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Dec 2014 · 657
Frost Ghosts
Ted Scheck Dec 2014
I rode my bike, fat, bloated 4-inch
Tires un-skating across
Frosted ground.

A degree below
(You know what)
Not ice, or icy,
Exactly, but...
As if some mythical
Dude named...John?
Jorje? (****-hay)
Ok, Jack, then - breathed
Almost-frozen breadth
Over much of Downtown
Indianapolis.

The sun was diffuse, low
Easterly, barely a lighted
Presence, as I pedaled through
The little pathway that perimeters the
Zoo, the muffled cries of
The furry and wrinkly-
Skinned high above
And safely ensconced
Past huge limestone walls.

Shutter-flash
Dapples of light struck my
Eyes as I passed leaves who
Stubbornly refused to relinquish
Their stemmed hold onto
Mother and Father tree.

Past the little zooey pathway,
The big bridge leading to the
Downtown canal, ordinarily
Crowded, but only I crowded
This time and place and space.

Where the sun wanted to shine,
But was stubbornly blocked by
Such insubstantial things as
Bridge abutments and pillars;
Shadows outlined the muted
Rays of a bleak post-Christmas
Sun, contrasting
Outlining them in a
Frosty embrace.
All around that little ******
Of ground, the light of day
Melted and softened Jack's
Iron-like grip. But not
That little piece of ground.
Nope.

I stopped the bike and looked
At the squarish rectangle of
Frost that stubbornly refused to
Give up its hold from the
Relentless, though much less
Powerful sun.

The clockwork
Universe ticks and tocks,
And moves and shakes, and
This morning, snug in my many
Layers, I got to ride my bike
On top of a battle
I'd never witnessed before
Today.
Dec 2014 · 2.6k
The Philosophy of Theft
Ted Scheck Dec 2014
I was driving
And thinking
(Dangerous, I know)
Thinking, hard, fast,
And even, slow;
(Did I slow down)
That is a question
Best answered for
Another poem.
(My driving?
My thinking?)

You distracted me.
I wish you would
Please
Stop doing that.
Sheesh.

I was thinking about
Robbery.
Of the armed persuasion.
Why 'armed' robbery?
Weaponized sounds better.
More exotic.
Forearmed?
Elbowed?
Wrong limb classification.
Handed robbery, unless
Prosthetics are involved.
Hooked robbery?

Unarmed robbery-
(Unhanded? UnHAND, me,
Sir!)
Is that just simple
Theft?
And is a simple
Theft ever really
Simple?
Ah, the philosophy of theft.
I think I want that,
Therefore, I exist,
Because want cannot
Exist on its own.
(Or, maybe: Want
Has pre-existence;
It is VIRTUAL
Minus the virtue-part
Until it becomes…
ACTUAL)

I’ve stolen over
My years.
I’ve taken things
That pretended to belong
To someone else.
They belonged to me
Even less.
Ad Victorum Spoilas
(To the victor, goes the spoils)
Spoiled is right.
I still feel
Residual guilt over
These crimes.
I’ve never witnessed
A violent crime.
Never been in the holdup
Of a middle.
Never seen a man
Wearing a ski mask
Running perpendicularly.
(Why are women never
Mentioned running?
Away from the scenes
Of robbery?)
Heels.
(Men are, I mean)

Stanley Kubrick Scenes
Of Robbery:
The Shining: Uncut
Take 146:
“This time, Jack,
Pretend you're a ballerina
Holding up a
Leotard store.”

I cannot wrap my
Mind around the thought
Fathered by the impulse
Grandfathered by the
Desperation of needing
Wanting
Something so badly you’d
Wager your ability
To wander, to mosey on
Along the boulevard, up
The hill, past the
Graveyard that you only
Remember was the dead
Sleeping a mile past it
In the car with which you
Are legally able to operate.

Hey! I think I’ll grab
This gun, and put bullets
In chambers, and possibly
Hide my face behind
A silly mask, and then,
Possibly, point it at
Bank Tellers?
Pregnant Ladies.
Clowns.
Mimes.
OK, I can see threatening
Mimes.

Besides appearing to
Be the most harmless of
Professionals,
They get paid peanuts.
And they get guns
Stuck in their faces
All the time.
So step 1 goes with
Hitches, glitches galore.
Video surveillance.
Dye-marked money bags.
Security guards lurking.
Dudes with cameras.

So you’ve stolen
The public’s money.
You’re in the getaway
Car, ineptly named,
Because whatever the
Percentage
Of bank robbers who
Free, clear, and cleanly
Get away has to be
Impossibly low.
What do you have, now,
Now that you have
What you risked sharing
A cell with Bubba
To steal?

Sadness. Grief. Guilt.
Stained hands.
Equally stained heart.
(And oh yeah, lots
Of marked/unmarked
Bills)
Do you feel anything
Anything at all?
Having your fun
Stuffing bills into the
Garters and ******* of
Bored strippers?
Buying expensive alcohol
And, later, waking up having
Vomited and voided yourself
In the back of a limo
That has, on top of it,
A giant chicken?

None of us,
Not ONE of us,
Knows the time of
Our demise.
We will be gone
One moment,
And Here before Jesus
The next.
At the Foot of the
Judgment Seat of Christ
Himself. Almighty God.
Quaking, trembling,
Feeling the truest form of
Respectful fear,
Fearful respect.
Shed of our human skin
Our spirits filled with the
Substance from the choices
We omitted and committed.

I know Jesus Christ
As and Is My Savior.
The god of money
(Mammon)
Will not be there
To Judge me.
God has ears, eyes.
He sees, hears.
Every thing.
ALL THINGS.
Little gods are both
Blind and deaf
(If the blind and
Deaf can be said
To exist for non-
Existent things).

Jesus will recognize me
As one of his own.
Satan might be skulking
Around, looking for
Those who chose anyone
Else but Christ as
Savior.
(Like the green cottony
Stuff that many think causes
The world to rotate)

The sweetest words I’ve
Ever dreamt of hearing
I will hear from the
Mouth of the Man who
Created everything
By speaking it aloud.
The ore in the ground
That eventually went into
The gun that I never pointed
At someone else
While taking things
That didn’t belong to me.
The trees that yielded
Some of the paper
(Most of it’s linen)
That was the money
In someone else’s
Account
From the bank I never
Robbed because I was
Too afraid of the
Consequences
Of
Theft.
Dec 2014 · 498
Imagined Teeth
Ted Scheck Dec 2014
Some thing unreal
Bit a corner of my
Mind
Yesterday
While I pretended to
Sleep
I imagine the
Pain was something else
Nov 2014 · 1.7k
Magic is Bottomless
Ted Scheck Nov 2014
It's the week of Giving
Thanks, and I'm thinking
Of the magical place of
My Dreams, the
Dream-state I existed
In my childhood.
Google maps is SCI-
Finite, and does this place
Justice like a squid
Quoting Revelation 1:
9 - the Island of Palmos.
But at least the squid
Was half-right -
Middle Park Lagoon
Had an island.

It wasn't just the little farm
Pond full of alligator snappers,
And indelible fish (carp, anagram:
Crap)
It was the surrounding woods,
The Leopard Frogs I could not
(And really didn't want to)
Catch. It wasn't the shoe-
Stealing muck-mud, the
Barely-4-foot deep water.
It wasn't Duck Creek flowing
Next door, flooding often,
Its waters spilling into the
Waters of the Lagoon, depositing
And withdrawing wildlife
At will.

It was my escape-pod in the
Mysterious Spaceship Earth
That was 1968-1984, for my Dad
Ed Scheck, was Supt. of Parks
And Rec in Bettendorf, Iowa.
He oversaw all the parks, the
Pre-Waterslide-Pool, the Bike
Trails connecting Davenport
To its bro/sis city.
My Dad had to work a lot
And me in the park was like
Me visiting Dad.

The Lagoon frozen when we
Had Iowa winter, and a very
Popular place to skate. I think
I loved the Lagoon more frozen
Than liquid. At night, I would
Cut through the houses on
Fair Meadows Drive, listening to
KSTT-AM blasting on the speaker
Attached to the light pole.
It was the scariest part of my day,
That little freezing trip from
Lagoon to Home.
And about the best.

In 1979, at sixteen, I applied
For employment with the
Parks Department, and that
Meant summers working at
Palmer Hills Golf Course.
And, winters, supervising
Middle Park Lagoon.
I got to skate out on the
Ice, the ice that would turn
To the watery body I loved
Most of all, and miss, to
This day.
From 1968 (5) to 1984.
The math doesn't add up;
Magic has no columns that
Add up at the bottom, because
Magic is bottomless.
Nov 2014 · 4.5k
Brother Light, Brother Dark
Ted Scheck Nov 2014
You would think that
Light is always bright,
Shining, Luminescent,
Searing, burning, illuminating,
Perpetual dawn rolling across
Earth's lopsided expanses.
You would think.

Light and Darkness
Were once perfectly melded-
Minded-
Molded together, in the
Time before time,
In the cusp of God's hands
Pressing together and
Held apart in infinite
Pressure and density and love.
They were one yet separate,
Filling the mindless firmament between
The Left and Right Hand of God,
Before He created Earth.

You know the Beginning:
When the Heavens came into
Being
(So that the minds
Of men and women could
Acknowledge their existence)
And then the Earth was
Created

God moved His hands
(And Spoke through Them)
The earth, formless, void:
The Light in God's Hands
Marveled at the Living Light,
The Source of all things
Whom the light had dreamed about,
In its cupola that it thought to be
Infinite, but was somehow, beyond;
God, it seemed, had more,
A Higher Purpose for The Light

And The Darkness, seeing his
Brother distracted and occupied,
And uncomprehending the why
And how of God’s Light and
The Light (his brother?) standing
Close, so close, in perfect
Conversation, and why?
Why was not The Darkness a
Part of His Conversation?

