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fearfulpoet Oct 2019
these hard words

are the only fruit my hard-rocked soiled-soul produces,
my alliterations secrete no beliefs, quench nothing,
the poems I don’t write are my most successful,
the songs that comforted, now find no-entry orifice

skin cold wet clammy sweating unsuitable for tilling,
my horizons natural, felled, underground swallowed,
replaced by the man-made barriers, guardrails of words
leaving body, utterances shoutout, exiting non-permissioned

lurch from one guilt-carrying, black leather-straps wrapped,
round my arm, to the ones strapped around my temple,
honorable acts owed, responsibilities fear foundering
unfulfilled lists, griefs, signs of cowardice, badges shameful

deep sighs, open groans, me mean asking questions of myself,
laughed off, city noises turned off, silences of colorless colden,
the sirens loudest inside reverb endlessly, still give nothing away,
a final exam, an all sided, annual checkup reveals nothing but


these hard words

7:48am 10/15/19
fearfulpoet Aug 2019
I’m tired of my hands


<>
and my hands are tired of me,
the never ending pick up, put down choring,
without a end date lease or a by your leave,
if I never see a ***** dish or a poem unfinished,
my hands will be permanently attached
in one of them praying emojis

tired of my big mouth so wide,
saying **** notions like love you,
and love no more, so just shut it,
nobody’s somebody don’t care,
stick to whether the weather gonna change,
and if you’ll be sleeping in
the bed or the couch

tired of brain worrying,
brain farts polluting the atmosphere,
things I won’t do nothing about,
words gone to hell, climate change arguing,
poem titles that are body-less horsemen,
no useful good to no-body without
hands and feet and words in between

tired of my hands smacking my head,
and the headache that’s sure to follow,
tired of talking bout if it might rain someday,
man,
I am tired
in places I ain’t got no earthly reason,
and no words to say hey,
I’m tired of my hands
(and most everything)
<>

8-24-19 2:28pm
  Jun 2019 fearfulpoet
betterdays
miles mean nothing to a heart that is pure
words penned in grace, sent to ether
give heartease to the overstretched
sowing stiches of understanding
in tapestry threadbare

little suns and stars
shining bright in love and hope
from face unseen and adirondack chair
gives strength to one down, from down under
allows grief, the words needed the abilty to care
for these simple gifts, no payment required
from the heart open to care...
in response to a beautiful poem" the dirge of memory" gifted to me by Nat Lipstadt....one in a million..
fearfulpoet Mar 2019
Why they call me the fearful poet! (The Razor Thin Difference)

”but who am I to complain
the  razor thin difference tween
blessings and curses so thin,
sometimes are they not, the same thing”

Aug. 2018

~~~

this familiar line, well traversed, lives on the maps
sketched indented on your palms and brow,
at the edges of the crow’s nests, the eye’s keyboard witnesses,
recording every stroke

we tap in seeings, forming letters,
letters into lines, lines into verse,
as we alliterate, we walk unawares,
of the razor thin difference tween blessings and curse,
indiscernible until concluded, perhaps, not even then,
the stanza’s probable outcome,
always unsure, unknowing destiny’s decision

so we walk, tread, plumb, shoutout
“vive la difference,”
hoping the blessing messengers hear us first,
consummating our pleas on their favorable sight & side,
ever fearful, we do not shout loud enough,
do the blind hear,
need me, possess my sacrificial offerings,
my trepidations, burnt on the Temple’s altar

who will breathe their smoke and understand
their fearful origins?

so we-write, cajole that our every moment’s fear,
find the difference, that we don’t bleed from life’s razoring,
the thinner thinnest
needle threaded,

and fear is the threat,
and fear is the thread,
that holds me together


until the unraveling
requires me to write again,
the fearful poet
3/21/19 4:15 am
fearfulpoet Sep 2018
objects in the distance may be closer than they appear  

how many thousands of times
these words mirrored blankly upon my eyes

only today did I-read them accurate

from the nowhere    from a great void
someone stepped and lifted me from a
rubbled prone
where there were no options
asking for nothing
over and over I beseeching

now I see
in the mirror
those words

I see only them
in the heart human
the object so close
it writ upon my face
proudly
  Sep 2018 fearfulpoet
Bus Poet Stop
~for those who will read this and weep~

the quiet ones,
the silent Job ones,
who quote not from the
Book of Lamentations,
but author their own,
based on-the-job experience

localized versions of cryptic elegiacs
accepting the wooden crosses borne,
stepping up to the
unrequested unforeseen,
then buried under, burnt alive,
yet never relieved by dying,
nailed by words, stronger than iron,
promises sworn, promises kept
with no ending date relief,
promises by and to themselves,
but not for themselves!


the wearers of crystal glass shackles,
adorned with decorative locks for which
no key did the maker make,
nor any divine creator
dare conceive an early release,
never no escape contemplated,
for the lock human, unrepentant unbreakable,
a decorative useless metaphor gesture,
a blunt “life *****” advertisement

I compose amidst a
bus pond of mismatched city folk,
a tapestry of ages colors and differing views on god/no god,
none would believe that as the bus sways me,
it’s in rhythm to holy choral music,
hundreds year old,
divinity masses and motets worships,
where one human can hide temporarily
a safe house,
to calm his questioning relentless
from the horrors of no answers,
for when the mind has no solution
to the rough and tumbling lives,
lived in glass shackled confinement,
the poets desperation equals theirs


summon eagles to transport these imprisoned,
but the shackled refuse,
I come to them but they wave me off,
I go crazy for once I was enslaved,
thirty years war that left devastation,
from which so many poems created

so I speak with heightened regard
of one who planned futures for others where his
non-existence was a founding father (ha!)


but the day came and
I was released by my own inactions,
but means nothing until a way to
away found
to release the yet bound early


got a couch, airline miles, hundred dollars
in my pocket and an unrelenting need
to save them, a consumption disease,
the glass shackled, at ease,
won’t rest till all are freed
this my creed
no one left behind

these cyber words do not mock
for they are unbounded, set free,
when
the flesh connects and the needs of the flesh
are stronger for they are in heart conceived
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