Breaking a mirror won't bring financial ruin,
Unless you keep breaking them.

Carrying a rabbit's foot is just weird.
Ask the rabbit.

If you walk under a ladder,
You're ringing the wrong rung.
Enrol in a Health and Safety seminar.

If a black cat crosses the path of your vehicle,
Swerve,
You might clip it.

Pulling wishbones.... see Rabbit's Foot.

Bad news comes in threes,
And fours, fives...

You can bang on my wood anytime.

Lucky pennies don't exist in Canada.

Spilling salt is safe, and cheap.
If the price increased 1000%,
We'd still buy and spill.

Wishing on stars, candles and such
Is like holding air in your hands.

If you find a four-leaf clover,
Use EPA approved **** killer.

Don't step on a crack,
Don't sell crack,
Don't smoke crack.

Good Luck!

Turn on.* He preached,
A psychodelic mantra.

Turn off, I rejoin.
Recharge your battery.
Hear the place.
Don't skip out.

Tune in,
That's what he proclaimed,
Like a hallelujah chorus.

Tune out, I respond.
Extract the buds, and smell the flowers.

Drop out, his litany ended.
Alone, or with drop outs?
Distances and depths vary.
But his voice carried.

Drop by, I invite. Stay awhile.
Have a cup of Yorkshire Gold,
And walk in the garden,
With me.

I've been traveling,
Trying to return to my roots,
So return I did,
Returned to the woods,
That carpet the mountains of the Appalachian.

Up the mountains I climbed,
An old rifle slung across my back,
Boonie cap keeping eyes free from the harsh glare of the sun as it filters through the canopy above
Trying to find on the mountain that I've been lacking in the North..

Wildlife is active all around,
A breeze is flowing up the mountain,
Whisking the settling heat up and past the peak,
My footfalls soft and sure.
I come across old trails I haven't seen in years,
Mostly washed away and rendered impassible.
On the eastern face I find the remnants of a forest fire.
The field that once held nothing but cinders littered with healthy saplings,
Already taller than I,
New deer trails and bedding areas,
The old ones I discover to be abandoned and the new roost of varmint.

It finally strikes me,
As I descend off of the old mountain,
The truth of what it was I lacked,
I fell into the trap that ensnare many a men down in the South.

The trap that the Mountains lay,
From the Adirondacks to the Allegheny,
Of being a timeless place,
Where you are unplugged from the rest of the world,
And everything is simpler,
It's a trap that had not chains to wrap around arms and legs,
But to encase around the mind.

It is easier to leave than last time,
For I know I shall return,
To this little retreat,
In the Daniel Boone National Forest.

Dylan is dead.
no, not Bob, you Philistine,
Dylan Thomas who implored us
to rage against the night;
so are a passel of poets
and penners, but not I

Emily heard her fly buzz,
well before her eyes shut; she
was a wee bit obsessed
with the reaper

Hemingway's also a goner;
guts enough to shove a shotgun
in his mouth--mostly I wonder if
he tasted blue gunmetal like I did,
and who cleaned his brains
off the wall?

nobody had to clean a red dollop
of mine, for the firing pin was askew
and all I got was a click, and a sense of shame,
and impotence more flaccid than
the one which put the barrel
in my mouth

hell, how hard is it
to **** yourself--I guess harder
than I thought, since I never bought
another rifle

so Dylan is dead
Em and Hem too, but you
are reading these lines without
contemplating your own demise
I suspect

after all, it's early spring
and a time of new things
clawing their way into the light
thinking nothing of the terminal
night -- but it's just a sun dip away:
ask Dylan or Hemingway, or even JFK
but I wouldn't bother the Belle
of Amherst

she would make parting
sweeter than sorrow, and she
never tasted the cold lead, or spoke
with fear or dread of the dumb
and the dead

she never murdered
men in black pajamas  
in a forest primeval...

I didn't see their spirits
ascending, in ribbons of light,
only rivers of their red blood
soaking the green ground,
yet today ravenous
for more it seems

why would she rage
against the good night, when
her carriage waited patiently for her,
and immortality, her vessel bound
for a light Dylan and I
will never see

Block - unblock - block
Heart opened, heart shattered, heart locked.
Mind screaming, silent dreaming
Mind hushed, dreams rush.

It seems like you are playing musical chairs,
I am free of you, but when the music stops.
When the world grows silent,
You sit in my mind again.

Unblock and stare at the words proclaiming "online"
Curiosity crawling up my spine.
Wondering if you ever opened our chat and stared as well.

Block - unblock - block
Heart opened, heart shattered, heart locked.
Mind screaming, silent dreaming
Mind hushed, dreams rush.

Every time I see you
I feel we can start afresh, anew.
You smile, I smile.
We try to remain in denial.

We go on as just friends
We finally make amends
We pretend nothing happened.
Then something happens

My heart flutters,
But nothing can come of it,
So it shatters
I locked it again, but you are a skilled lockpick.

unblock - block - unblock
Heart opened, heart shattered, heart locked.
Mind screaming, silent dreaming
Mind hushed, dreams rush.

I wait for your message to arrive,
You're no longer blocked, you're alive.
But it never comes,
I become numb.

My dreams are black,
Because if I sleep too deep,
I might miss your message back.
The memories creep.

I can see them sneaking over the fence,
Maneuvering through every defense,
Until it stands like a shadow learing over my bed.
A demon stuck in my head.

Block - unblock - block
Heart opened, heart shattered, heart locked.
Mind screaming, silent dreaming
Mind hushed, dreams rush.

I am almost over you.
I have almost made it through
This tormented affair
This maze of dispair.

The memory of you no longer walks with me down the street,
I don't see you in the places we used to meet.
Your face doesn't burn in the back of my head,
But now you have crawled into my dreams instead.

My mind is working through the last bit,
But I am so exhausted.
So tired of fighting guilt and shame,
So tired of breaking all over again
Whenever I hear your name...

Block - delete number
Heart broken, heart shattered, but heart finally locked.
Mind screaming, but screaming a different song.
All of the dreams are finally gone.

It is over.

A life of rushing to and fro,
Here and there trapped by the clock,
Working hard to get things done
Day in day out without a stop,
Get up late and you’ll miss
The bus, the train, or find you’re stuck
In a traffic jam, you cannot move,
You grit your teeth, you curse your luck,
With seconds wasted, minutes gone,
You ask yourself the reason why
It wouldn’t be better to opt right out
And just sit and watch the world go by.

From Entertaining Verse Poems
©Blair Gowrie (Roderick Macdonald)
www.macdonrod.com/EntertainingVersePoems.htm

COME AND TALK TO MY FLOWERS

Come and talk
to my flowers

when my voice
is nothing

but the wind

my mind now
a season

season after season
dressed in only birdsong

here I will be
at the edge of summer

the depth of yes
winter.

Here I rest
part of the universe.

Come and talk
to my flowers.