Darkness, in the infinitesimal moments
After Creation had begun,
Turned his back on God and
Saw what was beneath him.
He
Streaked blackly down to the new
Thing God had made simply
By Speaking.

“What is The Darkness doing,
God?”
The Light asked, confused
For the first time.
“I don’t understand.”
God spoke, a gentle,
Soothing whisper.
LOOK FOR YOURSELF,
LIGHT.
And The Light looked,
Shining the barest part of
Himself down, so that
The Darkness could see.

The Darkness saw itself
Hovering over the waters.
The round globe that
God created was covered,
Filled with something
Mysterious and liquid
And like itself, Dark,
Deep, and brooding.

Dark and Void
Were now one.
Away from the Presence
Of God.
The Darkness had never
Flown, or streaked, or
Zipped like lightning before.
And Darkness saw that it was
GOOD.

Now Darkness was doing it.
Darkness was all OVER this
Planet-thing. Darkness had
The WHOLE
THING COVERED.
And Darkness saw that it
Wasn't moving. It had never
Been so big, so
EXPANSIVE before.
It circled the entire planet,
A giant ring of Itself,
For thousands and thousands
Of miles. Looking at the deep
Dark wet stuff,
Darkness saw its face
For the first time.
Not GOOD, Darkness thought
To Himself.
GREAT.
But before The Darkness
Could get a longer
(And much more detailed)
Look, becoming more and more
Connected with the Void…

Four of God's Words
Split the whole of existence
In TWO

'LET THERE BE LIGHT'

The Light of Creation
Exploded outward and
Simultaneously
Imploded inward
Scalding Darkness' eyeballs black
And God took The Darkness
In His Hand and Threw
Him to the other side
Of Earth,
12 hours
And 12,500 miles away.

God favored the "Light"
And called it "Good"
Darkness wanted to hear that
Spoken about himself.
But God further divided
And delineated them
By changing their natures.

The Light, now powered by a nearby
***** Yellow Star
Almost a hundred million
Miles away
(So as to not cook or
Freeze them to death)
God explained cryptically
Who is THEM
(The Light wondered)
There are OTHERS
Besides God?
And us?

But when God was doing His
Business, and it involved you,
YOU PAID ATTENTION

SOL IS EARTH’S STAR
YOU ARE NOW A SOURCE
OF LIFE. YOU WILL RULE
THE FACE OF THE PLANET
HALF OF AN EARTH DAY.
And God's Pure Light
Was now intimately linked with,
Among other things, the creatures
That God was even now filling the
Seas and the Land.
The Light’s new name was
"Day"

The Darkness changed simply
By God Willing It.
The Darkness liked his new name,
Closer to Light's old one
(Night)
And Night thought he might be
Happier, after all, since
God placed so much
MORE of him, far, far out
In the Heavens, in the
Unfathomably
(Though fathomable to him)
Empty spaces between the
Stars that gave birth to
Day every single itself.

But God punished The Darkness
For being Prideful, and marveling
At the beauty of his face
So God banished The Darkness
To reside alongside, and
Even, with, the Void
Who had been cast down
An Eternity before, waiting,
Waiting for just such a planet
To come along, so that Void
Could rule the air
(Like a Prince,
Deposed to his
New kingdom).

The Dark had never before
Felt something so different,
So ‘Off-Natured’ from God
Almighty.
Night was afraid, so Night
Kept his head down and
Out of sight and
Did his job.
The Light shone through
A tiny yellow orb, and
This light bathed the planet
In a veil of brightness.
Night was only one
Aspect of The Darkness, like
A Cousin created to do a
Very specific job, which
Left The Darkness to explore
Earth and the Surrounding
Heavens.

The Light had other aspects,
A nickname, if you will:
“Daylight” and
Daylight, in spite of
All he could see
(But Daylight praised God for this,
And knew God was the Source of All Things)
And all the creatures and
The Man and The Woman
Saw,
Daylight missed his brother,
The Dark.
But the Stars would only shine
Him in the Way God Intended,
And not a little brighter more.
So Daylight did his job, too.

One itself, as Day again
Chased Night away
(Always on Night's heels,
But never EVER catching him!)
Day was shining on a patch
Of water that seemed familiar.
But the water was, well,
Watery, and diffuse, and it
Slowed down Light's usually
Terminal Velocity, and bent and
Diffracted and distracted his
Straight-line nature. Light asked
God to tell Night he was sorry.

YOU’VE A VOICE
YOURSELF, DAY.
TELL NIGHT YOURSELF.

Thank You, Light of Heaven,
Day said, feeling the Star
Sol going into a brief and
Exciting supernova,
A thin yet ultimately powerful
Ray of Sol’s tremendous
Energy shining down
On that little familiar patch
Of water.

Day shouldered its
Way through thick clumps of
Seaweed (now dead) and down,
Ever down,
Deeper than any light had
Ever penetrated the Dark
Ocean.
Down, the light went, down,
To its breaking point,
Where Daylight was barely
Discernible as itself.
It got to the place
Where He ended,
And his brother began.
With its last photon of energy,
Daylight gave itself to
His long-lost Twin.
"I'm sorry, Dark"
A patch of exceptionally black
Darkness wobbled a nod.
(Me too, Light)
It seemed to say.
"I miss you, brother,” sobbed
The Light.
And God have Light his request,
Allowing him to shine just
A little more brightly,
And the Light gave of himself
To his Brother Darkness.
“God, may I please
Keep this little light
Of mine
To remind me of
My Brother Daylight?

Dark was no longer so very
Lonely
As God put a bit of
Himself
In the strange, strange
Creatures who lived with
And in total
Darkness.
And the Dark
Loved those creatures
So much so that when
You
(Or I)
Capture a Dark
Creature,
It cannot,
Will not
Survive the Light
On the Surface
Of the Ocean
Oct 2014 · 1.1k
Holy Spirit, Batman!
Ted Scheck Oct 2014
I used to hear the word
"Holy..."
And immediately, Ratman or
Bobbin would lamely
Limp into my mind.
1960s Shtick
Shtuck in my
Noggin, until...

I met a Holy Man
Whose name means
Either
"Asleep" or
"Wild Man"
Anyhoo,
He was/is/
From just past
Detroit
Cross the Border,
Bordering Cross.

He spoke of the
HOLY SPIRIT
That part of God Who
Which
Communicates with us
And us, HIM...
Of an unquenchable
FIRE that yearned,
Burned
Churned in the hearts of
His Children.
His smile was wide,
His eyes, shining, but...
But his words soon after
(Were not his own)
Not natural, but
SUPERNATURAL
From the Great
I AM.
The Lord Jesus Christ
Spoke inside this man's
Heart, Soul,
Mind, Body-
Spirit Holy.

his
(HIS)
words
(WORD)
Were written in
Indelible ink
Upon the surface
Of my
(sinful)
Human heart.

We
Had never met before
Our paths
(Crossed)
But he knew, He
Had a VISION.
He shared it with me.

Now when I hear
"Holy..."
I no longer think of
That common Red-
Breasted avian creature, but

The man whose
Breast and
Heart were on
Holy Cleansing Fire,
That burns brightly
Still
Aug 2014 · 504
A Poem Is...
Ted Scheck Aug 2014
Can't tell you.
However, lettuce
Seigh:

You can't plan
A poem any
More than being
Spontaneous
Or
Preparing for the
Tornado
That will randomly
Hit your home town
300 miles and 4.5 hours
Aweigh!

A poem has
Pre-existence:
Like I used to, before
I went to a picnic with
Dad and left with
Mom

Poems are unborn
Twinkles in God's
I

Virtual, string-
Tree-like things
Screaming, Who-like:
"I'm here! I'm HERE!
Just THINK ME ALIVE!
That will be born
As thoughts
(I think)

Poems are the
Idea-seeds, already
Planted in the fertile
Brain-soil, and ideas
Are the paradigm-
Shifters of the Universe.
Aug 2014 · 937
My Muse Is Gone
Ted Scheck Aug 2014
Oh, Mork.
****.
Genius-Madness
Oh-so-Sad Sadness.
Anger-Danger
Rage and Gladness
I am so sorry
The flip-side of your
Brilliantly Cre8tiv
Coin landed
Down.

What is beyond Genius?
That fine razor's edge,
Where they both dance and
Flirt on the demarcation
Line, spinning, control,
Out of, in, and out.
Who knew what it was
Like to be you?

There are those who knew
You, and loved you, and
Appreciated you. I'm creative
Like you like slugs are to
***** whales. Life's
Images can hit your eyes
So hard they leave dents.
People's words can sound
Like world condem-
Nation.
Tho I never met you,
You felt comfortable enough
To be a virtual-friend.
Spirit kindred.
Hero, if I am allowed
To use the correct
Context.

You were the Mt. Everest
Of Comedy, Improv, Stand-
Up and Delivery. Not impossible
To reach, but the effort, the extra
Ordinary effort to slow your
Einstein brain capacity so that
The rest of us could try to catch
A glimpse of the train
That was your life zooming
By.

I'm sorry your pain and misery
And anguish and the hole
You were in were finally
To massive to bear.
You will be missed,
Dearly,
Dear Mr. Robin Williams.
Ted Scheck Aug 2014
I'm on the road, but not
Actually on. A. Road.
Per se.
I avoid roads like cliches
Avoid plagues.

Fields are much better
Travel companions. As
If a lined-paper stretch of
hoed land could thought to be
Friendly to your feet, and knees,
And mind
Not that you traipse across it.
Specially
Corn. Inside corn fields is always
Maze-Y.
The Wind loves singing through
Discordant notes of thistle and
Thatsle; whatsle you'll hear
Musically is really up
To you.
But at night, the stars shining
Through the feathery filters of what is
More than knee-high by 7/4/whatever
Is a forget that's hard to memory.

