What dreaded curse has engulfed us all?
Surrounded by those who need us the most.
Their eyes are hollow and their words are empty,
As they call to their neighbors for a helping hand.

A man who is trapped by the vice of addiction,
Cursed to perish from this horrid affliction.
A pregnant young girl who is eating for two,
Abandoned by love she believed had come true.

They still bear smiles from time to time,
But we put them down for who they have become.
We judge them and scorn them for what they have done.
But we are the ones that did this to them.

Our way of life has destroyed many dreams.
Competive nature in its very seams.
Selfish in nature, no problems equate.
On the words I held back, I will suffocate.

So many times I've reached out a hand,
But changed my own mind in exchange for my pride.
I've held my chin high to ignore those below,
And I have become a part of the norm.

~~~

for S.

~~~


six months, two seasons later,
summer poet,  
now a transpositioning,
chilled, blustered & wind blistered,
winter observer,
arm chair couching,
poetry compositioning,
beneath a cashmere blanket of
the lush quietude of an early
Saturday morning
in the city of eight sleeping
millions

you, poet,
stumble upon yourself,
thumbing upon prior dusty
man-you-tell-all
man-you-scripts,#
recalling the where and the when
of an old ecrire composed,
all the while,
the whole world-arounding,
rests, theater-encased,
in the early morn
sound-surrounding
of

true quiet,

for there is nary a visible
source of sound
in this old citified heart &
house

but

true quiet is not the absence of noise

heat-felt fires on a wintered January dawning,
in a silence noisy,
emotionally reverberate,
wild spreading from icy toes, to red nosey,
heck, the body entire,
quiet sweet jam filling,
with the silent crackling fires
of the metaphors of
love

the mind reversely calmed by
fevered puzzlement
mystified by the mystery,
simplistically complex,
how his soul got married
in manner beyond extra-legal,
an internet irregular,
superseding the less-than-the-so-superior,
superior courts of regulatory
administration

to another
currently sleeping, resting only,
a Fitbit confirmed,
thirty nine steps
away,
but a lifetime needed,
to be taken to her,
hidden in a but-a-block-away location,
to find and keep
nearer

in a way, a way,
discovering Columbus-you,
a cacophony of silent metaphors,
waxing, ruminating,
upon the detailing
of a strange and straining
voyage
to this no longer remote,
undisguised visionary land of
love

in the summer the insects battled,
who could chirp most vociferously,
under the trees of competive birds,
mostly mocking the tiny creatures efforts

while the summer ease breeze called out,
in tunes soul-refreshing,
and you were then
quieted
in remote places,
in remote places within
where calm,
rarely claimed knowledge or
kinship

in the city, with sky undecided,
night to flee, day to welcome,
the streetlights flicker in a muted code,
cold air shakes the street signs to and fro
diligently, silently, working
while its underling humans,
all still noisly
dreaming

the racketing pounding of
a love poem escaping,
the whooshing breaths,
all capitulate to the supremacy of a
new testament definitional

true quiet

is reinterpreted,
better understood,
it is a locale precise, a
terminus finale
where calm intersects, perfects, blends,
with a certain warming temperature,
both being,
natural noise suppressers,
both beings,
a combination reflection,
viable only in a
singular coupling

the ending
reached,
a realization
breached,
true quiet comes best
in pairs,
when the heart and mind are
synchronized with
another's