Dave Slate

Dave Slate Oct 2015

There was something in your smile,
When you looked at me sideways,
Sitting, in the passenger seat, of my car.
And I can't help, but replay the memory.

I bought the beer in your hand,
I would have paid for the world,
But I let the moment pass with the joint.
I hope to never know why you're here.

It was outside of the bar that
I realized the reason that I came.
Smoking, confessing our dreams and our truth.
The way our eyes connected, I could tell it was you.

#love #truth #life #eyes #memories #lost #romance #beauty #you #found

Oct 2015

Herman Winter

Hey, bartender

If you don't mind, I think I'd like a drink
Can't take much more of these polar extremes
If you don't mind, I'm not looking to think

I can feel myself starting to sink
This world's not made for the in-between
If you don't mind, I think I'd like a drink

Don't want to talk, I wrote it all in ink
I've come to learn nothing's as it seems
If you don't mind, I'm not looking to think

Growing up here I felt myself shrink
In a feeble attempt to find my scene
If you don't mind, I think I'd like a drink

I stretched myself to the outer brink
Certain now I've figured out what it means
If you don't mind, I'm not looking to think

It was here and gone in less than a blink
Like figments and fragments of last night's dream
If you don't mind, I think I'd like a drink
If you don't mind, I'm not looking to think

#villanelle

Dave Slate Oct 2015

Ode to Change

November you can find me at the voting booth
Putting in my plus one only for the real truth
  All people of the earth were created the same
  This is the election that will change-up the game

We are liberating Blacks, Gays, Trans, and Females
So that everybody counts the same as white males
  Nobody shall be left out of our public schools
  Nor shall their hands be banned from their right to use tools

Until equality is provided for all
Brothers, Sisters, Mothers, Fathers join me in call,
  “Our cause is one, our right divine, if our justice
  Is denied, it will not stop or cure the restless”

#love #thoughts #change #equality #right #feminism #queer #feminist #equal #progress

Dave Slate Sep 2015

If You Only Knew

I spent a good portion of the day
Writing poetry I'll never publish
Competing against people I'll never see.

The faux-socially aware
Stand on the shoulders of the confused,
My enemies have solidified over the years.

I'm a rolling stone
Never giving my contemporaries
The privilege of emotion.
Cold and uncalculating.

The only girl I tell myself I truly love
Has thrown away my notebook
In a fit of rage. I had written
Of another girl not unfamiliar.

#meditation #thoughts #you #freeform #freeverse

Dave Slate Apr 2015

Soul on fire

I'm in bed, my soul's on fire
  Thinking bout my one desire
To have that touch I've had before
  I had enough, but  I want more

I think about you from time to time
  Recollecting days when you were mine
One memory that sticks to me
  Has hauntingly been bittersweet

I was young and you were dumb
  You were drunk, I had some ***
On that couch we talked all night
  I dropped you off in morning light

I miss you now, but I know
Things come around and they go

H.W.

#love #life #fire #desire #relationships #lost #sonnet #romance #soul

Dave Slate Apr 2015

Thoughts after the lecture

Back and forth, up and down
  I've been spinning round and round.
Where I'll be's not up to me
  But can it please be pretty?

I'll give up, you take control
  Don't make me own this sordid soul.
This way's straight, but is it north?
  Has this lone path been my course?

Is my love, really enough?
  Where do I turn when it gets tough?
If I'm lost and can't remember,
  Is the next step always surrender?

Does the show have to go on
Even after I am gone?

H.W. (subject to revision)

#love #lost #sonnet #thoughts #soul #you #confusion

Dave Slate Apr 2015

Sleep

Sleep has made a fiend out of me
  Every night I try to hold out
And in the morning, painfully
  I do what I can to keep the light out

Sleep took the love I had for night
  Sleep, the jealous nagging wife
The only true cure for my plight
  Is the one who threatens my life

Sleep is pulling me below
  It waits down there for me to drown
And when my breathe comes low and slow
  Sleep anoints me with its crown

Sleep takes from me time and energy
But all is forgiven in a dream

H.W.

#love #dream #sleep #sonnet #soul