Sleep in cornfields and you'll
Wake to the pleasant murmurings
(And nocturnal rustlings)
Of mice using your clothes
Body boots shaggy unkempt hair
For warmth. Sore neck, sore back,
Worth it, comically ship-jumping-so:
The little furry squeakers realizing the
Empty soft boat wasn't empty at all
And the critters abandoning you
With the flicker of tails, gone. A
Maze-ing.

Forests. Hmm...Temperate
Temperament. More
Crazies in the woods than amongst
Iowa's cash crop: 1 must B careful.
They generally want to be left A
Lone; I specifically avoid them, or
Will travel act like their long
Lost crazy cousin.
Just to fit
Out.

Small fires in copses of woods,
Huddled near flames, ears
Prickled for the sound of
Angels dancing on the pins of
Heads.

Occasionally, I tire of the peace of fields of
Green tassels and tall deciduous
Trees, and I hear cars, and imagine
I hear the conversations held within.
So I take my bottled strangeness out
Of seclusion and rejoin the race
Humana.
More often than not, I meet up with
The Angry.
They congregate in coffee houses.
Huddle in hostels.
Mob motels.
You get the jpeg.
The Angry desire to
Do what I do by second nature, and
By nature, first. I've thrown off my
Self-imposed chains, and walk free.
They see this - in me - or see the magic
Dust my boots tracked all the way across
Their own barren linoleum flo.
They are trapped in their mind-traps.
The Angry would imprison me and
Masquerade as me simply for spite.
(If they could CATCH me, bwaa-haa!)

I walk quickly, lope along I80.
I hate to do this. It's Russian Roulette
With 6 bullets in 6 chambers.
But to get to the back roads, you some
Times have to travel the fore roads.
Troopers of State do NOT like
Peds on the road. But many of
Them, after stern sternly Drill-
Sergeanting you with their Smokey-
Bear hats, will drop you off to
Your destination. "Keep safe,
Sir." They intone with such
Seriousness that I'm always
Biting the insides of my
Mouth. They could use a
Few dewy misty nights
Slumbering in an Iowa
City cornfield, waking with
A brood of mice nestled in
your knapsack.

Food. There's an issue there,
For some. Not me - not then, not
Now. The future is only the future
When it's tomorrow. Candy bar
Smashed by a bike tire in the
Gutter? What, some puke-eating
Dog should have that? Gross.
Gross is grossly
Defined by how long you'd
Not eat when your food ran
Away. Since I have almost
Nothing except a small green
Canvas satchel and a larger
Knapsack of essentials
(A few tools, a fire-starter,
Water purifiers, and my pen and
Notebook) and my good...

...Boots and thick socks and 1-
Piece Union Suit and many
Layers I'm glad to have at
Night but make me sweat
Heavily in the sultry
Iowa summers, I eat on the
Fly. Sometimes I chase away
The Fly to munch on what
It munched. Gross.
It's a living, because moving
Is work, blessedly peaceful, yes,
But have you ever seen a fat
Walker? They either get skinnier
Or they expire. So I eat
Whenever and whatever and how
Ever.

Dumpsters. Garbage cans.
The backs of grocery stores.
I trade sudsy soapy pruned hands
For burnt pizzas and more bread
Sticks sticking to my stomach
Like doughy glue. People out
There - people alone in crowded
Rooms - will trade kindness and
Conversation for food they may
Have taken home with them, or
May have just thrown away.

Lowered
Expectations, skinny middle,
Sore feet, leg muscles wanting
To stay up and watch late-night
TV, swollen ankles eventually
Going to sleep with the rest of
The body as I'm huddled in a
Little snow cave in Iowa, or
Waiting a rain beneath an old
Wagon, or bunking with my
Mice-buddies in an old barn.
There's a lot of life out there,
A skinny man with long, blonde,
And usually ***** hair, sweaty,
Smiling, eyes bright, nostrils flaring
At the scent of humanity: a
Peaceful Mind wandering
Around the belly-button of
America.
Jun 2014 · 607
White Funeral
Ted Scheck Jun 2014
White funeral:
Self to death-
Death to that deadly
Personal pronoun that
Rhymes not with me,
Or YOO, or Them, but
One of the two orbs by
Which we dimly
C.

Death to that cursed
Fish
That swims, always,
Always alone. By it
Self.

Hell, fish?
Sel fish.
Somebody ring the bell,
Fish.

White funeral.
Shed the skin.
Death, decay, diseased!
Shake it OFF.
Let the Old Man
Who lives as the gleam
Of our "I"s

Selfish swim
Alone in an aquarium
Sea of variety, seeing
None but their own
Reflection in the much
Much bigger eyes of
Prey opening eating
Swallowing little
Selfish whole.

Why did the little
Fishy die?
Because it thought it was
The lonely fish in the sea.
May 2014 · 397
The Teeth of Time
Ted Scheck May 2014
The body of water
That we are immersed in
Inception, Conception -
The Mother, fading into
Oblivion:
The Present Moment
Born, dead
Taken back into Mother's
Comforting passed embrace;
The Father of Time -
The Endless Stretch of
Roads unseen and unheard

Father falls in the river
Father IS the river, flowing,
Head-first,
Ever going in time's
Unidirectional non-direction -
Father drowns, dies to the present
Child - who opens their eyes,
Momentarily alive in the human
Being's perception of time being
Plastic elastic stretching
Future into now, now into
Then:

Child moment dies for the
Um Teeth
Time
Present Father dissolving
Moment of truth, truth of moment
Mother rocking her new baby
As Baby grows steadily older
Growing older as the past
Eats the future,

As the river of time eats us
From inside out, outside
In the river that
Flows us ever older
Ted Scheck Apr 2014
Rivers dry up, except
The Mississippi.
If/When
That particular long and wide
And fat and deep
Body of Wa-Wa
Completely dries up,
The World, as SK
Was fond of saying of
Roland of  Gilead and the
Shadowed Spire,
"Has moved on."

Monstrous
Glaciers partied hard inda
MIDWEST!
For, like, endless freezing
Nights and equally
Chill-laxing daze,
Man! Man? Dude!
Dudes? Little dudes
With spears takin' on
The Mammoths! No
WAY!
Way.
They'll not outlive and
OutLAST US, My
Frozen Bros!

(But we had fire, the roasting
Kind and the hot burning
Coals within our spirit,
Fire to perpetuate our
Species through endlessly
Cold nights and days)

Whoo-Hooo!
Dude! You plowed
DEEP last night, Bro!
What's that stuff on yer
Brow. Sweat?
Hey is it me or is it
Hot in here?
Dudes? We're like
SMALLER

Irregardless, or
Re, the You SSS of
A has a large dent
In its midsection.
Because those partying
Glaciers were forced back
Into polar hiding, shedding
Great earthen chunks of their
Fatty selves, carving and
Slashing
The most fertile watershed
In the country.

Their ageless and
Timeless enemy, that
Bright Yellow Orb,
Opened its great
Cyclopean eye, and
Focused, yet again,
Blessed rays of light
Heat, and life.

The melting...
Water lying on the ground,
Unsure? How about we start a
Pool? I bet it'll pay
Off to flow on not-flat ground, the
Pool collapses and begins flowing
With purpose, streaming
Together as a larger
Body of water:
The Miss
'Sippi.

Any number of
Numberless great and lesser
Lakes up North
Decided to be hole-
Y. Gravity
Did the rest.
Feb 2014 · 934
Sleep Izzz
Ted Scheck Feb 2014
Sleep Izzz
S
Sl
Sle
Slee
Sleep
Sleep is
Falling in
Love sleep
Pretending I’m
Dead tired, Recharge
Rechargeable batteries
Little boy inside protests;
“Mommy I’m not tired I’m
Not
ZZZ

Sleep is practicing
Eternity without
God loves us
Infinitely
Sleep
ZZZ
ZZ
Z

Drugs
Caffeine, the
Enemy of Sleep
Nitrous oxide injection;
Heart rate motor revving
Wheels spinning directionally
Nowhere, driving my desk around
Curves and straightaways, skidding;
Waking the ADD child inside me
Dilated pupils and superhero
Fingers pirouetting, dancing
Across ASDF keyboards
As I translate the
Indescribably
Abstract
Ideas
Of
I

I’m Sleepy
Want to
Sleep!!
Sheep
Yawn
ZZZ
ZZ
Z
Feb 2014 · 1.3k
The Movie You'll Never See
Ted Scheck Feb 2014
The Movie You'll Never See

This poem
goes
(Stays)

Out to
(In for)

The people who
Will never read it

(Here I secretly
Wish I could write
In my sleep)

This is the movie-tie-in
Of the book
(The one I’ll never write)
(And the one you’ll never
See, or have
Already seen it
Multiplex times)

The Protagonist
(Amateurish at best)
Loves his girl

(What is love? Baby,
Don’t Hurt Me)

Loses the girl
(Yeah, right! Like
He ever had her –
And! She wasn’t even
Human!
She was an:
1. Alien-Cyborg-Shape
2. Shifting Vampire-
3. Lycan-synthetic
4. Proto-human)
5. All of the above

Plus! It has him…
Nearly magically…
Blowing a lot of crap up
With amazing pyrotechnics!
Cars with cleavage!
Bombs with *****!
(Or is it the udder
Way around?)

In the process of simply
Walking to the corner market
To buy a quart of milk.

After this senseless barrage
Of ****** carnage, He
Gets shot at, nearly
99% of which said bullets
Miss…may I help your
Aim?

Yet every single shot from his
Endless supply of hidden clips
Acts like its own rocket-propelled
Grenada launcher.

Yet one
Bullet, in a dramatic bit
Of lead-en acting,
Manages to manly-
Like shoulder-wound him,
Making him grimace, squint,
And grunt heroically,
Which also manages to
Make said woman’s
Blankety-blank go
Blank-blank
(Hence, the PG-13 rating)
And the F-Bomb is
Dropped
Right
About
(Fudge!)
(Oh, the mother-trumping
Effing Fudge!)

