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spysgrandson Aug 2012
would be easy to bemoan blue Monday
but for me the downer is usually Sunday
for I am incapable of not peering ahead
drearily anticipating Monday’s dread
and knowing the day we name for the moon
will be here eye-blinkingly soon
perhaps since earth took seven days to create
Monday will arrive ignorantly intestate
left for all of us to build upon perfection
ripe for us to engage in insurrection
with the simple picking of fruit from a tree
and the loss of blind bliss for all of thee (and me)
so Sunday marks the end of a white beginning
and Monday is only the first black inning
of a game where we all run from base to base
but always return to the same selfish place
Sunday before blasphemous blue Monday
written last year--still haven't been writing much lately
Laid now on his smooth bed
For the last time, watching dully
Through heavy eyelids the day's colour
Widow the sky, what can he say
Worthy of record, the books all open,
Pens ready, the faces, sad,
Waiting gravely for the tired lips
To move once -- what can he say?

His tongue wrestles to force one word
Past the thick phlegm; no speech, no phrases
For the day's news, just the one word ‘sorry';
Sorry for the lies, for the long failure
In the poet's war; that he preferred
The easier rhythms of the heart
To the mind's scansion; that now he dies
Intestate, having nothing to leave
But a few songs, cold as stones
In the thin hands that asked for bread.
spysgrandson Nov 2015
Will died intestate,  
which mattered little because
he had even less

a lake house
the county said wasn't worth
back taxes or a bulldozer's
brutish time

but they razed it
confiscated his truck
which was older than time when
I said I couldn't pay
his final debt

the pine box and small plot
came to two weeks' wages,
a headstone maybe three

they left his boat,
a tinny vessel painted with rust
but I knew I could trust it was hole free,
buoyed to his dead pier, the day
he passed

I took it to his
favorite cove, where bass
would hop into
his lap

for half a day, maybe more,
I fished but came back to shore
without anything
for my hours

save a solitary
memory of a time Will told me
ALL he had would one day be mine,
except his way with fine fishes
that eluded my drifting line
and hapless hook
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
These are Jack's commitments: to his body
exercise, stretch, heal if possible and prepare for death.
To his sons: love and respect and teach, learn
to be aware of the effects of his anger or forever be an angry man.

To his wife: in equal portions serenity and uncertainty,
the early years, the middle years, and the final years.
To the community: to treat it as distinct unknowable individuals
much like heavenly spirits but also dangerous animals.

To poetry, religious in its contemplation
of experience under the eye of eternity,
in the realm of the gift and the realm of the sacred:
his individual experiment gone well or wrong.

To his student: not to hurt for gain or inflict more pain
than stimulates growth. Both of them are students
of each other, the periodic table and the civil war.
Other than that, expect to forget and be forgotten.

To his friends who are merely friendly: lonely
inexorably, working hard and playing hard without self-pity
severe about the law and believing in the death penalty
they're the men you'll want in your foxhole warriors at the gate.

To himself by which I mean mind or something hidden, intestate:
a quiet place and time to think deeply or simply
but not too easily to quiet the questions, to know
his bones and the particles of sunlight they stilled and slowed.
--Heaney, Seamus, The Sunday Times, 30 January 2000
--Heaney, Seamus, The Christian Science Monitor, 9 January 1989

www.ronnowpoetry.com
spysgrandson Jul 2017
my cell phone, my Kindle, my desktop
if I die intestate?

what will willfully addresses the solemn secrets of silicon?

(and woe be to me if my last call is a wrong number, my last Facebook entry an unanswered political jab)

will anybody bother to delete my files
after I am deleted?

or is that the new immortality--for apoptosis does not apply to photons,
electrons and "lol"s

I bet when limbo, heaven and hell were conceived, not a soul would have believed, a hard drive in the sky would one day keep us all alive, indefinitely...
I thought vulnerability was for the weak.
Even when I let you inside my thoughts
I've had both hands on your steering wheel.
I swerve hard left turns on the difficult memories,
dodging the on coming traffic of blatant truths.
My minds is a pile up on intestate 98
but I have you on the detour route
to Mr. Nice Guy lane on the road of "life is okay".
The next stop is "I am happy" street on the corner
of "you will be all right" avenue and "I don't care" lane.
But these fabricated roads are painted over signs
that trick you into believing that I am truly "fine".
But all the cars have crashed and burned
and now you know the truth.
Insomnia is literally killing me right now but hey makes some interesting poems
Soon after nibbling pumpkin pie,
     I felt terribly amiss,
where death be not proud
     did scythe lance me
     never came to bring
     bliss, well nigh,
thus hour writhing with torturous pain

     awoke wish to lie with permanent rigor
     mortis supine without an intestate
      for meager pose Hessions this guy
attests, which scarce material goods,
     one would immediately espy
little stock dis

     due dill ling dad doth not deign
     deliberately displaying no deny
ill asper being non
     materialistic, not wanting aye asseverate
     next of kin burden
     some task to decry.

