You watched me, raised me, taught me how to use
my hands to make a fist and give massage.
Your home became a haven from abuse
that I endured, that you left home to dodge.
The friends, the barflies buzzing round your flat
would treat your old-soul brother as a peer.
They answered patiently the questions that
the man-child asked to understand his fear.
We were so close until the very end,
when Mom would live with me and not with you;
she wasn't sure you had the strength to tend
her, watch her wither as she chose to do.
I never thought when leaving then that I
would never hear your voice before you'd die.

yo, buddy...
dere's a secret to dis.
First of all,
a good, sturdy bed
of veggies;
carrots, onion, celery
chopped up fine.
Take your time
preparin' 'em.
Start a slow, steady heat.
It softens 'em up.
Now, dose tomatahs.
Y'gotta put your hands on 'em, see?
Firm, ripe globes
is what you're after.
Peel da covers off 'em,
and work 'em gently.
Get your hands right in dere.
Y'should have
a little moisture there by now.
Now, just keep da heat on low
and let things simmer for a bit.
Here's where you add your spice,
whatever floats your boat.
As mild or as hot as you like.
Whatever you do,
keep stirring now.
There may be a little foam
around da edges;
not to worry.
Just lower da heat a little,
so she doesn't boil too quick.
Now, be patient.
If you can let 'er cook for an hour,
dat's good.
Da longer, da bettah.
Soon, da smell
will be everywhere.
Lean in close and get a taste.
A little more spice
at da end, and

**BAM!!!

what do I save
when I press save?
a few words
unforgotten
shards of ideas
slivered into soles
painful enough
to extract

perhaps pieces
of what once was
my soul

Something prehistoric does arise
approaching Mother Gator's birthing mound.
Reptilian brain, primordial pair of eyes
see naught but food or danger looking 'round
at local parents, tourists, kids, and I
as we stare back in awe.  We hear the sound
of striped-back alligator babies' cries,
seeking out the warmth of higher ground.

We move to see them better. Her cold stare
and shift in murky water lets us know
that not by grace of boardwalk are we there,
but her ancestral patience.  As I go,
I turn once more to see her lying where
she has been since a million years ago.

open swinging door
oscillates gently in spring's
warm and moist respirations

hyacinth's odor
wafting in through the screen door
on reminiscence of you

there would be no sleep
this night
wracked with reckoning
futile cup of decaf cooling
minutes become
memories murmuring
recriminations reverberate
bowed head nodding
over quiescent keyboard
as vivid visions vanish
one
        into
                another
hesitant hours hovering
errors echoing
in void of forgiveness
aching agony of awareness
becomes brutal
he receives respite
as night became day
he understood what truth
could be known
he has only himself
and the day before him

and so he lay down
and so his eyes close
in the light of morning

So cliche to say
"your whole future is before you"
when we are rooted
in the soul of your childhood.
Better we should wish you
safe journey, safe home
whenever you might
find your way back.

Too late for farm living;
must tend to my sustenance
in the spare bedroom.

the Belle of Amherst -
because she'd not stop for death --
her poems still breathe

"Is that all there is?"
The eternal question answered:
"Is that all you've found?"

Gathering self for
the morning's journey into
today's mystery.

Still trying to write;
anything worth doing is
worth doing badly.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=1398227

A link to my soundclick.com page.  Please listen, and, if you find something you really like, please support your loco musician.  :)

Come to me with tears, my eyes have cried.
Laugh until you hurt, I've been that manic.
Deceive me if you can, I know the lies
we tell ourselves in fear. I will not panic.
Pound my chest in anger, feel my strength;
know I know your pain, yet do not feel it.
Tell me of your breaking heart at length;
words absorbed and heard the salve to heal it.
We together know we can survive;
after all, we'd chosen different roads and
gone our separate ways just to arrive
in time to hold up one another's loads.
You think you weigh me down, yet do not see
my burden's lighter when you lean on me.

She never knew that her love
freely splashing around
on the parched, bitter soil
of my heart, saved my life.
That she was a literal gift,
an answer to lame, limping
prayer, the gift that would show
me that Spirit would hear
my halting and gimpy attempts.
She offered me all that she was;
despite being far beyond desperate,
I refused, for I knew that she could
find a better man, rather than battered.
That night long ago when I lay
on my bed, when I hadn't a prayer,
knowing only that I had to find
one, to grab onto something to live.
My last prayer that night was a Thank You
to the Universe for the pure love
that she showed me.  I asked that she
knew that I loved her for loving
when I contained nothing alive.
Next morning I woke, made my coffee
and ran to the stand for my paper.
Took a shower, poured my cup, and then dropped it
as I saw her smile on the front page.