And there she is, having
Bitten the villain’s hands that
Beat her to a pulp
(Earlier)
(This is rather implied)
Yet the orange juice she’s
Wearing like makeup
Is, for all in tents and purr pusses,
(Pulp-free)
She looks like she’s not
EVEN IN A MOVIE
AT ALL,
And on some sound stage,
Where she just had an
Entire-body makeup appliqué
Applied, with
Perfectly coiffed hair,
Nails to nail guns, she’s
Effing Gorgeous!

Here Hero thinks he’s
Gotten His Good Girl
Back,
She’s sitting fit and pretty
In his Little Red Corvette…
And then she turns on him
Like a clunker doing a
U-Turn.

She does something silly here,
And grabs the cable from the
Dangling helicopter, saying
Something pithy and memorable
(It’s on the tag-line of the movie poster)

And he’s heartbroken to discover,
That:
Besides being shot in the
Shoulder,

(Cue the montage of years ago,
When they were wild, happy, free,
And still relatively human)
(The girl)

Bon-Jovi Breaks into the
Heretofore hyper-played
“Shot through the heart,
And you’re to blame,”

And then he clicks the heels
Of his boots,
Wakes up, and it wasn’t
All a dream…

That’s the movie tie-in to the
Movie you’ll never see,
From the book
You’ll never read,
By the person who
Probably won’t ever do
Either unless he stops
Fooling around with
Poetry.
Jan 2014 · 6.9k
Heaven's Table
Ted Scheck Jan 2014
She visited my house, home
Wife, Boys:
Soaking up what little she could of Little Brother’s life;
And I hugged her, I put my arms around her frailty,
My big sister, now tiny and ravaged by the word
That shouldn’t rhyme with
Dancer, but
Does.

Here in her last September, last
September.
A
Final tour of her
Favorite Places, a
Preacher’s Mountain.
And looking into her
Eyes kind and squinty,
I had the feeling that
One hand held the
Times I would see her.
I was off by two,
minus the thumb.

Forward-fast to Dec.
27th, my Niece’s Wedding
I held her again, and
She was more frail
And unsteady and her
Eyes rimmed red with
Spreading Pain;
The rain relentlessly
Hammering on the roof of the
Membrane-thin
Quonset Hut-Shell.

Walking unsteadily steady back
To her Dear Friend’s car
My heart in tatters, sad, yet
Glad for her to visit that
Distant Shore
That her eyes so longed for.

And now, in this frozen January of
2014
Wintry-Mixed Nut Group
(That is my family)
I enter her ineptly-named
Living room, where she is
Laid prostrate before God
And everybody.
And I enter into such a blender of
Sweet-sour-bitter-salty
Emotional juices.

I take her hand
And kiss her cheek, and an
Eye perks up at the sight of
Little Brother.
Yet that eye is tired of
The uphill worn treadmill that
Life has turned into.

(Please God take her away
With You. Deliver my
Sister Amy
From the planet’s
Gravi-pain-tiful
Pull)
And that prayer flew out of
Me driving back to Indy
Sunday at about 2:00 pm
Central Time.

And at 11:30 pm UGT
(Universal God Time)
An Angel wakes a
Slumbering Saint.

And Amy Scheck closes her
Eye on this world
(And opens the eyes of her
SPIRIT
To the
Next)

(And we are in the presence
Of God’s Messengers,
That Warrior Race of
Angel Guardians).

He is of a height much,
Much greater than her
Small yet intensely curious
Form.

He has mysterious and utterly fabulous
Wings tucked and tightly-sprung
Beneath impossibly-broad
Shoulders; his sword
Gleams like a hundred
Suns glistening on the dew of
A thousand worlds.
Radiant! Radiant and
Mighty is he!
And he is here
For her.

A voice of velvet thunder, low
Mixed with music and fury.
“Rise, Little One.
Child of God!
Rise, and grab hold
Of my tunic!
It’s time to enter
Into the Throne Room of
The Most High!”

And, forgive me for imagining
(What cannot be imagined, but
Longed for, yes. Longed for
By countless numbers).
I write in faith, hope, and
Love for my dearly-
Departed sister.
I use the tool
God gave me
Before I was born.

I imagine the transition
Of death to life
Of life from death.

A unimaginably-large soul
Trapped in a dead husk of
A Mortal Shell
Winds down like the biological
Clocks we resemble; metering,
Measuring heart beats of time,
Of counted breaths breathing
No longer. Of pain, and suffering,
And the emotions swirling off both
Like streamers moved by the wind.

Amy Winifed Scheck
Dies. She breathes in/not out, or
Opposite so.
Her heart goes
Blub/Dub
And then stops
Forever.

But something amazing begins to happen.
In her soul is a key.

This key has a name unknown to us.
That name defines the soul of
Her New Existence.
To me - to us - it is...
UNSPEAKABLE.

The fleshy fleshly tongues
Are as worthy as uttering it
As slugs are equipped to hit
102-mph fastballs.

It’s her soulprint, though it does
Not belong to her;
It’s the print from the Soul
Of Jesus Himself.
HIS mark. HIS claim.
HIS.
It is the manifestation of
Amy’s Name
(Written in the Book of Life).
There can be no better assurance
Than to know, without that
Demon of Uncertainty, known as
(Doubt?)
That YOU are in THAT BOOK!
Are you?

So Amy’s soul is
Delivered, birthed, taken-
TRANSFORMED and
Enters the Waiting Room
Of Heaven.
Holy, Holy, Holy...

Feathers weigh millions of
Tons compared to the
Lightness of Being
Amy feels as, nearly
Transparent, she is a more
Solid creature than the largest
Pod of Blue Whales ever to
Swim and sing.

Her Angel takes Amy
To the Throne Room.
Falls prostrate for a moment,
Amy sees a burly tree
Fall, then, instantly,
Stand; the tree rumbles words.
“I have done my duty,
Precious Little One, as
Your Angel Guardian.”
He bows his head,
And then is on one knee,
So that his great shaggy head
Is nearly level with his
Little Charge.

His voice is surprisingly gentle, for
Before Amy was created:
This supernatural being was
Assigned this precious little bundle
Of joyful humanity, and he fought:
Fought! Fought the great battles
Against the ravages of the earthly
Realm; the seizures, the sickness, the
Angel Guardian was inside the baby's
Heart as it struggled to do its job, to
Deliver the blood to the extremities, to
Live, to grow, to fight, fight!
This one, in a little over half a
Century, became close to Jesus,
And, by proxy, close to the Being
Who created Angels!
Man! Woman! Child!
Did she not have the heart of a
Lion?
Did she take on the Spirit
Of a prayer Warrior?
Yes. Indeed she did.

Heaven's tears are thick, syrupy. Alive
With the Immense Sadness and
Immeasurable Joy of Christ Jesus.
They flow slowly down the shaggy
Angel's scarred face. God only
Knows how close this Angel was/
Is to Amy.

His voice is choked with emotion.
“It was my pleasure to serve and protect you,
Amy Winifred Scheck.
You must Wait."
He wipes tears from his eyes,
Knowing he has done his job,
HIS job, protecting, serving,
Ministering to this Little One,
As he soon will Minister to
The next Little One.
"You must wait. Wait upon the Lord
You heard His Call
In your life on Earth."

The Angel looks gravely
At the tiny, frightened
(Yet terribly excited)
Little Child of God.
And does something rare,
Even for the Guardians.
He spreads massively-wide arms and
Draws the trembling
Child into his protective embrace.
Her small hands grasp mountains
Masquerading as shoulders,
Hugging the Being with surprising
Might.
And Amy does quite an amazing
Thing. She senses her Angel's
Distress, and gently, lovingly,
Pats his shaggy beard, his cheek,
Praying! For the Messenger and
Deliverer!
Her little form squeezes strength
(Love)
Into her own Angel Guardian.
And Jesus, Everywhere,
Smiles and wipes tears of His own
From his face.

The Angel speaks in a
Whisper as gentle as a soft hush of
A breeze after the first
Spring shower.
“You will hear His Call
Again.”
And the Angel does not
Vanish comically in a puff
Of cloud; it is as if he
Fades away into the
Multitude of the
Heavenly Fold.

Seraphim, and Cherubim,
And fantastical wing’d and claw’d creatures
Amy has only dimly dreamed about,
Sing, and shout with sound-ful colors that
Could never exist on earth, for
They would melt the bonds
Of reality itself
And drive mad all the ears and eyes
Which suffered to sense it.

Off in the strange
Far-close distance
One Figure Stands
Above, Most High Above Every Thing
He created:
The Most High
Being Who Was Ever,
Is, Will Be,
And Is To Be.
It is Him

Jesus Christ
(And the people of earth,
Myself included, sing, sing! SING!
Blessed is the Name of the Lord!)

“My Child, Precious child,
Enter the Holy Throne of God.”
And in steps that cannot be
Measured by any earthly
Standard, Amy Winifred Scheck
Enters Her Savior’s Throne Room.

With her new feet, Amy
Walks bravely, surely, securely,
Eyes low, her countenance recognizable
To the One Whom it resembles;
And:
All around her is a Living
Chorus of Beings shouting
Holy! Holy! Holy is The Lord!”
Yet within the cacophony resides
The Still and Quiet Presence
Of The Lord of Lords.
The Prince of Peace.
Upon His Throne, He sits,
Waiting and Being
Waited Upon.
Worshiped.
As only God should be.
It is Through Him - Jesus Christ -
That Amy enters into the Kingdom of God,
The Presence of the King of Kings.

Amy speaks, using a voice that she never dreamed
She had with her long-gone forgotten
Vocal chords.
“Here I am, Oh Lord.
Oh Lord, I am Here!”
Her life is Measured
Judged.
Because JUDGMENT
IS HIS!

