#decades
and I will be paid
praying the money
stretches
two Fridays
and the past
two decades
I have been
balancing past
who will collect the debt
when it all comes
trickling
down?
because no one will
be around
when they come
knock-
knock-
knocking.
Mar 24
Mar 24, 2026 at 4:45 PM UTC
We’ve [all] gone [too] far—
Reached the tippity-top.
Of a plane.
Of a satellite.
Of a mountain.
The [highest] to go [in life]
Above
Life
Like an Angel just made
Or an Angel creating another Angel—
“How many Angels can dance on the edge of a pin?”
I say “edge”, as in, we are all on edge
:The fringes of society
Trying to make sense of it all
:The dangers, and how we are all drawn to
The end.
Like a pen to it’s period.
At the end,
Though,
It is just “farewells for now”.
Like a fair-weather friend
Knowing the end
Of the[/this] relationship.
©2025EllenFinn
Nov 14, 2025
Nov 14, 2025 at 12:23 PM UTC
Energy radiates and traces my body with celestial tones
I am more alive than I’ve ever been
when surrendering to awe and wonder
the same way my younger self fearlessly did
something about that glimmer hasn’t left yet, may never leave
memories still have flavors to me
mornings with a lake of flakes in my bowl
or years and years later when a fried hangover cure restores me
each month and its esculent flashbacks are a part of me
a cell in the skin
a beaten feather in the wing
something about the glimmer hasn’t left yet
the Earth is still new
and discoveries never expire:
new scenery
new explorations
new chronicles in the cinema
new kindred spirits
new waves of audio
new therapeutic solitudes
all balancing out the
new captivities
new mistakes
new mediocrity
new unhealthy solitudes
and more
until the body is a home base of homeostasis
commensalism at its finest
but something about the glimmer hasn’t left yet, may never leave
I outgrew shadows who doubted their expiration dates
I don’t rubricate the sky in a rage
anymore
don’t let the heartbreak pause a pulse
anymore
don’t let misanthropy obscure who I see
anymore
don’t let uncertainty’s web catch me in a paralysis
anymore
or at least I try
something tells me I’ll never “age out”
of my hunger to live fully
I know deep down you're similar
your craving will not fade into cinders
oh what a feelin!
To be trippin on nostalgia.
Dec 29, 2022
Dec 29, 2022 at 2:17 PM UTC
and what would be
when we wake up
decades have passed
plants as tall as skyscrapers
on the overgrown road
big impressive lions
shining stars in the night sky
Apr 11, 2021
Apr 11, 2021 at 12:09 PM UTC
Generational gaps of knowledge and experience
Bringing to you some kind of appearance
Like the technology at our fingertips
Or the way an old clock ticks
Differences in us by decades of age
Though, similar in so many ways
Like the way we love
Or want be loved
Like the need to dance
Or taking a chance
Generational differences
But human nonetheless
May 12, 2020
May 12, 2020 at 11:19 PM UTC
In the ‘50’s we all lived in black and white, marching in step with each other, our lawns making us ashamed we weren’t more perfectly matched.
We didn’t know it but we were waiting for the 60’s, that time of candied heart love and daffodil embroidered clothes.
We got more refined, less cluttered in the 70’s but kept a mellowed down pink turned taupe, having grown too cool for pastels.
But little did we know the permed haired, gaudy colors would leap out at us in the 80’s, an overdone shiny world, trying hard to find something lost, but never known.
Relief came with the 90’s, calming us down with normal colors, not too bright, just right, giving us hope we were getting better.
But around the century’s corner lurked the black and white intel world, a mystery that was inexplicably mingled with blood, too terrible to imagine, only finding a reprieve with a safer, mutely colored world, diverse and reassuring.
The 20-teens got even more comfortable, washed with seeming inclusion, ignoring the faint cries from the earth and its creatures.
Then 2016 rolled in and the world erupted, leaking and oozing, quickly covering the humans and their earth colors with grey, seeping into black. Warning us of nature’s revolution lying in wait.
2020 and the world is the color of fear, yellow searching for red fear. But as we wait, hiding inside, the earth quietly begins to pulse, the trees suddenly bulging with the need to blossom, as all the creatures sigh in turn, hopeful, waiting to begin again.
Brave world.
Mar 27, 2020
Mar 27, 2020 at 6:32 AM UTC
The minutes pass like hours
The hours like seconds
This moment is but a memory
And I am the man
Lost in eternity
When did I wake up,
And will I remember everything?
Will I gaze back longingly?
Might I forget that the minutes past like hours
And the years like a falling tear drop?
What was that feeling I had?