Her beauty leaves the gods to weep and beat
their chests from unfulfilled desire.  Her legs,
slender, strong, with graceful dancing feet.
Full of life, she understands the dregs,
the darker being lurking just below
my skin, the lust-filled poet-mystic. She
chats of cummings, karma and tarot
while cooking bolognese sauce with me.
Post-dinner, melting on my arm beside
me on the couch with baseball on the tube.
From there, off to the bedroom. Once inside...
well, kiss and tell is just extremely rude.
Ah, to be Young Frankenstein again;
creating love from Abbie Normal brain.

teasing sweat
from every pore
of your body
you writhe against
invisible bonds
your limbs held
by my voice
and sensation alone
I will torture you
gently with sweetness
till you vibrate
and ring out
like a struck gong

Shopworn covers, brittle pages,

faded, handled carelessly -

dime-store dreams locked up for ages

in the musty library.



Risks untaken, words unspoken

stacked in cornered memories

beside the shelves that hold the broken

spines of bound-up fantasies.

Whose words these are I think I know.
He's on another website, though;
He will not see me shopping here
To snitch his words for me to show.

My readership must think it queer;
I post ten thousand poems a year.
Between the copies, pastes and likes
I've barely time to chug a beer.

They give their addled heads a shake
And ask if there is some mistake.
The others call me out, a creep.
Who cares? They're just a bunch of flakes.

Their poems are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have villanelles to sneak,
And lines to own before I sleep,
And lines to own before I sleep.

Beautiful, brutal,
"...our business is rejoicing...";
strings being tortured,
trumpets scream in agony,
tympani broken at end.

shouting
                  LOVE
silently
in most indirect
unmanner
across gaping
expansively
unechoing
carpeted floor
of semi-living room
        (soundlessly
she smiles)

Flourescent hope is
tapped by reality; picking
shards out of my skin.

A life lived
as an oxymoron:
sociopath
with a conscience.

Sandpapered throat and
bleary eyes greet me today;
a code id da hed.

each quiet night
a sieve
sorting what's kept
and discarded

Your receding steps
echo upon my forehead
like dripping torture.

Drops of memories
patter down gently, wet your
unused pillowcase.

A gulf of unsaid
endearments erode the shore of
common happiness.

Silence, like water,
a universal solvent:
breaking down years of
bonds which held us together,
watching love spiral away.

Silly children...
play with mirrors
as if we were doors,
portals to other times.
Theirs are night-games,
indulged in dark
imagination.
As if my hand-held cousin,
carried upstairs
walking backwards
could show the faces
of husbands or death.

Really.
We show only what we are shown.

Of course, in our years,
we have seen husbands
and deaths.

The braver child
will call upon us
in necromatic glee,
invoking the shade
of Mary Worth
to appear through us.
A cosmic crap-shoot,
depending much upon
Mary's mood
that particular night.
Three times
they call her name
before me,
hope they see her,
pray they don't.

I have been shown many
a Mary's death...

many a child's, too.

The rumbling cat circles the chair,
wondering what wakes me
at this hour. A reassuring stroke
or two between lines,
and she puddles beside
in tail-wrapped satisfaction.
Heir to a hundred insignificant sufferings
which scurry and gnaw
at the underpinnings of slumber,
half-awake and fumbling for gratitude,
I choose enough small misery to write.
Don't scare up ambition to rhyme
or scan, or make myself look good,
or put lipstick on the false smile
of swinish apathy wallowing muddily.
Cold, clammy soil suits and soothes my mood.
There is a hunger howling
in hours dark with early morning
for a gentle scratch behind my ears,
a soft hand welcoming my nuzzle;
a nesting ground of warm worn cloth
smelling of home and family
where I can pad its perimeter,
curl into myself
and sleep.

There's a lot more
to being sober
than staying sober.

in whispered words
you sing along with
the song of my heart

unconcerned with tune
or harmony
a simple chorus
in unison

the reverb swells
as the presence
multiplies
you and i and love;
with Spirit
adding contrabass
more felt than heard

My granddaughters bounce
in bikinis to the pool;
now hardly children.

I remember passion fondly,
sepia-toned snapshots
of vaguely familiar faces,
preposterous poses
grinning at memory's camera.
Such children we were,
bloated with self-importance
raring to be loosed
upon an unsuspecting world
     (they'll never know what hit'em).
Battered by time,
small success and major failures,
a one-sided smile
crawls up my face today
as I pray
for a fragment of that fire,
a torch
to light the rest of my days.

Soft breezes of love
become nothing but passing
of winds in the night.

It is a night where I must craft my words
or try to weave lines on a broken loom.
To think a poem will spring forth is absurd.

Stillborn inspiration can't be stirred,
emotions drained away. I must assume
it is a night where I must craft my words.

My prayers to Muse fell back to earth, unheard.
All artistry has booked a separate room.
To think a poem will spring forth is absurd.

