found out what you
don’t want to know,
having found out what you
don’t want to find out

find myself weeping,
fists holding my head,
communing with floorboards oak hardened,
groaning acknowledging,
this, this, THIS


this discovering, uncovering,
this is
why I write,
this is
why I dare not write anymore!





12/13/2019
so-me-times the compulsion is greater than the fear
  Dec 2019 abecedarian
Poetoftheway
“the simplest definition of our learning to count to infinity”

wrote those words
to a stranger in pain, awful pain,
asking him to count his blessings


now awful pain
no stranger to me

a pain four decades long,
that the surgeon promised was fully excised.

but today was triggered,
chest pain dagger ingredient emergency room

so I am counting for,
but not to,
counting on

infinity

when the wounding cannot be recalled,
only a minor scar to struggle from wonder whence
came it from

which is the definition of reaching the
infinity place,

where finite comes to rest
dec 10 2019
  Dec 2019 abecedarian
False Poets
~for patty m.~
and all the others that surrender their truths
word by word by word
~

get paid by the word.

nothing particularly relevant-familiar to a poet-revenant.

we the Falstaffs, the literate fools of the world,
pay and pay on, pay forwards and backwards

once eons ago, in a confession blurted,
in a moment of spent outrageous misfortune:

”what you did not ask was this!

With each passing poem,
I am lessened within, expurgated,
In a sense part of me, expunged,
Part of me, passing too,
Every poems birth diminishes me.”


this is our only pay-out & pay-meant methodology.
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