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 Apr 2018 alwaystrying
Nyx
Bonfire
 Apr 2018 alwaystrying
Nyx
Staring into the fire
As the flames crackle and pop
The elegant dance of light
That seems unable to stop

Unleash your deepest secrets
As you sit around the flames
For those who shall surround you
Will soon forget your name

Alcohol and spirits
Fill your body and mind
Though around the bonfire
You will feel yourself unwind

The people here will listen
Strangely they will care
And for some odd reason
Everybody else will share

A peculiar bonding moment
With strangers you just met
What is it about this fire
That makes nobody seem like a threat

No faces to be matched
With the words that they pour out
No contact info exchanged
For this moment will be blacked out

So come sit around the bonfire
And begin to pour out your soul
Because for this fragile moment
Your story can finally be told
What is about bonfire that makes people have such deep talks and feel so calm?
Charity, you say
I should be grateful for a free meal
I earn a “living” wage
No longer a minimum wage peon
Thanks to my unpaid student debt
And yet, still
I eat from food banks

For my lunch break each day
No longer than 30 minutes
I watch others go out to eat
And I eat my PBnJ
That ****** congealed jelly falls mostly into the bag
And I decide it’s not worth the effort

Last night’s dinner:
Another cake or sugar-laden death note
Given graciously.
I just skipped dinner instead

Grateful, I should be
For a week’s worth of food
Only allowed to be rationed once a month

Variety is foreign to these faith-based organizations
Shelf life is king
Taste and nutrition are optional coincidences

Thanks to them I will never eat another raisin or can of tuna
I am sick of trying to make 2 lbs of ground turkey or a pack of hot dogs stretch two weeks
With 1 lb of rice

I’m grateful
I’m eating
My 5 year old is
Grateful all the way to my rising cholesterol, impending diabetes, and rotting teeth

I make too much for government sponsored insurance
And not enough to pay for what I need
I am the gap generation
Slammed into a stress walled coffin
Between homelessness and eternal devastating debt

Grateful
Because I am overweight and out of shape
Because I don’t look poor and starving
Because I “get” to sit all day behind a desk

All it took was 6 years of letting the government forever make me their indentured servant

Grateful,
That at least I’m not dead on the outside yet
 Apr 2018 alwaystrying
may
Nauseous
 Apr 2018 alwaystrying
may
The water hit my back

It felt as if it was getting warmer

I started seeing blotches in my vision

Nauseation washes over me

Quickly seizing the water from flowing

And grabbing a towel to wrap around my damp body

I padded my way down the hall to my room

Where I flung myself onto my bed

and hoped the feeing would go away
It was as if I almost fainted in the shower. I have a massive headache now
 Apr 2018 alwaystrying
BlueBird
I am a kaleidoscope of all the broken parts of me.
Everytime I move
My pieces fall into a different place.
I wake up a new person more often
Than anyone I know.
Stability is not in me.
I am a gentle rush of color,
Rolling around in this life.
Never meant to be put back together.
The rich man/woman came to the gate for entrance.
To face heaven refusal which he/she didn't understand.
But was told to search within themselves.

The adultery soul came to the gate.
To face the same fate.
Told to fess up to your mistakes by searching within.

The thief came to the door.
Told to turn around and reach deep within.
Advised like all mention they can try again.

The man/woman holder of God's law.
Who sermonizes to many before them?
A few were selected and a few not.

Heaven refusal became well known.

A child helps helplessly came to the gate.
Instantly was accepted into the kingdom.
Along with the poor.

Many will make many won't.
But we have a place in this world before seeking heaven refusal.
there was no power

from my Mumbai hotel I
could see the stream of people
in the narrow street below

a cart carrying the dead listed
and nearly toppled over

the ox pulling it did not stop
dragging the askew carriage along

passersby steered clear of the primitive hearse
knowing it carried the curse, the fever felling the denizens
of this muggy megapolis

a plague harvesting souls
quicker than they could be burned

the Mithi was thick with their ashes,
diluted only by tears of the mourners
who harbored fears they would be next

I was there, a helpless healer;
a doctor turned detective, running
a race to find a cause, a miracle cure

all my potions impotent,
all my staring at slides a lesson
in limitations, ignorance--a discovery
of crawling creatures too miniscule
to be dissected, too beguiling to be
understood

my eyes were tired of looking
at the tiny death moguls and their victims
my ears weary of the entreaties for relief
from suffering

yet I stood and watched, one wagon
after another, carrying carrion for the pyres

I prayed the power would stay off,
for light would have shone on me:
a curious survivor, unworthy of whatever
grace kept me from the heaps of lifeless
limbs bound for the fires of the night
 Apr 2018 alwaystrying
Ashley
Take the devil out of my path
Put my skeletons to rest
On a bed of roses where I
Lay me down, definitely

