I don't know if you do
have trouble writing poetry at HP like I do
It's hard enough to stay on page
It jumps like jack rabbits caught in a hailstorm on the Texas sage
Then it will suddenly disappear only to turn stone cold sober as it has done year after year
The "Who's On" floods my screen .
Even ignores my command to go it seems
It's supposed to scroll not stroll across the page
Just wondering if others share my rage

You can be lost in the forest
Riding on you bike
Galloping on horses
Putting up a fight
Marching to music
Baking a cake
or catching a school bus
before a swim in the lake

You can be a reader
Or the one written about
Maybe a perceiver
Without any doubts
You can be a page turner
maybe one who turns around
You could be lost in a forest
And never be found

Doesn't always respond
when called

Often laughs at odd times
when talking

Stops says hang on a sec
starts scribbling

Cries at joy, smiles at misery
Amused at anger

You think they are right there
with you

Lying beautifully
with hidden rhythms reddening

Usually displaying angst
heartache, loneliness or self loathing

Sometimes joy from the delicious
ache of love

Always always lost in some other now
when now needs scrubbing
not scrutiny

Often trying to fit things
on a page

Black and white flowers
describing non existent colors
on an infinite canvas
fed to eyes in hiding

Usually easy to spot discomfort
in a crowd

Inundated by all the words
When sober or not

If you find them in this lost shape in the wild of syllables and sound

Run
Or hose them down
Before they infect you
They are the carriers
of humanity


Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

the vivisectionist comes to call
when I am separated from you
his palsied incautious hands
removing the hours from my body

one

at

a

time

dragging his dull rusted scalpel
across my psyche
in his leaden deliberate pace
whistling
tunelessly
monotonously
in my ear
he will have no truck
with anesthetic

I am bathed
in the sanguine gore
of his butchery
which others mistake
for sadness