I recall an angst, a fear, far off
The way a smell looks so familiar sometimes
I'm lost in time
And here I am, again in reminiscence
It takes patience, or is that just an illusion?
Yet I feel so present in my past
The now is a bygone blur
Rush me again you'll see I'm dead
**** me with your clocks I'm a sleep walker
Let me shut my eyes and rest my weary head
It's been a long day... But tick tock, there's another anyway
Sick and tired of being sick and tired
Melancholic miseries, yet this pleasant ecstasy
That fear far off, I don't mind this time
Here I am again, here I am again
Sep 8, 2019
Sep 8, 2019 at 1:59 PM UTC
It’s something I think about often,
Do we fully understand the fragility of this life we possess?
And suddenly a loved one is taken …it inflames you to think.
Every consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.
These lives of ours are fleeting, gone in a minute.
When you suddenly understand this, everything fades into the background.
Pushing 70 now… I choose to soar out of bed joyfully rejoicing each morning,
That life has granted me another day above the dirt.
Life is strong and weak…it’s a paradox.
Keep your mind strong my friends, don’t hide behind your fears.
This life of yours is an amazing gift….live it with a smile!
Sep 21, 2018
Sep 21, 2018 at 3:38 PM UTC
My mother decided not to fight with the Earth anymore
While she wanted zucchini she let the blueberries grow.
She parked her little trailer by the trees and closed the door
I guess my mother decided not to fight with anyone anymore.
"Just what I needed" she proclaimed as she showed me around
her little trailer in the woods, wheels already sinking in the ground
A sink, a table, two coffee cups, a bed
and almost enough room to stand without hitting your head
on a three acre plot with a five bedroom home...
My mother decided not to fight with that house anymore.
"No shoes allowed," if one of the two rules of the trailer
Because my mother decided she's not gonna sweep anymore
She left home with her baby and boyfriend
in a school bus I wouldn't doubt he stole.
(My mother decided she wasn't gonna fight with her mother anymore.)
And when that wasn't working, she went off on her own.
Her son was the only man she'd fight for.
She married my father because;
"he just wouldn't leave me alone."
My mother decided not to fight it anymore
She fought for her house, her kids and she swore
she'd fight to the death if someone tried to take that from her.
Fought she did, fiercely or quietly
she did what she needed to.
How did my mother always know what to do?
One night we snuck out in the darkness
we left home for somewhere new.
She dressed us up in dresses and we drove and we drove
My mother decided we weren't going to church anymore.
We'd go to prison to see my father even though she was told
if we didn't we'd have a beach house in Jersey, everything paid for.
Because of her I know my father and love him unconditionally
Maybe my mother decided she wasn't going to keep that from me.
Because of her I know my siblings, doesn't sound like a choice
But my mother decided no one was going to separate us.
My mother decided not to fight with the Earth anymore.
She let's the weeds grow taller in the front yard, it doesn't bother her.
She'll pull them out by the roots when they're ready to go.
My mother knows what's worth fighting and fighting for.
Jul 13, 2018
Jul 13, 2018 at 4:17 PM UTC
One day
this is going to end
whatever that started
because time doesn't understand
the breeze comes
passing by decades
get everything replaced
this place will look no same
the fast we embrace
the memory escapes
and we forget it ever lived
that one day, we've been in.
Nov 15, 2017
Nov 15, 2017 at 11:07 PM UTC
The first time I said his name, he asked me how I knew him.
I was thrown. I knew him and I knew Kim.
What we've been through -
Your family and I;
I often lay awake at night and toss and turn and sigh.
I felt like taking his head in my hands and saying
"Your brother - he was mine."
But I didn't.
He lives in the house next to my parents.
And knew me until I left. Bereft.
Then he sees me now -
and acts as if he doesn't know me.
Like he hasn't held my hand or cried,
Well that's what's really thrown me.
The tree in your garden. It's planted for him.
With me at the window, watching tiny you and Kim.
We used to sit in that garden, late into the night.
Until everyone was gone, left with nothing but starlight.
Oh, what we've been through -
Your family and I;
To this day I lay in bed and sometimes have a cry.
So I was thrown, to the bone, and feeling so small...
When I realised that in your mind,
- I didn't exist at all.
Jan 12, 2017
Jan 12, 2017 at 5:30 PM UTC
Time passes like no other passes.
Like no other classes: you cannot learn
about time, and how it moves.
You can be shown mechanics,
the seconds and minutes.
Though these illusions alleviate
us of reality-
how gradually
it treks on.
It stops and starts
and starts to stop.
We feel the slots
slipping by, flying by.
