spysgrandson: Favorites

Apr 2018 spysgrandson

Cinzia

You don't begin with Guernica
if that's somewhere you're ever
meant to go

chubby baby hands grip the crayon
someday if you're lucky (or not)
they'll draw a thin straight line
in charcoal
just the least perceptible curve
enough to delight the eye
imperfection thrills the masses

then you paint and paint and paint
time and patience
some money
luck again, always luck

you're a master

maybe someone will recognize in your lifetime
most likely no
unless you're a tireless self-promoter

but your work
your work is sublime

Apr 2018 spysgrandson

Dreaming of bitter persimmons

Apr 2018 spysgrandson

r

Dreaming of bitter persimmons

My father and I
lie down together.

He is dead.

We look up at the stars,
the steady sound
of the wind turning
the night like a ceiling fan.

This is our home.

I remember the work in him
like bitterness in persimmons
before the first frost,
and I imagine the way he feared
the pain, the ground turning
dark in the rain.

Now he gets up
and I dream he looks down
into my brown eyes
that may as well been his.

He weeps and says goodbye,
my son, I don't want to
go yet, but I can't wait
around to watch you die.

Apr 2018 spysgrandson

We Are

Apr 2018 spysgrandson

L B

We Are

Posted this some time ago and pulled it down after a couple hours.  I think it's time to leave it.  No, I don't write too many love poems....
___

I've often thought of splitting seconds down to nothing
how far it might be possible to walk into a wall
until my atoms slushed into the chalkboard
till the pressure where--
they are no longer fissile
where time stops and everything stands still...

...except for that taxi in the alley, honking

I could tell you what is out there
but who the hell would listen?

Everyone kept asking what I'd seen

Someone, somehow told them something--
of the torrent rushing by me
of the torment of the all-stop
for a soul still fused by heat and light to longing--
--or how would they have known to ask?

 When you get out there--
when you are really out there
it's all exactly where you left it standing--
every cell--
burning despair over the fuel of utterly alone
And how can anyone tell you....

I begged,
"I want to feel again!"
He kicked me
“You can feel."

A window standing open in the third floor of night
and I was hanging out it

A taxi in the alley
leaning on the horn

Heard-- my mother screaming out
from somewhere
Saw-- my body beside a car
below in snow

From behind me--
“Who the hell called a cab!”

...and when you're really out there
the windows all have opened onto nothing...
Death having long since-- left the scene.

When you get really out there
it's all--
and nothing

 He came to lead me out
I begged
“Define me!
Wrap your loving words around me!
Give me all the reasons we should be!”

He touched my hands my face
"We are"

made sure to catch my eyes--
again assuring

"We are.  We are.”

The intention of that night was for me to commit suicide, end the agony.  Perhaps the truest free-will act of my life was turning from that window.  It was not an act of strength or good-- not even desperation-- just response to silent urging-- to turn around.  Something snapped.  I could see it all, the evil ones waiting like starving vultures and then, the absolute mayhem of their panic as if they were shot around like rubber bands,  suddenly aware they were exposed.  I fled the house with two different boots and someone eles's coat.

I escaped into a January sunrise of despair.  The evil watchers had sent one of their own to accompany me.  The same one who had assured me it was hell, the same who would assure me as we walked along that "I'd get used to it."  But the morning colors of daybreak over the Merrimack River and the songs of birds were far too beautiful.  One thing I was sure of:  I was not dead, but had somehow escaped the anteroom of hell, had torn a hole in the continuuum of their diabolical plan.  Yes, it is possible by a single decisive act to alter time, to change eternity.

Drug related psychosis (LSD) with thought-process hallucinations and audibles.  Lasted 8 or 9 months, during which, I hardly slept for more than ten minutes at a time.   It ended as suddenly as it started.  Yes, I was in my right mind again.  No, I could never hit the reset on my life.  Consequences?  I knew what would have happened to me if I had gone to a hospital.    I'd read The Bell Jar and Ariel-- knew what happened to my Aunt Lil-- Belchertown State Hospital, the shock treatments, the Thorazine with its tardive dyskinesia. "...Our names too close, confused too often...

".  https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1911551/lillian/

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2035619/drowning-in-the-shallows/

When it was really bad, there was this one guy, Jay, who could talk me down. He was like an angel.

Mar 2018 spysgrandson

On A Plate

Mar 2018 spysgrandson

Third Eye Candy

On A Plate

in my periwinkle dawn, i soak my toes in moss.
and the moon's wrinkles. cherishing
soft and belligerent; against the tide
the scuttle of diamonds -
of more humble gems.
in my chamber of Untold Sleep
lies a blithering beguiled !
and all my love in shambles
on a plate.

have i come from the most unlikely scar ?
have i slumbered past all reckoning ? curled up, into a yawn ?
have i dreams enough to mask my impending bloom ?
so that'd be all my plot; to fill my plate ?
or encompass the symmetry
of my wound,,,, ?

Mar 2018 spysgrandson

Radio version of a mid-summer night's dream

Mar 2018 spysgrandson

r

Radio version of a mid-summer night's dream

When I was thirteen
and still seeing daylight
between my ****** feet
I went to spend the night
with my best friend;
we watched Gunsmoke
on the TV and raided
the refrigerator;
I remember his sister
coming home later
and leaving a crack
in her door and taking
off her clothes before
turning the radio
of my childhood on
leaving it playing
all the hot night long
and I sill hum every one
of those sweet songs.