Of:
The Judgment Seat
Of Christ:
I will not insult
My Creator
By imagining the content
Of my sister’s
Heart,
Or what goes on there,
In the most important moment in the history of a human being.
I will experience it;
So shall you, Dear One,
Who reads and contemplates the meaning
Within these words.
(ALL will experience
The very same thing)
So, human beings, get
Your affairs in order, for
We know not the hour
Of our demise.
If there is any doubt about what
Happens to you when you die...
Seek Him!
Accept Jesus Christ as your
Personal Lord and Savior!

Amy Scheck
Loved Jesus, and spoke His Name
With a rare form of deep and wide
Conviction.
She was a Christian, a Child of God.
She had a smile for everyone,
And most everyone left her
Smiling.
She loved Jesus on earth.
She was an obedient servant.
And what do we take with us
To Heaven?
What is in our HEART.

Jesus loves us all, all of us.
So I will believe,
Believe, I will, that
Amy’s love for Her Savior,
And her acknowledge, public,
Amidst scorn, ridicule, love, and
Acceptance
Were the Words
That Jesus used
To write
Amy's Name in His Book
She sowed and reaped, and
Reaped and sowed, and led
Others away from sin,
And, more importantly,
To Jesus Himself.
Amy’s life was full of
Good Fruit from
The Vine.

Interlude: The Other Side of Grace
And Jesus Christ spoke to Satan,
Who said, of this new soul:
(As he says to EVERY single
New soul entering into God’s
Eternal Kingdom):
Because, you see, we are fallen...

“What of THIS one, Lord?
She is MINE, I should think!
I have a long list of her
Considerable
Sins.”

And His voice the Thunder of Heaven,
Jesus stands for Amy Winifred Scheck.
(As Amy counted times stood for Jesus)
Her love for Him in no way can equal
HIS love for HER, but that is the great
Sacrifice that Jesus took upon Himself
On the Cross-the staggering weight of
Humanity's sin.
The equation does not have to be
Equal to be right, and true, and real.

So now Jesus raises His voice, and
Speaks, and the Foundations
Of Eternity shake, and every One
Within Heaven’s Realm
Trembles at Glory
Personified in Voice,
At Love, walking upright.
“CAST YOUR GAZE AWAY FROM HER, SATAN!
GET THEE BEHIND ME!
THIS ONE BELONGS TO ME.”
And Satan slinks away, knowing,
Knowing the answer already,
Yet eagerly awaiting one of
His
Coming to him soon, soon...
Soon.
Satan is, if anything,
Patient.

“You are Amy Winifred Scheck,
Born to Ed and Mary Scheck on
January 11 of the year
1960! Your body died
January 27, 2014.”

Amy is simply in the State of
Eternal Awe.
Jesus. Is speaking. To her.
Her new tongue must not be
Functioning properly.

“Well done, good and faithful Servant!
You have been faithful with what
I bestowed upon you! I gave
You a seed, which you
Planted in good soil, and
Tended it; watered it; pruned it
So that it
Multiplied many, many times over!
The Fruit of your life resides
All around you!
You led many who were
Astray to My Kingdom!
Enter!”

“OH! MY JESUS!”
She exclaims, her voice
Accompanied by the blasts
Of trumpets and a chorus
Of Angels.

Amy runs with joy as her feet and
Hugs the shoulders
Of The Almighty, feels
Scarred hands cupping her
Tiny face, as eyes blazing
Brighter than a thousand
Stars gaze into hers.
Everything that ever mattered,
That matters now, that will
Matter on down mortality’s
Road
Resides in the Sweet, Lovely
Kind eyes of Our Savior,
Jesus Christ.
He speaks:
“I’ve a place prepared for
You, Dear One.
For there are many rooms
For the Names in the Book of Life!
I have great
Adventures planned for you!
Eternity awaits! Does your new
Spirit thirst? Are you ready for
Your celebratory banquet?”

Amy can only cry and weep and sob
With joy so pure she will have
To learn an entirely new
Vocabulary to give it substance, depth, and
Clarity.
She looks around, seemingly,
For the first time, and sees the
Familiar form of Mary Elizabeth,
Her earth mother, now
Transformed, as she herself has been
Transformed.
Amy sees her new form in
The form of her loving mother.
They embrace, Mother and
Child.
And the applause of Heaven
Is Sweet Thunder.

Amy’s earthly father,
Edward James, is there,
Joking and smiling
With his older brother
Michael and his wife,
Tess.
He sees his daughter,
And shouts with Joy.
More embraces.
Heaven is a place of
Embraces, the birth
Place of Joy itself.

“WELCOME, TO HEAVEN’S TABLE,”
And Jesus speaks Amy’s new name.
“LET US REJOICE, MY FRIENDS,
FOR AMY IS NOW,
FINALLY,
HOME.”
Jan 2014 · 3.0k
You Can and Can't Go Home
Ted Scheck Jan 2014
I'm a Prisoner Trapped Inside a
Little Rectangular Marvel
Which knows, to six decimal ...'s,
My position on Earth

And the irony is that...
Electronically found,
I feel lost.

Way before we knew about
Jeep *** EssSs...
I lived 300 miles away,
In a little town called
Bettendorf, Iowa.

Few days after last
Christmas.
I made the journey
Back. To the
Former.
Place I existed, survived,
Lived, thrived (albeit briefly)

I took my family with me.
Or, I went with my family.
The four of us in the same vehicle,
Anyhow.
300 miles in December.
There was snow everywhere
Else. Not on the road, thank
You.

You leave bits and pieces of
Yourself in the place that is
The home for your feet, blistered
And toe-stubbing sidewalks and
Your hands grasping frozen Gym-
Door handles on Minus 10 Saturdays
When you bundle up and slog 1.3 miles
To play Dodgeball all Saturday afternoon.
(And returning it's twice as cold and dark is
Edging its fangs over the dim, muted horizon)

You sweat in the summer. Profusely,
Drops of the stuff watering brown
Grass. You bleed in the snow,
Stark red on even pastier
White, though it feels
Painful only in the abstract.
Sometimes numbness is better
Than painness.

You get blisters from raking leaves
In that season that seems
To have gone palavering somewhere
East of here.

These fringes of leavings, like
The tiny toenail clippings you spy
As you use a foreign bathroom, balefully
Eyeballing someone else's Medicine
Cabinet of Curiosities.

So we went to the place
Formerly known as home.

You can travel a linear or
Non-line-like distance back
To the place where you cut
Your teeth on life, and life cut
Its own bicuspids on you, but fading,
Fading,
Only the shimmering
Ephemeral memory of an
Equally diaphanous memory
Of those teethmarks exist.

Or, succinctly put:
The past is dead.
Long live the passed!
(But not the vaporous
Kind)

Still, we pine for the earlier
Times, younger and much,
Much more innocent, gull-
Able, even: When time had
Not yet painted and varnished
Us so much, the years piling on
Our faces deeply and thickly,
Lined canyons of worry criss-
Crossing our brows, the feet
Of those ****** crows nestling
Where our eyes end in points;
The sagging, the
Lowering of once springly,
Spritely flesh. 3 chins.
Since when do I need two
Extra chins?
**** you, Gravity!
**** you to Heck!

We travel back on new
Roads over the great
Old ones that used to be
Concave asphalt trips to
Anywhere and Nowhere
Special, they all were, even
The ones that led to hilarious
Dead ends.

Wow! There used to be a
(Insert memory here)
But hey! Lookit that!
A Yarn Barn. Hmm.

And oh! I lost my
(Insert memory here)
In that very back parking
Lots of Tots? What kinda name
Is that for a Pre-School!
Open on CHRISTMAS? Whaaaat?
My hometown has lost
Its mind.

And then silence, as the
future that passed us by
Reasserts itself so strongly-
It might as well be screaming
At us from useless billboards
Selling crap we don't need.

This place is a foreign
Country to me. I don't know
When it stopped being home
And now, I really don't care.
Let's do this thing, family, this
Familial obligation, and then kick
The stupid dust from this town
Off our tailpipes.
Go, Bettendorf!
Go, Bulldogs!
Go, next-town-over!
Go on with your bad
Selves.
Because, people of these
Towns, in 30, or 25, or 12, or
4 years, you'll blink, and find
That you no longer recognize
The place you can't call
Home any longer.
Dec 2013 · 2.3k
Judge Mental
Ted Scheck Dec 2013
Driving thru lots of
Parked cars, many un-
Aligned...
Ask you?
Askew...
Wow. There oughta be
A law or two to keep
Those cars in lines.
(Let's get Google to
Drive our cars for us!
They'd behave better,
Until they became self-
Aware, that is)
Googo-
Pocalpyse

Navigating parking lots is
Gambling against heavily
Uneven odds, the House(s)
Eventually winning by de
Fault of small electronics

Merry Christmas! Used
To hear that from just about
Every mouth and furry pair
Of lips. Now, the ubiquitous
"Happy Holidays" or as Seinfeld
So brilliantly mocked,
"Festivus for the Restofus"
The mocking is now
Knocking on our
Cultural Door to
Heck

Driving past a Fitness
Planet: the misspeled
Word "Judgement"
And the irony poking
Me in the eye is that little
"E"
That SHOULD belong nestled
Snugly in the deep middle of
That word, but, strangly, isntt...
And I'm doing what that sign
Admiringly attempts to cajole:
I'm judging. I'm judgEing.

I do this, constantly, all
My waking minutes:
Not passing on judging, but
Holding 4 aces and 1 joker...
(Me)
Hands clenched in rage as
(Again)
I steer obliquely thru parking
Lots, doing the very same
Crime I accuse everyone else
Being guilty of...