There's no way to tell,
when ours will end,
though its grasp eternal,
begins again.
Oct 16, 2016
Oct 16, 2016 at 2:55 PM UTC
Arrays of stars land softly
on this thick bed of pine needles
under your graciously reaching tree,
and we see impossibly blue, miniature
flowers with centers of infinite white.
Tunneling underground, more
have been born over the decades
since you planted their mothers and fathers
by hand, here in this garden that has become
a secret woodland, even in the middle of town.
Mar 30, 2016
Mar 30, 2016 at 7:54 PM UTC
Two hundred years ago and yesterday
a sailor wrote a letter in longhand,
entrusting it to the road
back to his beloved,
where dawn was breaking
at the closest port of call.
A century ago, a shy and lovely
mail order bride wrote
to the man who would be her husband,
in a land entirely different from her own.
In her delicate, sincere questions, from a
heart wrapped in ornate brocade layers of
kimono silk, she hoped to begin to know him.
Relationships formed gracefully, over time,
an ocean of water and thought intervening.
Water and air may be there
keeping souls apart,
until they are meant to be united.
Now, two beloved young friends have found
in each other a twin flame, first seen shining
in the virtual world of today. With only letters,
or flares or morse code, these two would have
seen, and known, that light within one another.
Souls destined from very early on.
My loving eyes have seen them, decades from now,
leaning into one another, silver hair entwined
as they rest their heads together on one more journey.
I defy anyone who might challenge me,
seeing these two blossoming in love
from a virtual, chance encounter,
to say that life is any less real
in the ways that matter most,
when it is born in abstract space,
in this manifestation of a reality
that is in itself a metaphor for
Reality.
Reality, is living,
deeply living,
the inexplicable,
unfathomable,
exquisitely simple
complexity,
of being fully human.
Feb 9, 2016
Feb 9, 2016 at 5:45 PM UTC
At 5, his eyes grew wide with wonder
He jumped on the giant chair and swirled
His father’s office seemed like a castle
To him; the biggest in the world!
At 15, he stood determined,
Ambition burning in his eyes.
One day he'd reach the top as well
For him; the limit was the skies.
At 25, he was undefeated;
Half way up the ladder to success
Nothing could derail him now
He was the greatest, He was the best!
At 35, he held his daughter;
All his dreams were coming true.
He stood in his private office,
Brimming with pride, he admired the view
At 45, He'd made his money
The time to follow his heart was now
To silence all those naysayers
And find his own way somehow
At 55, He could see
the dead end his child was heading towards
despite all their fights and laughs and tears
She never did heed his words
At 65, He sat content
On her swirling chair, his heart glad
She smiled around her office proudly
And said, "Look, I finally made it, Dad!"
At 75, His grandson cried
His daughter too, with frustration
Finally, He could tell her all about
Parenthood’s trials and tribulations.
At 85, He smiled as
His family surrounded his death bed
He'd lived a life of no regrets
with nothing left to be done or said
At 95, He lay in the ground.
Decades of his memories living on
In his family’s hearts for years;
Their love for him forever going strong.
Jan 5, 2016
Jan 5, 2016 at 10:56 AM UTC
1969 Cult Mentality: Charles Manson
is asking you to “leave a sign… something witchy” at the scene of the
crime. You listen because you believe he is Jesus. You smear the word
“Pig” across the door.
1978 Cult Mentality: Jim Jones
is asking you to drink grape Kool-Aid infused with cyanide. You do this
because you have been convinced that he is “Christ the Revolution.” You
inject your child with the toxin before gulping it down.
1997 Cult Mentality: Marshall Applewhite
is asking you to tie a plastic bag around your head after you consume a mixture of phenobarbital, applesauce, and ***** You do this because you believe dying will take you to the spacecraft flying behind
Comet Hale-Bopp. You make sure you have a
five dollar bill and three quarters
in your pocket for the interplanetary toll.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 6:38 AM UTC
Inward smiling as the thought just returned
Remembering the shame as advances were spurned
Still going red at the thought's recollect
No romance that time, another chance wrecked.
Ah adolescence and all the things new
The callowness is borne like a fedora askew
The so spotty face that we tried hard to hide
By growing our side-burns enormously wide.
And now decades later and still happy in love
With the woman who always fits me like a glove
Those teenage angst years are now way in the past
But we have to go through them for the now things to last.
To be loved for decades is a wondrous thing
My heart wakes each morning and just starts to sing
For my love lies beside me as we welcome the day
In my heart I now realise it was always this way.
©Joe Wilson - My love lies beside me 2014
Jun 14, 2014
Jun 14, 2014 at 12:26 PM UTC