R R DeWolfe: Favorites

Mar 2014 R R DeWolfe

Shel Silverstein

If you were only one inch tall, you'd ride a worm to school.
The teardrop of a crying ant would be your swimming pool.
A crumb of cake would be a feast
And last you seven days at least,
A flea would be a frightening beast
If you were one inch tall.

If you were only one inch tall, you'd walk beneath the door,
And it would take about a month to get down to the store.
A bit of fluff would be your bed,
You'd swing upon a spider's thread,
And wear a thimble on your head
If you were one inch tall.

You'd surf across the kitchen sink upon a stick of gum.
You couldn't hug your mama, you'd just have to hug her thumb.
You'd run from people's feet in fright,
To move a pen would take all night,
(This poem took fourteen years to write--
'Cause I'm just one inch tall).

Mar 2014 R R DeWolfe

Indentured to Fear

Mar 2014 R R DeWolfe

Helen

Indentured to Fear

The cannibals only come to me
in my dreams,
when I’m breathing
another lie,
hiding behind
living seams of another life
I lay awake, while I’m devoured
I’m alive, even as I die

I can’t trust the screaming monkeys
or the elephant that sat on my lungs
or the crows that come to pick at my liver
even though the scarecrow that I erected
between my eyes is just a lonely figure
that waves in the breeze
with all other thoughts
that have drifted
into the eternal,
before they have begun

Be Quiet!

you monkeys
with long noses
what stick their face
into my dreams and
shriek at me
You’re lost in your head,
come back to us
so we can mask
your tortured screams

I’m already there inside this life
but facing a loaded gun
when every picture
that passes my eyes
is bathed in the molten glare
of an oft abused, setting sun

Each fond memory fades
into a living nightmare
I may move with the grace
of someone less catatonic
but you can see the state
of current my demise
in my vacant stare

— The End —