"bookended" poems
This home is becoming
Like a weathermast of the soul
Beaten into responding silence.
To awaken here again
And to only wear this armour
As a riposte sufficient to self-assurance
And to rise, out of lazy eyelids and
Consider the opposing wind turrets
Laid as the proposition
All slack and starkly
Poised on the trapeze
The wallpaper durability of family headaches ;
The spurned lover's recurring luminosity
The marked and re-imagined lists
Detailing personal no-shows and defeats
Bookended by
The passing on of friendly eyes.
Assuming the universal, and in doing so, blindly holding out for the miracle :
For falling out of love is completely plausible
Whereas letting go of shame is mostly incomprehensible
Jul 7, 2014
Jul 7, 2014 at 1:44 PM UTC
What can’t be seen
Holds us down
What can’t be spoken
Is the weight in which we drown
I feel it haunting me
The only take away
I truly weigh
Is everything between the words you say
I’m stuck
Here on Earth
You, the sun
I realize your worth
Though with recognition I’m done
I want to feel!
Give me your warmth, make it real!
Make your pauses incarnate
That look in your eye, honor it!
Yes, I understand
You’ve presented the framework
My feet are planted firmly on land
But I’ve seen you melt mountains
Dry up whole streams and fountains
Ushered in new life and hope
A daily cycle, though more grand in scope
I’m begging
Tell me I’m wrong
But I believe you’ve left out
Half your song
The part where I belong
The part where I stop witnessing
And start contributing
The part where I sprout wings
And join you in the sky
Hovering
I hear a few yes’s and a couple no’s
Your voice is as perfect as ever
But it cuts out and implication grows
Bookended by your breath, time lasts forever
Away from the sun my life is bound
I’ve only ever made it a few feet off the ground
The parts that keep me from you
Are when you don’t make a sound
Reality or perception?
Regardless
My hell
I wish that **** apple never fell
Aug 7, 2015
Aug 7, 2015 at 7:32 PM UTC
How does one lose a creature gracefully…?
Is it possible to just be okay with a quick goodbye under the hum of those awful fluorescent lights? Would it have been easier, kinder, softer, if the lights were lamps scattered about the space, yellow and murmuring? When does the gut-wrneching tightening stop? Will I ever let the sadness of it leave my chest?
Sitting in this complacent grief even months after it all is kind
I know that the grief will let me cry and I know that when I do, it doesn’t judge me for my “I wish things could go back to normal.” Because regardless of how familiar the New Ways become, it still isn’t the same. I am bookended by these two creatures that have and continue to adore the Earth I walk on. But the Old Ways stick with us for longer than we’d maybe like.
But in filling that little empty nook, the small nest where a dog named Nelson used to lie, I’ve forced myself to grow, to become changed.
My adult life started when I got Nelson, and it started again when I had to let him slip through my trembling fingers. And it continues on with this new creature named Franklin, who sits just to the left of that Nelson shaped divot.
Loving things that leave you utterly shattered is what makes us so mendable, forgetful, endlessly desperate for devotion…
The whole scene will replay in 10 years time, and I will be even more ruined then.
Jul 6, 2023
Jul 6, 2023 at 2:53 AM UTC
Preface
Life is bookended by nothing.
Grasp what nothing truly means.
Nothing is not another form of something.
Nothing is — nothing.
*****
Where were you long ago?
All that time before a tot.
In some distant god’s château?
No. Not there. You were not.
Perhaps a soul in surplus stock,
A spirit not yet wrought.
Dressed in some heaven’s frock.
No. Not there. You were not.
Then came a twist of fate,
***** and egg were now one.
In this way did they create.
Your life had begun.
So began your book of life,
That in volumes three.
The past, the present,
and the yet to be.
Life is always in the now,
Presents itself as a choice.
Many matters to disavow,
To others, you give a voice.
Life is more than career,
Love is much more dear.
To love another earns its worth,
Makes your mark upon the Earth.
Take the time to stand and stare,
Feel the sun burst in the air.
Enjoy laughs and romance,
Work at love, at every chance.
And when the last word is writ,
There is no more, yet to be.
Life for you did quit,
Not something faced with glee.
At the end, where do you go?
To the place you were taught?
To some distant god’s château?
No. Not there. You are not.
Your Book of Life, a mere spark,
‘Twixt bookends of eternal dark.