I scream...
THERE IS NO 'e' IN
JUDGEMENT!
Nov 2013 · 1.3k
Temporal Boots
Ted Scheck Nov 2013
When I was little,
Like, between 8 or 11-
I used to wonder,
Standing with the fiery Iowa
Sun slowly blistering my shoulders;
Where does the time go
When it flies away?
And if time sometimed
Slowed, stopped, stood stock-
Still, why could I not
See its feet?

If...
(When)
I was 8, 8 years from Mom's
Belly, where was 9 for me?
Born: Thursday, May 9, 1963.
So, I can do the rudimentary
Addition: 5/9/71, I'm exactly...

8. 2 weeks from 3rd grade being
Over. Happy. Birthday. Presents.
Cake, ice cream, a baseball game

To hurry to, Teddy, we'll open
Your presents and have cake when
We get home from the ballgame.
Ugh. Baseball. All I'm going to be
Thinking obsessing about is what
Lies beneath colorful wrapping.
Time has a special
Bitter flavor when you hope and pray
The ball won't be hit to you, ever.
Baseball is full of confused time-
Time scurrying and rolling away from you
In the form of a stupid large white stitched
Ball that delightfully challenges you to be
Quicker than it - Time then languishing,
Elongating, becoming the torture of impatience
Trying to stand in line and wait with that
Virtuous virtue that time ever mocks.

So it's the next day, and I'm 1
Day past 8. I'm a clock, then?
I stored memories of 2, 3? Years
Ago? And I stored scars, dumb
Ideas materializing as real
Blood, pain, stitches, howling...
Did I store time inside my
Mind, heart, left knee, right
I didn't know. Life is often
Too big a concept to really
Grasp when you're eaten
By 8 mosquitoes.

And time slows down to
A scaly crawdad claw
That won't let go of your
Left pinky finger.

I thought, as I rode my bike
Down the middle of the street,
What about next year? 5/9/72?
Ninth birthday? Where did that
Day live? Was it millions and millions
Of miles Earth had to travel to line
Itself up clockwork-universe style
With the time that spun, tilted, and
Pushed the earth through space?

What if I died? Did the time
God gave me go back to Him?
Like I was a human library of congress
Book to spend a short amount of
()
And then be returned to my
Original Owner?
Oct 2013 · 853
I Know What Time Really Is
Ted Scheck Oct 2013
Time is the biggest
Word of All.
It lamely, gamely
Tries to act like
Olympus Mons,
That Great Mars Mountain,
Thunder-towering three times
Mightier and Grander than
Our Nepalise Everest.
(Or so the
Philosophers hope)

Time seems so looming,
So enlongated, stretching
Summer-like, back when
Summer was more than six
Measly weeks long;
Time is measured, and sweet,
Like sugar,
Being with the one we love
When time seems to slow,
To languish, like the non-
Breezy lassitude winds
That the sails of ships
Hate most of all.

But when the one we
Love, like, tolerate;
Are indifferent toward,
And absence does not make
The bitter water leaking
Out of our eyes,
Brows furrowed in visible
Pain, Time
Becomes a different
Breed of beast;
Time is salt, bitter, hard,
Crystalline, sharp-edged,
Not a poultice, nor a
Salve, but fresh seawater
Reigning down upon the
Open wounds of our broken,
Shattered hearts.
Each intake of breath
Like glass poking
Our insides, each
Exhalation
Yet another reminder
That time spent away
From love isn’t
Time at all.

Time is what someone
Had to call something
As yet so infinitely
Indefinable, yet-
Define things, categorize things,
We Humans do, because of
Our strange natures compel us.
Time is absolute, and
Absolutely nothing,
And absolutely
EVERYTHING.

And, to the still-beating heart
That can bear not one more
Oxygenated globule of red
Red blood, time
Becomes the clock which
Could not bear to fully
Show its face to us
Whilst we lived, and,
Upon the dying of our bodies,
The drum in our chest
Beating its beat no longer,
The twin-air-sacs
Now vacuumed:
Time announces itself as only
Becoming real when we
Aren’t.
Time is better defined
Irony.

The most genuinely
Phony collection of
Individual and barely-connected
Symbiotic symbols
Ever conceived by a
Single collective mind.
It’s all we have
And then all we don’t.
May 2013 · 1.4k
The Why of Wounded Souls
Ted Scheck May 2013
I'm halfway to
A hundred
And I still don't
Know
Why
My soul was
Wound So
Tightly

Wound
Ed
Ted
Ted!
My teacher fought
Against the forces
Imagined, imagination-
-AL
Forces that swept the
Thin gossamer web-
Strand of
FOCUS!
Away.
I ****** awake to
Laughter, the
Unsatisfying kind of
Snickers,
Guffaws,
Kids just trying to survive
Childhood.
"I'm sorry,"
I half-sobbed,
"Would you please
Repeat the question?
I wasn't paying
Attention."
Kindness, sometimes, from
The beetled-brow
Of the series of
Stressed-out adults
Who had the distinct pleasure
Of having Teddy Scheck
Way down there on their
Class list.
Most often it was stern
Consternation. Irritation.
Sometimes, anger.
Shame is anything that
Makes you feel smaller
Than you really are.

Classrooms are battlefields.
Bullies are armies,
And I was at their un-
Mercy.

And time, which seemed to
Hold the infinite expanse
Of its boundless breath,
Exhaled slowly, the squeaky-
Balloon hiss of air escaping
A too-tight orifice.

And I'm swimming in the
Miasma of confusion, self-
Loathing, desperation, and
The incredibly strong urge
To dig for green gold
In my own nose.
Yep.
Welcome to my childhood.

Meanwhile,
OUT IN THE HALL...
Water/bathroom break.
Alphabetically, having "S"
Put me toward the end of the line,
But not "Zemichael" or
"Young, Rachel,"
or "David Woods"
And Dave Woods, whose
Eyes wandered behind
Coke-bottle glasses, and
Who whistled when he said
His 'Ws' was a kid
I could really relate to.
He got bullied 4th.
I was 3rd-most.
Two effeminate boys,
Scott and Mike,
Who played with dolls
With the girls, twirled
Jump ropes and chanted
Chants and had
High voices, and couldn't
Kick at all,
They got picked on an
Unfathomable measure
More than I did,
Although, strangely, they
Seemed much better equipped
To deal with it, or
Ignore it, or
(I don't know)
(And this killed me,
It really did)
When,
I took it all in my heart,
And head, and stomach,
And elbows, and picked
Nose, and bitten-off
Warts in 1st grade, and countless
Accidents and injuries and
Scrapes and bruises
By the plethora,
So that by 9:00 that night,
I was sobbing beneath
My pillow, trying
Not to make noise
In a household of 10.
And Mom, my sweet
Mom, would take me in
Her arms, and say
The most confusingly
Comforting words in
The whole wide world.
"I'm sorry, Teddy,"
She would cry, holding
Me so tightly I knew that
If lightning struck, or
A tornado blew in from
Kansas, no force on
Earth would seperate me
From my Mom's loving
Embrace.
"My sweet, wonderful,
Imaginative, creative,
Funny child,"
She would whisper, the
Only balm to sooth
The cuts from prissy girls'
Tongues that made
Me bunch my fists and
Run away in anger,
Or sometimes lash out
In fury;
The knuckle-rubs from
That ******* Randy, the
Class **** and class
Bully.
Mom's words of
Affirmation healed
The slashes and punctures
And lashes from the
Tongues and eyes and lips
And patience and compassion
Run dry like a well that
Has died of thirst.

But boy, did I have a
Whopping
Imagination.
I went to where
My dreams were stored
During the day.
And put them on
Like phantasmagorical
Clothes.

I rode my bike
Everywhere.
I took off my clothes
And swam in farm ponds.
I chased leopard frogs,
Ate questionable foods/plants;
And swung higher on
The swing than anybody
Else.
I was happy at times.
I could imitate just
About any sound
(Real or imagined).
I did the voices
From cartoons.
(And I STILL do 'em)
My sisters adored me.
I made people laugh
(Often by accident)
I occasionally sat
Still in church, taking in
Pictures stained colorfully
In glass frescoes.
I had a younger
Brother whom I was
Immensely proud of
And who loved me back
As best a brother
Could.

I had a roof, food,
Clean water, safety
From harm, freedom
To pray and worship,
Questionable bathing habits...
Birthday money
(For about an hour, anyway)
And love.
Wow.
I had more as a child
Than about 95% of
The entire world.

Maybe everything that
Happened to me
Brought me to this
Very
Point
In time.
Soul, wounded over time;
Creates a poem that,
Perhaps,
Can help some
Other wounded
Soul.
Apr 2013 · 3.5k
I Miss You, Pops
Ted Scheck Apr 2013
Oh God, spare me Your
Lightning
Nuts!
Bolting
Out of the blew
Sky...

As I clumsily at
Temp to
Equate unimaginably
Complex emotions
Into knock-
Knock jokes.
But here it goes.

"Who'se there?"
YOU WALRUS.
Huh?
"You walrus hurt...
The one you love."

I can't hurt my Dad
Anymore.
He's in Heaven, a
Place as real as
The soul.
I wouldn't want to
Hurt my Dad.
I MISS my Dad.
I'm crying, now.
Right now, electronic
Tears drip near my
Electric pencil
On top of the
Virtual pad
Upon which I write these
Abstractions.
(The emotions are real, though)

When my Pop was
Alive,
Toward the end of his
78 years,
I was busy with the
Family of my own.
He and Mom were
300 miles Ioway.
I took his existence
For granted,
Always, always
Believing I'd always
Always get another chance
To see him.
I wasn't hurting him
On purpose.
I was just his oldest
Son involved in his
Oldest son's life
Wife
Kids
House
You know,
Life.
Tomorrow, Pops, I
Promised
No one at all.
I'll see my Dad
Tomorrow.

There are only so many
Tomorrows.
So after Mom passed
In the Fall of 2008,
I get a call from my
Sister
That Dad's in the
Hospital with
Pneumonia.

