You asked if I was okay,
I said I was just tired,
Well I lied.
You saw the butterflies,
I said it was for a friend,
Sorry I lied.
You saw my art,
I said I was drawing inspiration from around me,
Oops I lied.
You ask all the time "are you okay?",
And I always say "yeah I'm fine",
But I lie.

my father’s younger brother
was quite an interesting fellow
worked over time in different jobs
and on the sided wrote poems
stories  novels  texted songs

we lived about 150 miles apart
exchanged occasional mails and comments
on each other’s writings

then I received an email rather strange
stating that he had underestimated
his sickness but wished to have no visits
at the time

it seriously felt
    like something was not right

and two days later
    I was just about to call
a weeping aunt was on the phone
and told me of his death

from what she said
it was not nice

he died of  cancer of the pancreas
could hardly move in his last weeks
and only weighed one hundred pounds
down from 200   when he died
guess his demise was a relief for him
    as well as her

how sad that he  a man of letters
     who wrote thick novels and articulate verse
could not find words for his own pain

maybe  like many of his generation
he felt his sickness was  a shame
or he was furious at his body   or his fate
or did not want to burden others
or did not like them to be witness
to his waning health

I do not know

what I shall remember
is the loud silence
in his last mail

          * *

about 250 years ago
young Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s tale of Werther’s
passionate unfulfilled love and ensuing suicide
triggered a wave of suicides across all Europe

the author was more than embarrassed  
it is reported he was actually quite shocked
by this effect of his romantic writ

from then on he avoided the portrayal
of hypersensitive romantic youths
    with their emotional entanglements
    and often fatal ends
and preferred dramas of the simpler sort

     like the eternal fight of good and evil
     the striving for almightiness and universal knowledge
     dilemmas of obedience and command
     et cetera

today, like then, young people
go through the stifling pains of unrequited love
and feel they hover at the brink of the abyss
    ready to jump

then, as today, young Werther’s suicide
is nothing but a waste of youthful life
that could have brought him many happy moments
had he allowed himself to stay alive

from the crevices of thought
have grown naked ribs of rocks
shaping into mountain cliffs
on whose peaks thick clouds are wrought

there I stand  shivering
   on drizzling heights
strain mine eyes to find some lights
so I see
     and not miss
steps that lead from the abyss

                  * *

some music
makes you feel
so very old and wise
so full of aching joy
and knowlegde of the world

it sums up
   all your life
   in sound

dew drops
   brilliant in the morning sun

haunting your memory
   beyond recall

Just because it sounds good. Doesn't mean it makes sense.

Time spins on a dime spent in a phone booth
forty years past and she never answered the call
only to pop up again and give out a green light
but this time it was I who couldn't give a ****
where age had taught me a few lessons in love
and my time is worth so much more than a dime
I could have loved her but forty years was too long
we were no longer teenagers, in a different world.