Mighty is this bitter blade,
Crimson beaded water falling out of my grave
Another dusty record plays
Dancing by myself in the blue shade

I've dug a lot of holes to uncover the bones
And to be released from the dark
Because the moment that I saw you coming
I was both, feet, running to those open arms

But the rusty metal gate will fall
Plowing through the field in which I silently lay
Lovely, little paper doll
Scared of what the ghost of you might say
Because the moment that I seen you running
For that last train coming, it done broke my heart
a short poem

<•>

kept women

my words are all kept women;
an old fashioned term
that has no currency today
but true for me

they but be the heart of my hearts,
when they leave my employ
keep them well, these yeowomen,
good fellows all,
for they will always be your
one true reciprocating lovers

keep ‘em

please

<•>

lie

how many gray April Saturdays are inventoried,
that we be bequeathed yet another this dull day of the 7th of the 4th month,
of errands and tax preparation and poem initiative-nationhood

the city backyard is a dulled green, energy ****** by one three too many nor’easters in March that  “Sherman-through-the-south”
came marching double time,
leaving the leaves, airport-delayed
and the spring poem planting, struggling

buy milk, lie and get a refund, do stuff and
don’t forfeit forget to
do laundry and
lie

write the longest short poem in history
that green-shots nature won’t provide,
so Me absinthe wills into existence

<•>

this English Woman

tomfoolery’d me continuously,
nature comes to her on knave-bended knees begging for
a verbal sword tap upon each shoulder for a knighting of a periodical glorious poem.  

She provides.

Does woman live in a glen, upon the wetlands,
walk moors
in moons grasp,
or upon a table way in the back of the pub, drinking pints of imagination?

man will die disconnected for so many “reasons”
but if his passing precedes an answering to where,
wherever she locale composes,
man will haunt her residential terrain  happily

<•>

Seven Hours

the clock implies that the body sleet-slept, probed deep-dark for seven hours.
disbelieving, then recalling the dues Frodo-Friday eve paid:
three and half hours with two thousand others at the Opera,
hours of Placido Domingo,
extracts from the body
emotional  countenance,
homage to artistry exemplary;

the pharmacist denies having this drug among the sleep aids
so to the opera must return to earn my occasion occasional dreamland refreshment

a well worthy trade: innervation trust rest from enervation must

<•>

idiosyncratic

all my idiot life wanted to be
syncratic
unique something special different

then I realized that’s what
everyone wants and we are all idioticsyncratic

so much trying, exhausting life,
it’s wonderfully human and classically

idiotic

<•>

* Postfaces*

Postfaces are used in literary works so that non-pertinent information appears at the end, to not confuse the reader.

this very short poem was born, birthed, on a salty grey Saturday, April Seventh, Two Thousand and Eighteen,
precisely between
Eight and Nine O’clock Eastern Standard Time

The opera was Luisa Miller at the Metropolitan Opera,
Lincoln Center, New York City.  

Everything Everybody is a factual fiction of your imagination.
Short Poems are copyright, copied write from the tissue of a man who is epistemologically incapacitated in a life incapable of writing a short poem, post facing forward.

(Too **** bad for you).
 Apr 2018 alwaystrying
Ailsa
You were the type of person who loved dancing in the rain.
Laughter and the smell of daisies followed you everywhere
I don't think you owned a sweater that wasn't oversized
You would leave pressed flowers in all of my books, and I still find them today
I never would have imagined how terrible life without you is
If only life came back to people who deserved it, people like you.
No one except for me knew that behind the daisies and the oversized sweaters, you were hurting
You wore the sweaters to hide yourself
You were ashamed
You never wanted anyone else to hurt, so you spent your time fixing others instead of yourself
I tried to help you but I failed
And I hate myself for letting you hurt
I know I musn't dwell on the past, but it's hard when that's the only thing keeping you alive is my mind
 Apr 2018 alwaystrying
Kate
Splinter
 Apr 2018 alwaystrying
Kate
What is contained in those years prefacing our story?
Memory is a fickle thing-
Pieces of mine have been left in storm drains and deep closets
Give me what you can-
the frayed shoelaces from fifth grade and clip on ties from homecoming dances
We can trade these like baseball cards-
the patch of woods behind my childhood home for when you learned how to ride a bike
Could you spare the day you knew your mom would leave?
You can have the time I realized silence is tangible when you want company- it rests heavy on your chest as you sit alone at the table .
I take what we've traded and tuck it between my floorboards, in the panels of my walls, in my window frame
What was contained in those years before us is safe in my woodwork as you gift it to me
And the years to come will hold pieces of me
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