Striving merely churns my brain to curds,
its thin gray whey runs down some gutter's flume.
It is a night where I must craft my words.

A cadenced resolution's been deferred,
the last two lines will surely be my doom.
To think a poem will spring forth is absurd.

A peaceful flow of writing is deterred
until my buried spirit is exhumed.
It is a night where I must craft my words,
to think a poem will spring forth is absurd.

Ginger candy bits
slowly build fire in my mouth,
quench fire in belly.

There's no magic to
magick; look around, observe
daily miracles.

Hard to focus on the
little episodes in life;
each moment looms large.

Though while she sang, she sank in water deep,
A longing flowing song laced with despair,
And so the solemn willow learned to weep.

A woman lost in feminine mystique,
By madness tortured, far beyond repair,
And as she sang, she sank in water deep.

Gifting rosemary, remembrance to keep,
Too late to be redeemed by nuns and prayer,
And so the solemn willow learned to weep.

For Hamlet's hand, the price was much to steep,
An unrequited love the fatal snare,
And while she sang, she sank in water deep.

Bound in earthly plots, contrived deceit,
Deep, unearned sadness, more than she could bear,
And so the solemn willow learned to weep.

Fragile flowers surround her final sleep.
The river danced in her long, golden hair,
But while she sang, she sank in water deep,
And so the solemn willow learned to weep.

I don't know where these words will go - I'm writing in the dark;
throwing thoughts before me hoping some will find their mark.
I chase a moving target, follow footsteps down a street;
the sound of fleeing feelings, of your heartbeats in retreat.

That's pure imagination.  You're sitting by my side,
but even as I hold you I can feel you try to hide,
and more - to hide your hiding, hoping I'll be unaware.
You search your soul for someplace where you will not have to share.

I'm standing in the sunshine and the warmth of summer's play,
you sit in winter twilight and grieve the passing day.
You think that night and day can't meet - we're hours and miles apart;
you're sure we'll never finish, so it's senseless then to start.

I've walked the path you travel, I know the way along.
It's rough and cold in places, and it's easy to go wrong.
The crossroads of our journey's just a little further on,
where night and day become as one: I'll meet you at the dawn.

Would that my words would lift you from yourself
and take you far enough away to see
the wonder-fullness of your soul; the wealth
of wisdom, love and generosity
bestowed by you on those who cross your path,
should it be for a moment or a year.
Too close to see yourself, you'd think I'm daft
if I would tell you; you'd choose not to hear
the loving words of praise, be cracking wise
about senility, or loss of mind.
I shake my head. Pray that within my eyes
reflects a tiny glimmer of how kind
and gentle you have been when I've been lost;
how grateful am I that our paths did cross.

The road where you want
to follow me is not the
road I'm traveling.

Tonight I'll sing with
the band.  My heart will be with
this group of poets.

I've opened a page on Facebook, where I'm recording myself reading my work.

https://www.facebook.com/joelfryepoetry/

If you have a poem of mine you'd like me to read, please message me with the request.  Otherwise, it's dealer's choice.  LOL

I do not fight my fatal malady;
awake each morn, and live the day anew.
I have it; my cancer won't have me.

No battleground, no carnage to be seen,
my gentle Spirit bears my burden through.
I do not fight my fatal malady.

No cringing, no beseeching God, "Why me?"
In truth, I'd rather it be me than you.
I have it; my cancer won't have me.

Of course, I wish no one at all would be
in suffering.  Someday, I pray that's true.
I do not fight my fatal malady.

Should I live long enough that I might see
the cure the doctors say is coming due,
I'll have it.  The cancer won't have me.

When death will win its meager victory
the door will open.  Gladly, I'll pass through.
I do not fight my fatal malady.
I have it; the cancer won't have me.

Hey kids!!
Why don't we play
an exciting game of
"Who Shot the Arrow?"
while a nation
lies bleeding to death
at our feet?

Stealing hours from jealous time,
surreptitiously I write.
If that theft's criminal, then I'm
as good as busted every night.
Life rolls on; work, marriage, sleep.
Each busy day renews the fight
to find a quiet time to keep
unto myself; not out of spite
or hiding out from jaded eyes,
but understand my place aright;
at peace with all that might arise,
to see life through my Spirit's sight.
I gift myself the time I stole
to mend the patchwork of my soul.

Bones of dreams remain,
picked clean of pretense by the
winged passage of time.

You're allowed to show
your pain; I can handle yours
and mine together.

Within each shattered shadowed soul
a blinding binding light may grow
when tribulation takes its toll
in ways naught but the dying know.
We live eternity each day
aware of what most will ignore,
that in the end we have no say
when ends life's narrow corridor.
An omnipresent spirit's real,
begging that we keep in mind
the gratitude for wounds that heal,
and lead us down our selves to find
what words we whistle in the dark
to walk through fears which leave their mark.