Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
I've been aware
for many a year,
but cut off by him,
for crimes he accuses
for crimes undisclosed,
his silence is wider than
the great oceans,
with no means of passage.
till one day a word,
his brother uses a word
that makes no pretense,
that shocks, stuns, and
force!admits me to a reality,
I, knew but couldn't admit

schizophrenic.

here I am sundered speechless;
as a new form of sadness now
internally prevails, and I am
even more quiet than usual,
contemplative, they call it,
but
I recognize sad/mad in every one
of its manifold disguises, and wonder
just how much, own ingenious genes,
the paucityof my impoverished down~
bringing brought, bought, caught,
contributed to this loss, this onus,
this cross that has no answer to the
                                   *only question that matters,
                                     how much,
                                     am I the guilty party
                                                           ­              the disaster father
Nearing my deathbed,
I'll let my hair grow,
even as the first frost
seizes the tomatoes.

Everything, even life,
is a synonym for death.
I'll let my grey hair
explode from my head

like illegal fireworks.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
I'll be fire and smoke
in my hospital room.

I'll be furious, furious
at God for taking me
from my wife and sons.
My defiant hair will be

blasphemous. Who cares
about a pristine afterlife
when living is a joyous
mess? I'll be a manic wren

building his haphazard
nest from twigs, string,
plastic, grass, moss, hair,
and pages from the King

James Bible. I'm liable
to commit any sacrilege.
My hair will serpentine.
I will not acknowledge

the priest who is called
to deliver my last rites.
I'll insult the yellow sun
and curse the moonlight.

I'll lash myself to my bed
with my hair. I'll battle
until the end. My war cry
will be my death rattle

and vice versa. I know
that I'll be frail. My skin
and muscles will sag.
I'll be just hair and ribs.

Yes, when death comes for me,
I know that I'll be weaker
but I'll still make mortal fists
and attack the Grim Reaper.
that place with comforting as theme overriding,
essentials of dream, complex, shelter, cocoon,
which/whether, almost irrelevant,
if and or,
don't matter when you are at home,
light, fierce sun rays eyes filled,
moonlight stars invading one's composure
now!
time
to alight, feet on the grounding,
rain,
pelting, not an inhibitor to the poem
in me, its resonating drumming me up,
to a beating, a lyric, a thyme of rhyme,
fragrantly repeating in my head, home,
home is where the flagrant poems are
born, delivered by no midwife, from
the ***** of my entirety, all five sensoria,
commanded by multiple generals on
different battlefields, coordinating a
battle plan, exhale, attack, coordinate,
brain, eye, smell, movement, urgency,
taste, words gushed, light emitted from
the fingertips, you cannot write as fast
as required, you, self, afired, and afeared,
losses will be greater than expected, but
no matter when we carry the tide behind
us, sweeping the obstacle of ego, pinging
pain, the hesitation that collapses courage,
oh god, oh me, be brave, lead me into the
breach,
the hole, the aperture that will allow a totality
of me to exit, to escape, to compose, p r o p o s e,
the confines of my uncontrollable uncontained
unconscious natured being and fervent annouce,
on this day,
this poem shall be
written in its fulfilling, exiting fulsomeness,
&
entirety,
and let me rise, raise up, lift and shout,
one more last time, like the first time, praise and glory,
hallelujah to the parts of me that gifted me this
poem in-the unity-of-unison, uncensored, un~
inhibited and finalized momentarily perpetual,
with an amen amendment offered up too all and to
me…
amen, amen, amen
and let us rise up to morrow and once more,
write up to ride to birth the essentials of my next
homebound
be-ing
8/18/25
LA, CA
"And the older I get, the more I'm sure
That more by itself never was a cure
Some days I've got nothing to show for except
Walking the dog and walking the floor"
Mary Chapin Carpenter
<><><>
it's been twenty years plus
who can remember exact,
the last time I had a full-time four-legged
companion to share my bed, greet my head with
wagging tail, and joy incessantly, overflowing and drowning me
with face lickings and hugs of a topsy turvy twisty body,
and smiles and curdling yowls of deep throated
cries of obvious joy and the
first thing I'll do when the nectar of next
life's staging begins to commence will be me to get
such a dog as heretofore I remember as an unadulterated purest joy,