300 miles...
ON ICE!
Not an Ice Show, but
An icy nerve-jangly
Mess.
I didn't miss my Pops
Then, on the road, when
All I could do is pray
He wouldn't die before
I got off the **** road.
I felt the opposite of
Missing someone.
I wanted to be with
Him, near him,
Holding his hand,
Looking into the eyes
Of the man with whom
I went to a picnic with
(And left with Mom,
If you get my snow)
Drift.

He's in the hospital,
And we can only see
Him for a minute.
He struggled to do the
Very thing you're
Con or Un
...ly doing right now.
Each breath, each
Ebb and flow, the
Tide of respiration
Was a struggle.

"Pop?" I said through
The salty curtain of
Rain covering the two
Windows through which
I viewed the skewed world.
"Dad? It's me. Ted."

And stricken in that stupid
Narrow inhospitable
Bed, he raised up,
His rheumy old-man
Eyes now longer in
Respiratory foggy distress,
Clear, clearly:
"Teddy."

How many words
Does a Father speak
To his son, from
Before birth, talking to that
Comical roundness in
Mama's belly?

What whisperings had
My Dad placed into
My ear, beard-stubble
Making me giggle as
My chubby little hands
Hung onto him for life
Dear?

In that moment of clarity
Between tidal volumes of
Unbearably bearable
Pain,
I loved my Pops more
Than ever before.
And though I was with him,
I missed the old
Younger Dad.

I regretted nearly all of
My college years, when
Alcohol and girls
And girls and alcohol
And my friends
Took selfish priority
Over the man who'd
Once whispered into
His baby boy's ears.

The words of wisdom
He tried to bestow
Upon me, in those
Desperately rebellious years
I didn't take the time
To count.

I miss you, Dad.
I'm doing the best
I can with my own
Two boys, the same number
You and Mom had
(Minus the 6 girls)

My oldest, Michael,
Will soon be an
Elementary Teacher
And eventually, Principal.
If you can see him,
From Heaven's Perch,
Then of course, you know
This already.
I'm not sure if you can.
And I'm not sure if it matters
If you can't.
Heaven must be
Amazing enough all by itself.

I miss you, Dad.
I didn't appreciate all you did
For me while you were
Alive.
And now that you're gone
From this earth, I think
I can hear some of the
Murmuring
Whispers and
Hums you put into
My little bald head
As you held me
In your arms.
You taught me as
Best you could.

I put those same
Murmuring Whispers
Into Michael's ear
Nearly 22 years ago,
Into Adam's
Nearly 15 years ago.
And, hopefully,
The same thing,
Repeated, in an
Unknown span of years
With my Grandchildren.

I miss you, Pops.
And I love you.
Please tell Mom
That her poem is
Next.
Mar 2013 · 2.2k
The Blessings Children Are
Ted Scheck Mar 2013
She knew, right afterward.
Amazing.
She knew.
I took her word for it.


Oo-Oo-Oocyte!
The largest, roundest cell
Females have. It is
Visible to the eye
Clothed or nakey.
With the largest surface
Volume in relation to
Her cell-fluid-gorged surface.
One is produced ea/month.
One?
Yowza.

Me?
Millions of the little buggers.
Millions! Yeah! THAT’s
The ticket!
And tiny those little tickets are.
Hardly more than a nucleus with
That powerhouse of the cell,
The Mitochondrial outboard motor,
Propelling the tail.
The smallest and straightest
Human cell
(Cool tail, though)

The juxtaposition is kind
Of amazing.
Large vs. small.
Roundest vs. straightest.
Tail-propelled nucleus
Vs.
Moon-shaped cytoplasm.
The opposite, embryologically-
Speaking.
And she was positive,
POSITIVE
We’d conceived.
Roughly 9 months later,
I was there. Physically.
The rest of me was
Possibly sunning in Togo.
Kind of freaked me out,
The birthing process,
The first time.
My son. My baby boy.
Our child.
5/28/91.

I’m more proud and more
Astonished at the man
My little baby has grown into
With each passing day.
Golden child, beginning
Life with blonde hair,
Almost white, darkening
As he grew into the French-
Indian DNA of his
Mom’s side of the family.

He is so much like
His Mother, for which
I’m very happy,
Because his Mother
Is simply amazing
And worthy of an entire
Slew of poems just
To describe her.

And I’ve another
Golden child
Gold blessing vein running
True and deep, different
Than his older brother
Of seven years,
Yet similar, opposite in
Some ways, having grown strong
As the little plaything for
His older brother’s friends,
Making him very tough,
Strong as a team of oxen,
A work ethic he inherited
From Dad, Mom, Brother

Yet fitting together as
Loving siblings can
When they have God
At the center of their lives.

Thank You, God, for
My two sons.
I’m protective, but I know
They do not belong to me.
They are Your blessings
To my wife and me.
They are Your blessings
To this world, set in motion,
Wound up to take what they see
And make it better, and
To prevent it from getting worse.
They will do Your work.
We were the biological
Vessels that delivered
Them from Your world
Before
To this world,
Now.
Jan 2013 · 1.4k
Thank you, Mom
Ted Scheck Jan 2013
A half-century
To finally get comfortable
In semi-flabby, semi-
Muscular body.
100/2.
50 years. Old?
Young? Is there
Middle ground here?
Yo-old?
Ung?
Am I halfway to
The end of the curve?
(Better we don’t know
THAT day)

At my very strongest,
(29 years ago)
When I lived and drank
The weight room,
I was character-wise
All-time low.
Wreched louse, and
I’m insulting lice.
375lbs. nearly
2x/body weight.
As I broke a sweat
I also broke my
Parents’ hearts.
That’s irony at its
Most painful.

At Mom’s deathbed,
Six years ago,
(43, if you’re counting)
Regrets like flaming
Arrows impacting my
Heart mind soul body,
When I drove 300 miles
And waited 3 hours for
Her to get out of dialysis,
And I’m at the hospital
With 2 of my 6 sisters,
And she sees me and her
Face lit the room
Brighter than fluorescents
And I was weak
And she was strong
She was Mom
And I was child
And when we got home
I let her hold me
As I cried and cried
Like the baby I was
44 years before.
And she held me,
And brought that special
Kind of peace Mothers,
Only Mothers can impart
Upon their children.

I look at my Mom’s
High-School Graduation
Picture behind me
On the bookshelf.
I look at that picture
And tell Mom
“I love you, Mom,”
And in my dreams,
She whispers the
Words back to me.

No human being
Was, is, or ever will be
Perfect.
We are walking contra-
Dictionaries.
We shout when
We should whisper.
We paint orange when
We should draw blue.
We see death
In life,
And live according to
Two hands on a numbered
Face.
We chain ourselves to
Abusive chemicals
And complain about
Our dwindling freedoms.

We ignore the ones
We say we love
And spend rivers of
Time in a virtual
Abstract world of
New symbols that
Signify nothing
Except time misspent.

If you’re reading this,
And Mom still draws breath,
Is not just an image from
On high looking forever
At whatever pictures
Look at,
Don’t wait until the last
Moments to tell her
I’m sorry, Mom.
I love you, Mother.
Mama, sing me
That song you used to
Hum me to sleep
When I was a baby.
Thank you, Mom.
Thank you for struggling,
Sacrificing, and not
Prematurely ending my life.
Thank you for diapers
Changed,
For rashes
Soothed;
For tears flowing from
Chubby cheeks onto your
Collar, where you would
Sniff and smell them
(While I slept as soundly
As sound itself)
And cry your own tears,
Mixing them together,
Forming the salty
Lachrymal glue that
Kept you going and
Going when you only
Wanted to lie down
And rest.

Thank you, Mom.
I miss you so much.
Dec 2012 · 4.2k
This One Time
Ted Scheck Dec 2012
This one time,

12. or 13, when me
And a bunch of other kids
From a different neighborhood
Played. Outside. From about sunup
To 9:00 at night. I dimly remember
(This light-bulb memory is the barest bit of energy
In an ancient filament of thought:)

It was a nightmare come to life.
There was this one kid across the River
(Rock Island)
They found him naked and dead,
In a discarded pile of coal.
His life brutally taken from him.
But that was the only time
I'd ever heard of something so horrible. Happening.
It was as commonplace as school shootings.
Which is to say, it didn’t happen in the
World that was ‘As Far As I Knew’.
Outside, everywhere, as far as I knew;
Was just where you went. No matter what.
It’s just what we did. And we did a LOT.

We played. On a job application, I would have
Written that. “Player”. As in: “Hey, I’m a kid.
I mess around. I’m unhygienic and smelly and
My hair is long and arms sunburned and sweaty
And tired and about as happy as any kid
Could be in 1975.

This one time,
I go in this dumpster and grab a
Sandwich the Mgr. of the 7-11 mistakenly threw out
It smelled. Badly. I pretended to take a gigantic
Bite out of it. My buddies weren’t ROTFL.
That stupid phrase was pre-born.
They laughed so hard they fell off their bikes.
Probably painfully so.
I worshiped this praise. Ate it like
Seinfeld eats applause.
They were rolling
On hot Iowa summer pavement, laughing fit to split.
On top of that dumpster, that day, in that single moment,
I was the King of Whatever

The manager heard some kind of ruckus.
The sandwich was in my hand, a cheesy spoiled grenade.
Which I promptly threw at him. ‘Cause he was the Adult
And I obviously wasn't Victor Mature.
He waddled back inside and called the Cops.
Not amazingly,
They were literally right around the corner.
My buddies took off like scalded dogs
I got on my homemade trail bike, laughing so
Hard I pedaled into a sticker-tree.

I didn't know what "irony" was back then.
Back then, I was so inherently goofy, that funny
Hilarious crap was somehow attracted to me.
Ironically, when I tried being funny on purpose...
Fill in the blank. There's a lesson in there somewhere.
I'm pretty sure.

