the look at only me syndrome
is best characterized this way
everyone's attention must be
focused on the fab one's ray*

his or hers motto you'll recognize
it reads don't stop looking
keep the eyes trained only
on the super one's booking

avert not your gaze from me
for me is the most brill to see
you'll see that in every view
your pupils will ever see

look at me
ain't me a striking sight to
see
look at me
you'd just have to
*agree

he won't shut up
when he's around
he wants to write everything
keeps on formulating phrases
hallucinating
couches into flying carpets
swearing that he's seen
the ground from the sky

The Poet
we never know what he's doing -
turning black sheep
into heaven
he's stuck on the inside
looking out

The Poet
he won't shut up
but when I really need him
he's no where to be found

when he wants what
he wants
in these poems of his
I know I'll wind up
embarrassed humiliated and forlorn

The Poet
when he's around
he won't shut up
he keeps going on and on

And when he's gone
Silence.

Before opening the door of the lost
Perchance I will find the healing salve I seek
Its warmth melt the forlorn depths of my heart

Only emptiness remaining
Leaving the soul hollow and soiled
No longer the betrayer love control my emotions
Bitterness the ruler of my isolated world

So, pardon if soon I speak no more
As I ponder for a reason to live
I pause before entering the entrance way of the ghosts
And only a backward glance do I give

Gazing into the fourth dimension
Looking back, I see what was
What is
And what will be no more
Only a  backward glance do I give
Before stepping through the vanishing door

All Rights Reserved @ Tammy M. Darby Mar. 13, 2017

settlers came to the frontier lands
holding guns in their seizing hands
the tribal people's tears and blood
fell on the earth in a torrential flood*

they'd been dispossessed of terrain
so lasting was the anguishing pain
their ancient grounds ceded away
to the occupier's colonizing sway

the Indians of the vast Dakota plains
had a culture under great strains
the foot-print put down by forebears
was nearly lost like the brown bears

yet the spirit of the tribes still survive
in their ancestral territory it's alive
they've a heritage enduring of flow
*which is seen in the sun's risen glow