I'll still walk the floor,
long walks, yup, outdoors, early morn,
and late afternoon day settling setting endings,
dog and me, freshly bathed, settling in to watch
some British crime and ****** mysteries sleuthed and
solved by folks I'll never meet, but whose company enjoyed
over the distance of an atlantic sea and about seven feet,
and maybe dog  curls up next to me, by my pillowed
head, or between my happy to snuggle legs,
don't matter much, dog & me,
will discuss an alternating
rotation satisfying our
mutuality,

and even when I  still walk the floor, which be a task for evermore,
he can walk beside me if he chooses, cause choice is
what's it all about

with a true companion


nml
Girl and Her Dog
Song by Mary Chapin Carpenter ‧ 2025



Everyone asks when you're growing up
"Who do you want to be?"
I never had an answer, couldn't figure out
Why I couldn't see myself as some future other
No one's partner, no one's mother
No one's answer, no one's lover
Nobody but me
But the older I get, the more I see
That more by itself never worked for me
Keeping it simple as it can be
Walking along, just him and me
Mornings here with a coffee cup
Songs in my head, looking up
If the rain holds off, we'll be in luck
But we're lucky anyway
A long time ago, I got married once
It didn't take long to find
That the words I heard coming out of his mouth
Were not the truthful kind
I thought about moving to LA
Maybe upstate or the UK
Anywhere as long as it's far away
From what I left behind
And the older I get, the more I'm sure
That more by itself never was a cure
Some days I've got nothing to show for except
Walking the dog and walking the floor
Mornings here with a coffee cup
Stories in my head, looking up
If the rain holds off, we'll be in luck
But we're lucky anyway
In summer, neighbors leave tomatoes
In fall, dust coats your tires
Spring greens up every shadow
In December, we lay a fire
I figure I'm finally old enough
To know who I want to be when I grow up
A girl and her dog riding in the truck
Wave as we're going by
Now the older I get, the less I need
Just a good old dog underneath the trees
Keeping it simple as it can be
Fitting together like a puzzle piece
Mornings here with a coffee cup
Whistling for him while I'm looking up
If the rain holds off, we'll be in luck
But we're lucky anyway
We're lucky anyway

<>
1147am mon aug 8 twenty five nml hat lipstadt
<>
"for the vanity of man is as porous as dust...and, in their supreme wisdom, because of this failing, the Gods have decreed, that mankind deserveth no more, no less than his designated allotment of being.
And such it shall be."
writ by
The Marshal Gebbie
June 2023
<>
rise up, rise up,
son up, sun up!
see for yourself a newly birthing day,
the early rays licking the unlocking of a grinning earth's face,
humbling humans and their perpetuity e~mo/notions of eternity.
how are the daily~we, to measure ourselves, versus our ancestry,
by whom shall we~be set forth as examples to our posterity
what tools we fools think, we possess, an etch~a~sketch,
to imprint of who we are,
what we were, and
who we might become, and
be  beauty becoming,
marking our time with ensigns of
words of integers in some giant network
authored, offered, up unashamedly

and even though the sun
does not always greet & meet
the discombobulated human riffraff
every diurnal,
daily identical,
when it shines,
it shines for us all
in an equality of glorious,
it shines upon us all in equality,
it, great equalizer, who restores and
replenishes our colored planets blue green,
a methodology of air, soil and water interactively,
for we are all chemicals, forever effervescent rebirthing

and so it goes.
our cells, are a
rare earth depository,
we plant ourselves
eternally, fed by
foodstuffs of
our ancestors cells,
their brewed ***** dust,
and thus each of us singly
is thus remembered, reconstructed
as are we, both, individually and collectively,
from dust we are, to dust we return, this matériel future prepped