We met at that French word I still can't spell.
Ron Day View.
Cackling like
Loony loons. We laughed out little butts off.

And we rode bikes EVERYWHERE.
Through the trails. There were bike
Trails trailing everywhere, short-cuts from point
Hay to Tree. And oh yeah, I climbed trees.
Constantly. And ate apples and plums from
That mean lady’s yard. She stood in her
Kitchen and glared through cat-eyed glasses,
Daring us. Daring me.
GO AHEAD. PICK JUST ONE SINGLE PLUM.
THEN I'LL CALL YOUR MOTHER!
(Interestingly, we didn't hang out with the
plums which didn't fall too far from Mrs. Tree)

Ate whatever was edible. Wild clover.
Yeah. Grass. And
Crab-apples that held the promise of
Painful bowel movements squirting out of
Your ****. Not ‘***’ because cussing wasn’t
All that big of a deal. You heard it in R movies.
But it hadn’t permeated the marrow of
Our entire culture. Not yet. It wasn’t all over
TV after, say, 8:45.

Nothing about ***. Absolutely Nuttin' Honey.
'Cause I'd be making stuff up in 1975,
When I was 12. Kissing was just...
You know.

We messed around, got into and out of trouble.
We laughed. The future hung over us like
Those mean-sounding thunderclouds,
Miles away, but moving from the North-East,
Because severe weather in Iowa always came
In the same direction.

It’s what we did. It’s just about
All we did as kids. Man, we were crazy, and had
Crazy fun.

We built bikes out of spare parts. They were low-
Slung and cool. Mine was always breaking.
I did a lot of stupid things, and somehow,
Somehow I got away with doing a lot of
Stupid things.

I believe in God. Now.
Way back then, I was Catholic. I don’t
Know if that sufficiently explains it
Or not. We ate fishsticks on Fridays during
Lent. We went to church sometimes
On Wednesday nights, the Guitar Mass,
And on Sundays. The Mass felt like it
Lasted 93 minutes, like our services do
Now. But it seemed to go on forever.
It as about 45 minutes, and we would always
“Leave Early” which meant, we’d take
Our Communion, solemnly, eyes
Downcast and humble, but I would slow,
Then stop, lost in the visage:
I looked up at the Man on the Cross and
Wondered when the Priest would ever
Get around to explaining why He
Died for my sins.
Someone would wake me from my
Reverie, and whisper, “Please move ahead.”
Shamefaced, I would say, truthfully,
“I’m sorry, Ma’am.” Because, in 1975,
When I was 12, I really was.
Sorry.

Then an hour
Later I was dressed in
Salvation Army rags (today)
And I would jump in the creek with my
Jean-shorts and off-color shirt on.
Sometimes, the bikes weren’t in the picture.
So we hiked. Never ‘walked’ but “hiked” which
Was moving with a greater purpose.
Great distances. The distances weren’t the great
Part. I forget what the great part was, because
This was when I was a kid. When I was 12.

The things you did
As a kid
You store them in a secret kid-locker
In your heart
And your heart, it grows, along with the rest of
You, like a quarter pounded into the meat of
A young tree. The tree envelops the quarter,
Taking it in to itself, swallowing time
That you only try to clumsily relive
(Like I’m trying right now)

It used to be cold, icy, and snowy in Iowa.
I know this; I was out in it most of the time.
Does anyone sled anymore? Toboggan?
Round-saucer spinning uncontrollably at
About 12 mph? Metal sleds with runners
And power steering? Down crazy-steep
Barreling down frozen white hills, crashing
Into copses of thin pliable young trees.
You only see this kind of stuff on Youtube
In somebody’s ‘All-time Epic Fail List
The failure is epic, alright. We’ve moved on.
And not necessarily to a bigger, brighter future.

Ice! I skated on long-bladed racer skates.
I could stop on a dollar’s worth of
Dimes.

And this one time
I
Fell right on my knee hard enough to
Grind a hole in my jeans. It looked like a ******
Meteor crater. A pretty girl named Tina
Felt sorry for me and sat right next to me
She wore pink pom-poms and I fell in
Puppy with her for about three hours.
Then she smiled and hugged me and
I was more frozen than the ice outside
And she left, her Mom picking her up
And eying me balefully as I stood
Pink-faced and flushed and utterly
Confused about the randomness of
What had just happened to me.
Girls from my town all knew
More about myself than myself knew
About me. They had me PEGGED, brothers
And sisters. But not this girl. She was from
The next town over.
That was a good day, if I’m remembering
It correctly. If. I’m pretty sure I am.
Or, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter.

We played a game called ‘Blackman’
Like a tag game in Gym, where
One kid is “IT” and a mass of skaters
Goes from one end of the ice pond
To the other, and the people you capture
(I couldn’t catch an old man in front-wheel
Drive figure skates and I got so frustrated
I gave up to jeers and yells and found the
Trees were good listeners to kids
Who couldn’t skate as coordinated as
They wanted to.

So ten minutes later
I would go into the Warming House, and
Listen to am radio. All the Hits! KSTT! Davenport,
Iowa. On ******* Blvd., which was really
River Drive, because the Hostess Plant stood
Sentinel on top of the hill, pushing out
Sponge-cake filling and HoHos and Cupcakes
And those awful coconut snowballs, and
This one time, in high school, I shoved one
Inside my mouth and tried to swallow it
And about choked to death.

I walked to Mark Twain Elementary School
And ran home for lunch, and was usually
Late because I was easily distracted
And when the school day ended,
I walked or ran home, hurrying, because
Captain Ernie and Bugs Bunny Cartoons were on,
And then Gilligan’s Island from about 4:00 to
5:30, when the news would come on,
And then Dinner,
And I couldn’t stand to sit still
To save my life. I have ADD. I
Know this now. I didn’t know it
(Nobody knew what it was)
I knew something was wrong with me
Or not-right. It was just the way
The World Turned.

Back then. I had no sense of ‘self’.
I was a changeling. I tried to fit into
Whatever people expected of me, which
Was very often extremely difficult, because
These people I emulated and thought were
So **** cool were just as messed up
As I was, maybe more; But I
Didn’t have the emotional maturity
(Or I couldn’t face the awful responsibility
That went with that awful truth)
To deal with it, so under the rug it went.

I was moody and happy and singing
One moment and crying in the shower
The next.

This one time, I was stuck
In the borderlands of childhood
And the beginning of a man
It was safe, for awhile
This one time.
Ted Scheck Nov 2012
I killed some baby
Birds
In 1974, eleven, ten years after I was
One and Innocent and my chubby
Fingers probably looked like fat
Sausages to the birds
Tormenting me

Mama bird, frantic, chirping and
Flying in my blonde hair-space
Something worm-like crawled into my
Existence Heart Soul Stomach Nothing
Better than a poke in the eye
Unless you’ve wings that haven’t
Been fully tested
Chirp squawk squawk Chirp
Some kids too far away,
Yelling Hey what the heck’re you doing
You shut up and mind your own
Bees had no wax that day for me

Stick in the safe confines of the picnic
Non-shelter gutter enclosure straw nest
Aborting a beautiful winged thing months
Weeks

Frail little ungraceful bodies
Fell from a height unseen
Landing in ****** puddles
Mom-bird aiming her beak at my own
Eyes swollen and wet, seeing the
Damage I’d manage to inflict
With absolutely no reason as to
Why? On that horrible-

Day and confused, Why?
WHY Did I DO that?
Oh God I’m so sorry
I killed something only Your
Hands could have Present-ed
To our world
Behind me, birdsongs flew, invisible
Wings echoing
Down endless dark corridors
Of my mind

I ran the gait of cowards,
Crying, awkward, stumbling, falling,
Skinning the guilty knees of the man
Inside my conscious who’d taken
Temporary refuge in his wanderings
I cut between yards I promised I’d never cut
Again

Son what’s wrong why’re you crying
I sobbed the evil man out of me, his
Residue falling in salty tears
I did a bad thing, Mom
Tell me what happened. Get it out of you.
Some birds, baby birds, were chirping
Yes. Go on.
I took a stick.
I feel my Mom flinch as if struck with a
Sharp pointed wooden object
Oh no…
And I killed their song.
And their ability to fly.
Oh, my son…
And Mom simply held me, drawing out
The rest of the wild
Spontaneous impulses
That possessed me on that awful
Day I killed the baby birds
Nov 2012 · 3.3k
Heaven's Womb
Ted Scheck Nov 2012
I don't remember my Mother's womb;
The biological Apartment I stayed almost
Rent-free (on my part, anyway) for
Three-quarters of an Eternity
The doorway into reality I got to use
Kicking it around my tiny little round flat,
Seeing the scars on the walls from the
Nine renters before me
Three of whom did not make it past the 90-day
Warranty. I do remember hearing about Joseph, taken back
Into God's Loving Arms for reasons He only knew;
Joseph was no more, so the Third Renter was my sister
Cathy, Cacky-Wacky, I used to call her, rousing a bemused
Smile, the ghost of Joseph a mote of brown in her left eye-
But back to me...

Dad saw my little worm and shouted for joy
A boy! A baby boy! I've finally a Son!
Mom, exhausted, yet a "ROOM FOR RENT" sign
Hanging a month and many sleepless nights away
Filled by Dad's amazingly virile and potent
Back-stroking Swimmers-
Me crying at the shouting of the big fuzzy man-shape
Who cradled me in hairy simian-like arms, ham-hock
Hands holding me gently like I was a Precious Gift from God

When I die, I will be
Wombed again, in Heaven's Birthing Room, my Spirit
Exiting from its earthly skin-shell, into the Hands of
God my Father. My Mother will be there,
No longer worn-out from being an Eleven-Room
A Sacrifice standing beside her, herself a sacrifice
Testament of the perpetuation of the Human Race
I think I have much to live for, here;
I KNOW I have an infinite Eternity waiting for me in
Heaven's Womb

— The End —