As per thee above mentioned
     immediate grippe of jabbing
     abdominal agony did not wane
for extended period of time,
     which sudden devout
     praying Holy Scott twas in vane

where that this ordinarily
     spry body of mine
     sought zilch ambition
     tubby vaunted or urbane,
but these lovely bag of bones
     felt fragile as if

     one to many fruit loops taken
     on Ozzy Osborne's ): crazy train
plagued with waves
     of gastrointestinal agony
     i.e. severe cramps dizziness
     nauseousness, and re

     pulsed with aversion
to air, don, or trumpet
     a swan song, sans of this aged jilted
     (once shy twice burned)

     once besotted handsome swain
hobbled thus unable to ride
     my high horse weathering a ****** reign
of terror reducing me to hash out,
     this ridiculous juvenile refrain.
Posing As Dystopian Rant

This prognosticator doth predict
potential based at current rate
sinister debacle that will
instantaneously annihilate,
which alarming (ohm my dog) turbulent
endemic chaotic spate

within human race poised to strike
doom and generate
shock tummy once amp pull goldenlocks,
now revealing a shiny baldpate
erratic behavior attendant prescient
intimations presage apocalyptic fate

while current commander in chief
didst unwittingly generate,
and sow the seeds of anarchy sparking
global conflagration that will create
instantaneous prime evil
total mortal kombat, cuz "FAKE" mandate

issued, when Trump went ballistic
loose sing rockets red glare,
when pressing hot button to demonstrate
thermonuclear supremacy,
sans 3D printable bomb
(albeit a moot point),

would render superfluous need way to late
to draft intestate
last (or perchance first, second,
third...) will and testament, tete a tete
perhaps minuscule (nee
infinitesimal) ordnance out of date

turns out a Department of Defense dud
eh, no surprise as aye narrate
finding Don tremendously irate
(blaming "crooked Hillary," democrats,
spongebobsquarepants,...yours truly...)
the list goes on, thus no need to iterate,

thus a sudden religious fervor gripped
the wide webbed world
attributing why weapons did not actuate,
which found pontiff in high demand

in an attempt to accommodate
frenzied zeal attributing aborted blitzkrieg
to divine intervention with bajillion
talking heads airing where to dedicate
material trappings to indigent, great
full not dead, plus those petty

criminals rightly or wrongly,
the strong arm of
lanced law did incarcerate
bowed down on daily and nightly basis
exploding huzzahs every
human did *******

"not prematurely," where
all walks of life integrate,
a spontaneous international
utopian revelation awoke
with linkedin diversity to promulgate
protecting the planet took precedence
yea right Matthew Scott - dear mate
only in the context of this poem I did create.
(neither defamation, nor blasphemy meant, sans Title)

Despite ingestion of
     anti anxiety medications
     ferocious hellish onslaught
     pummels me aback
finds resurgence of ghostly
     white implacable terror
inducing panic attack
cogs and wheels

of psyche frenetically
spinning alas and alack
swallowed in the un
avoid doubleheader maw
whale size amberjack
suctioned alive as dead ringer
     human master bait
     (feebly prate who GOD,

     somebody please HELP)
     doomed to die, "eye"
     doth entirely engulf me
     far worse than being slammed
     by malevolent forces
     loosed from hurricane
     classed as Category 5
on Saffir-Simpson Scale

     adrip with horrible gastric,
caustic, and acidic repulsive
bile alcoholic akin to applejack
and more rancid
than Q8 oily arrack
once again oft repeated phrase
     Death be not Proud, viz
     reincarnation of Moby ****

     (gone terribly awry)
on the attack after ME
with no way back
to house at Pooh Corner
     condemned to spin
willfully intestate,
while steeped in utter black
but....methinks

perhaps fetid blowback
equivalent to volcanic belch, would
     spit out "burnt offerings"
     formerly Matthew Scott Harris,
     whose steaming hot pipe dream
(Ahab) in mind can not
even get "LIVE" feedback,
and definite never

my Stradivarius fiddleback
(I rue...all the money
    momma's and pappa's...
scrimped and saved
     without giving
this sole sun any flack)...
ha...sardonic humor,
and wistful pointless flashback

equally frivolous hanker
ring for greenback,
legal tender, quid
     pro quo, et cetera,
NOW demise welcomed
     forever free from penury
small potatoes this measly mortal
even at dirt poor cheap

     expense courtesy
     Euthanasia travel agency
manned by HiJack,
where captain! My captain!

     Humungous humpback
clearly presented danger field,
     and only costs this one life
     as lil bitty chewy Whitman snack!

— The End —