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Common people called him stingy
And with his funds he was.
But he was parsimonious
In areas that they never saw.

                Epitaph
True, he never spent a dime
If he could get it free.
He never wasted any time
That anyone could see.

He didn’t have much love to give
And wanted no love back
He had a certain way to live
Laid out in white and black.

He didn’t give and didn’t take.
He had no use for friends.
He died alone and that’s the way
This kind of story ends
                      ljm
The word was, of course, Parsimonious. I enjoy doing these, but am having trouble keeping up with one a day every day. They are easy, but sorta like graffiti on a wall. OK to paint them out.
 Oct 2022 Kim
Thomas P Owens Sr
tears drop from a thousand eyes
and wash the sidewalks clean
of filth
of blood
of desperate cries
gone silent with the dream
darkness lights the alleyways
where life is cheap as rust
needles lay in greasy puddles
rats feed on the crust
deeper we fall
into nightmares awoken
speak not of this if you live in the light
there are tears enough for that which is broken
just close your eyes
and sleep at night
 Nov 2021 Kim
wes parham
Seventeen years old and troubled, I took walks in the woods to sort out my mind.  There were miles of it behind the old neighborhood.
I could meditate on thoughts and walk down paths, off paths, for miles if I wished.  My forest grew in semi-rural suburbia of my hometown, just a thirty minute drive east from Atlanta.
I'd like to think it grows there still...  

   One could walk a mile or two through untamed, mostly coniferous, forest but suddenly step out onto a clearing of uninterrupted rock, desolate and pocked like the surface of the moon.  A moonscape bounded by trees.  An anomalous break in the journey of green.  A massive plane of granite lies, apparently, beneath much of our state.  The woods in my area had this unique feature...  Patches where the granite was exposed to the surface.  Some were the size of a small city park.  Others were the size of multiple football fields.  Those accessible by bicycle were especially fun.  They would be explored thoroughly as I jostled and bounced my mountain-bike over the irregular surfaces.  Others lay deep in the woods.  I would walk as much as I could or just lie on the solidness of that ground and look at clouds.

   As pressures in my heart and mind increased, I would come to these woods angry and frustrated.  Pent-up emotions had few outlets.  Poetry was there, a kind of constant companion of the day,  but sometimes I just needed to run.
   Something felt primal and therapeutic about it.  One day, in a lot of frustration and anger, I made up this stupid game.   It was simple.
1: Run.  Immediately.  North.
2: Don't stop. Don't stop.  Don't stop.  Unless stopped involuntarily.

   I leapt off the trail and ran.  Though I felt despairing, the freedom was liberating.  Constantly, there were split-second decisions to make...  Over or under?  Left or right? More often than not, it just had to be "through" and, in my determination and stupid teen nihilism, I plowed through lots of tangles and thorns, scratching up my ankles in the process.  I didn't care and, stupidly, welcomed the blood until a stronger patch of thorns held fast to my ankle. My running speed slammed me to the ground.  I think I laughed, then, like a ******* crazy person.  I saw myself and felt foolish.  I laughed at the sad sight of this broody kid, breathless and bleeding on the forest floor, who actually had life pretty good.  My troubles aren't even worth recalling, they were that trivial, even in the moment.  I picked myself up as if I were happily helping a friend.  I was feeling pretty good and helped him walk, carefully, back south again.
This is a memory piece about an odd time.  ******* ADOLESCENCE. Ha.
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