*****
This poem is also on Vimeo
Runs 3:39
https://vimeo.com/432650832
Jul 20, 2020
Jul 20, 2020 at 5:13 PM UTC
~~~
*(Inspired by Miss Ohio,
I read your work)*
~~~
"This time, but once"
one of my oldest companions,
surely,
my most favorite dessert
and lie
of greatest acquaintance
who, in posses of the
electronic stimulus card key,
mistress unlocker,
privateer explorer,
of the Venetian Grand Canal passage
of my ear to brain.
temptress of words-whispered,
always inviting me
straight to the dark places
of just us girls
this time, but once,
no one will care,
no one will know,
fumble, hurry, do it
quick now, quick here
just this once,
just this morning,
but not tomorrow,
just this night,
one cocktail can't hurt,
a few strokings,
a drag of desire,
a hit of heat,
glide path, short and pathetic,
this momentary shame,
for the quid pro quo,
of the satisfaction gained
from lying to one's self...
so I lay with a lie
to startle start the day,
come night time sleep,
speak of a sequential array of
pleasurable fantasies,
lies repeated repeatedly,
do not become truths
thus,
a bookended graduation
two endings,
a matched pair
a commencement to start,
a commencement to finish
and the truths in your poetry
in between,
but just this once
Jun 25, 2015
Jun 25, 2015 at 10:36 PM UTC
I come and go
But like clockwork,
Every time,
It is bookended
By three words
And a smile.
Jun 28, 2016
Jun 28, 2016 at 10:57 PM UTC
He'd lived in the remaining house on the little byway,
The place and its existence somewhat accidental
As it was built as the groundskeeper's cottage
Accompanying a rambling edifice
Built by a former president of the mill,
That once-grand structure gone to rack and ruin
Nothing remaining save the odd bit of foundation
Poking forlornly above crownvetch and milkweed,
Though the lot of the man we'd dubbed the ogre
(The notion that he had an actual name
Not occurring to us at the time,
Though, as Nicky Demmer wisely noted
Whatever it might be, it must be unspoken.)
Was only slightly less unkempt and foreboding,
And it is hard to remember what exactly made him
Something to be feared and avoided at all costs,
Perhaps the combination of height
(Though lessened yet somehow accentuated
By a slight yet perceptible stoop)
And a widow's peak at the top of an unusually high forehead
Bookended by wiry and unruly locks,
Perhaps the fact that he rarely appeared in the daylight,
And then squinting as he turned his head to the sky
In the manner of one who fully expected
That it would fall, Chicken-Little style
But in any case his lawn
Was strictly no-man's land,
And any wiffle ball or frisbee,
Regardless of how new it may be
Or the retribution attached to coming home without it,
Remained behind, mourned but forsaken
And at some point we moved beyond our unease,
Too old for such superstition,
Moving on to other totems, other portents
Though some years later I happened upon his obituary,
Laying out the signposts of an ordinary
Though vaguely underwhelming and melancholy life:
He'd worked on the third shift at the mill all his days,
Thus precluding much of the social commerce
With his fellow man, no Rotary or Odd Fellows rites
To be performed at his service
(Of which there was none, burial being private as well)
And the list of survivors was limited to one daughter
Wholly unknown to us, ostensibly taken elsewhere
By an unmentioned and unmourning mother.
The item, brief and unadorned as it was,
Brought me back to that fretful nine-year-old self,
Though imbued with a greater disquiet,
As I had a deeper knowledge of the finality
Of cold, agate type, among several other things.
Mar 1, 2021
Mar 1, 2021 at 10:45 AM UTC
Here lies on the bier
My sanity
My baby
The gate on the edge
Of the precipice
Has given way and
I'm keeping the pieces in the refrigerator
There came death
In the middle of a two month period
Designated for mourning many things
Bookended by my crying
Alone
In the dark
If the well of life were reachable
She would be the first thing I'd throw in
Even if I knew she would not love me
Even if I knew she'd come back sick
I never imagined I could not make someone immortal by loving them
I have never kept a home for long
When push comes to shove
I can part with anything to
Lighten my load
I was always afraid to test this with her
It failed as I knew it would
Give her back to me in exchange for any promise, any favor, any fortune
Oct 6, 2016
Oct 6, 2016 at 2:24 PM UTC