Little azalea
on the corner;
You gave me quiet joy
year after year.

I promised you;
vaguely, as I scampered past
that one day I would snap your picture,
crop it just so
press you in a tender frame
and adorn you
above the fireplace
or in the gentle gazebo
watching as we sip lemonade
and murmur about the weather.

But you have withered
and your buds no longer clasp the dew.

I told you that it was no matter;
that the picture will always live
in my mind.
Yet my memory fades
and I can't even recall
that subtle twist of your fresh limbs
and what was that shade of pink?

I must confess to you
that in the Spring
I will plant a little azalea
above your cracked, buried, splintered bones
and scamper past to hang a dimestore sketch
of some nameless azalea
in the gazebo.

Au revoir to the fever dream valentines strung out on the idea of an almost always that never was quite anything
To the ash tongued burn scarred stigmatized and delusional messiahs shivering outside the unemployment offices
To the leftist inquisition huddled together for the warmth of enlightenment,
In poorly knit thrift store sweaters,
In drug induced nightmares,
In outdated self referential rhetoric,
In visions of a reckoning that has already come they couldn't be bothered to notice
I can not be bothered to notice
I watch the dead eyed newsman cut his sweetheart a chelsea smile with dimestore switchblade and now he's reading to her manic and weeping from his ***** diaries
She's an actress and I can't feel anything anyway
The spirit is exploding out the back of the skull from shotgun epiphanies and the psych ward prophets are holding on for dear ******* life and I am losing control every second I think about it
I know they'll come for me this time, I can hear them calling for my blood when I turn my ears to the sky
Deliver my eulogy as if you were there to see the end
Fake whatever you have to for the crowd
Paint your idols in shades of gray and your wayward ******* fathers the same
We're building up to some kind of ****** here and I'd like to just get to it
Maybe the lights are only on because there isn't anyone home to turn them off
But I can't make any of that matter now
I have it, all of it
I have a medicine cabinet's worth of reasons not to wake up,
I have enough clarity of vision to know that I can't see anything,
I have a page that never fills and a poem that never lives up,
And I have a sign hung round my neck that reads:
"Days Clean: 0"
The only thing I don't have is something to lose

It's too big
for the corner pocket

and that's no longer
a call I can make

my life now
reduced to shaking

continuously
a ******* ball

with an eight

and peering
into the deep blue

for  a suitable
dimestore prophecy

walks through walls
sews silence into
broken flower smiles

tameless as mist
shivering her forest canopies

sits like Himalayan awe
on swollen shoulders

performs snowflake dances
in solitary rooms
leaves your jaw stranded on desert planes
you cannot define

cuts tainted lips
dies a thousand times
revolts against impossible

liberates Marilyn

her soft soul
able to breathe free
without convoluted fame

as if her blue delphinium fields
lived only in her skin

pawning off beauty
with cheap dimestore perspective

Hollywood is a broken tale scandal
built up regime high.

Shards limping away from fallen skyscapers
unwritten poetry floats
like bright houses on hidden continents

lights up foggy shores
when long nights
plague the haunted

Messages
of common sense

coupled with dimestore
philosophy

slipped neatly
into sugary wafers

while the Great Wall
in faded gloss

exists far across
the dining room

in the beginning
there was light

albeit pale

and our mouths watered
but what we came for

never really transpired
and we left

wanting more

of what we do not
know

The world is God's own concubine,
Naked on this April morning
Cool enough to perk pink buds
Of a hundred billion roses,
Expectant of the yellow bees
Whose needs are close to mine.

Two more mass shootings overnight
Get scant reporting being less
Body count than the one last week
Or the ordinary bad beat.
Our heart goes out so much it's lost
The way back to it's own door.

I drop the beat, it's my own fault--
My mother bought the dimestore books
I wanted more than toys, and read them
Till I knew the words, correcting
Any one misspoke so I've got
Them now--will trade for your kisses.

My great teacher, Guy Davenport
Told of the time he put out Sartre,
On fire in Paris,
Set by his own tobacco pipe
Stuffed back in his jacket pocket
On a park bench.  Imagine that.

My own mistakes overshadow
Yours, and I'm running out of space
To sustain this unlikely conceit.
If verses ever did part lips,
I'd keep my pen in hand all night,
Exhausted lay beside it.

A taste I can't forget what sings
At your command--Oh how I love
The narrow path on which you glide,
The lies that only look like clues,
Discarded wrappers of long dreams
That I have slept through every way.

When paradise gets tedious,
I have it on God's word he'd trade
Eternity to hear your sighs.

I lay here lovesick,

Enchanted by the constant tragedy
of amorous dissatisfaction,
and the comedy of its scale,
its perceived weight

All of the lovers that are
just waking up to the fresh
contact of the living day

       --The same who might find
          their bed to be a haven
          of grey doubt tonight

This shuffling of emotion onto us
and further onto others
should be exhausting

and it often is,
but it is so intriguing
that we can't help but
turn the next page of our adventure

      or ****** dimestore romance

This novel baffles me with its
universal story of

                 insecurities abound

                 and doubts fulfilled
                 alongside desires

But when I see it
in the unmistakable
words that we write
on the page of life,

I'm all the more encouraged
to love without the fear
and anxiety that has
                                       Plagued the lover
                                    ten times over

And if there's one thing
I've learned
in all of this

It's to love what you've got
when you've got it

And when you don't have it, well...

                             Your guess is as good as mine

and it's your definition
of idle

much like that of
wrong

that troubles me

but then again
I'm a poet

so all of this becomes
dully
academic

but since I'm a poet
and I'm not being falsely
humble

I'm really that  of
the dimestore
variety

and this is something
I've struggled with
all throughout my life
and verse

the question of what
work really looks like

and who decides on meanings
of words and other things

but now I  can proudly say
I have finally found it

the confidence that is

to tell both the Devil
and God and

I love one over
the other I swear

I do I do

**** out

that's as nice
and as Christianly
as I can put it

Whit Howland © 2020