postscript

We Hebrews have a knowingly foolish,
a most beauteous custom, gifted to us by
our forefather Jacob, who when espying a
solitary grave by the road, a nameless marker of
piled-on stones, marking an unknown person last remains,
added one more, add-on to ensure this nameless one yet remembered,
so we too do not pass by without adding a stone, a tiny pebble,
we encumbered, to solidify, perpetuate, renew, ever sustaining,
cannot pass by without adding another rock,
another pebble, that time will surely shift,
but as long we follow this custom,
spiting time's erosive nature and until today,
yet the same, for at a cemetery, every grave,
all marker, ego big, humbled small, topped,
festooned, with small stones, we top them
signaling that this, very spot here, here!
for now, until for ever
shall never
be forgot

<.
and so this peculiar, deteriorating canister places
one more smoothed handy beach pebble, upon
this, his unmarked resting spot
nml
<>
Monday morning
7:10am
an august, August dream day
specified as the 11th day of this
eighth month in one particular
calendric methodology
and as the
17th of Av 5785
in his ancestral calendar
sJews place stones on grave markers as a long-standing tradition symbolizing remembrance and respect for the deceased. It's a way to show that the person hasn't been forgotten and that someone has visited their final resting place. Unlike flowers, which are temporary, stones are seen as enduring, representing the everlasting nature of memory
Historical Roots:
The practice may have roots in ancient times when graves were marked with piles of stones
We lived for the
next drink; the elixir to
erase the memories of
a thousand cruel dawns.
It took work when we
were broken and bedraggled.
Creativity and thirst drove
us through the day.

"Do you have anything to pawn?"

"Hey, why don't we stop by the
old carnival guy's place, he's
always good for a belt."

"Big Brenda will you give you a
10 spot to go down on her,
are you
up for it?"

The **** we did to stay liquid smooth.
We redeemed cans for nickels, It took
hundreds to get a bottle.
In and out of dumpsters filled with
the most vile trash imaginable.
Me and those aluminum cowboys,
knee-deep in the filth just to
get a drink.

Winter was bad, frostbitten hands and
hearts, but summer was worse.
Something about the way the sun
cooked the trash had a hellish putrid
effect on the soul.
That smell was the seed of my
sobriety.
Here is a link to my YouTube channel where I post poetry readings from my latest books, Sleep Always Calls, It's Just a Hop, Skip, and a Jump to the Madhouse and, Seedy Town Blues Collected Poems, they are all available on Amazon.
One composes a poem, in a singular fell swooping,
the words, previous, unknown in that particular order,
are felled like trees in a ****** forest, newly saddened,
an emptying and simultaneously fulfilling sensory battle,
a dressing and an ******* and the
poem (again) writes itself

This literary body, literally is birthed with realized labor pains,
actual aches, a pulsing pursuing, and you dare not
stop to fix an errant knight of a typoe or an out of placed
CapitalizatioN, lest the streaming be broke, mind's momentum
be disturbed fiercely feared, lost to the vagabonds that
exist solely for the express purpose of denying your self-expression

One such poem, written yesterday (1), reminded me of another (2) composed, years ago, inspired by a ferry trip returning home, an ode to an old dear friend, a lover of the fulsome of life,
who had recently
passed away

Twelve years passing, yet well remember,
the utter urgency
of its composition, the purging of the sorrow,
and leaves me bereft, very sad,
for after writing thousands of scripts,
like a ****** obsessed,

feeling in the quietude of a sleeping household,
soon to be tumultuous with morning to and fro
runnings around and about, a/k/a errands,
wondering
Where and Whence
will come such a poem,
my next fix(ation)
a desired damnation of emotion,
and fearing its potential
unhappy origins

5:39am
Wed Jul 23
On the island
In the sunroom,
shushing hesitation
with chest pounding,
mouthing my forefinger
in puzzlement, befuddlement
Next page