Little One,
Oh Little One,
How sad you seemed to be.
You ****** and moaned your grievances,
Not knowing you were free.

The world seemed so big.
When you seemed small,
The problems that you’d seek,
Today I yarn to reminisce,
How much you’d hate to be me.

Little one,
What caused you such delusions,
What caused you so much pain?
Your life was like a fairytale,
No losses and no gain.  

Come take a gander,
In my world,
See how you’d toss and turn.
Your thoughtlessness and gravity,
Would tumble, crash and burn.

Little one,
Oh little one,
The problems that you find,
Are darling little memories,
In a world as ****** up as mine.

I watched a young
boy beat his
chest and scream at
the dawn until
the liquid sky drove
him away.
He chased thunder
and
butterflies with the
same enthusiasm;
oozing a lust for
living in his chasm
of youth.
Ten years full of
questions and scabbed
up knees, freckled dreams
running across green fields
and sunlit meadows.
Golden little life,
resting beneath a
willow tree to sip the
sweetness
from the clover and
honeysuckle flowers.
Hours full of pocketknife
afternoons, whittling sticks
into arrows to
shoot at the moon.
And after the rain
oh sweet green youth,
run barefoot with the
wind
toward a sinless
sky.
And live, live
live, for tomorrow
will come with a sigh.

'I was beautiful once,'
    she said,
                  her weathered hands mending another torn patch on an old travelling cloak;

"It was good in its own way, I suppose,
    But it no longer had use for me.
...
I wore the beauty over my shoulders like
  A second skin,
          like a gifted jacket
                                 which I one day outgrew.
...
My interests turned to other purposes,
          And she was tucked away alongside the other tokens of my youth"

She stood, shaking out the quilt on her lap
     which flared in kaleidoscopic colour -
an intricate map
                     of tiny knots and stitches which had layered over years of constant mending,


"I make my own clothes now"







.

Molten
Running
Hardening
Goldens
Welding
Strengthening
Heat emitting
Steaming whistling
Sinking repetitively
Emerging each time
Lacking that youthful glow
Replaced by the reflection
Of my toil given to me
Losing the heat of the moments
Leaving it all behind
It could only last so long
And here I am
Smoothened by the love only I could
Give me

It is never enough
There is a piece missing from every aspect of myself
A sliver of beauty, a slice of intelligence, a portion of strength
That I so desperately want to acquire
With hands too unsteady for Da Vinci and a voice too weak for Houston
I pull apart words and smash them back together in Play-Doh poetry
I see this technicolor world and want to put it into film
But my vocabulary is too juvenile and the style too amateur
My metaphors are recognizable on all levels, the depth of a kiddie pool
To read the works of Shelley and Milton and Dante light this flame
That burns in anger at my own futile words, a seething disappointment
The greats, the classics, all I could ever read, and all I could never be
Each poem that I write lets me down, far too short and far too simple
My own words could never capture the essence of what I want to say
Who I want to be
It is never enough
But I will keep trying

Boomers

Bottle caps were currency
Pop sticks were our props
Maple seeds
Were whirly birds
Spinning like a top

Hopscotch drawn on
Down the streets
Jump ropes tied to reels
Double Dutch was fun to watch
Especially for the girls

Quarters pitched against a wall
Closest takes ‘em all
We played that game
With baseball cards
Some lost DiMaggio

We grew up fast
We learned the ropes
And mostly on our own
We’re called the Baby Boomers
We’re "like a rolling stone”

Bill MacEachern August 13, 2023

We never really knew each other.

Sure, we texted nonstop.
You stared at me in the halls.
But missed chances and glances were all we had.
We never had a real conversation.
(Maybe things would have been different if we did.)

All my memories of you
consist of my face lit by a bright screen,
sitting in the darkness of my bedroom,
wishing for you—desperately—at 11:11.

she calls it
the BIG V
a ****** name
tasteless
but accurate
it is
BIG
very
B
I
G
stretched out
used
sold for such
a low price
*****
*******
*****
****
****** deviant
not exactly
a role
model
not some
saint
by any means.
I've seen it.
perhaps I will
never have
***
if other women
look like that
vaginas
like gaping holes
holes so large
it makes your
*****
seem superfluous
a thin branch
against a muggy
night sky
"did you bring
protection?"
she asks
I can only imagine
why she should
ask me that
am I in danger?
what monsters lurk
in that
bottomless cavern?
I want no part
in this expedition
I do not want to go
spelunking

You were like a little kid looking to buy a new toy.

You picked the expensive one because it was
shiny and pretty and new,
but you didn't have enough money.
So you settled for the cheaper toy
even though you wanted the other one
so much more.

Eventually, you were happy.
But you still dreamt of that shiny toy
every time you closed your eyes.