"happenstance" poems
He owned books on many subjects
leather bound, with complex concepts
on which he'd ponder and reflect
He had it all, in some respects.
He could lecture quantum physics,
English literature and economics
He was renowned in academics
Though many found him quite eccentric
He explored the world only to find
That there's more to life than a brilliant mind
That there was a piece of him...undefined
See, He had never loved. He'd never pined
He knew all the math, knew all equations
He'd been to every corner of every nation
He'd learned 28 languages, knew every translation
But he was distraught by this realization
The pain he felt was too great to bear
He sank into the deepest and darkest despair
His heart was in need of dire repair
Finding love was his only prayer
He bumped into her by happenstance
and what began as an ephemeral glance
became a sucker punch from romance
She thought he was sweet, so she gave him a chance
That's when the world's smartest man finally learned how to dance
Feb 11, 2012
Feb 11, 2012 at 2:35 AM UTC
Art Bouchard,
My father,
Never marched a drill,
Nor fired an angry shot...
Recounted fond memories
I've heard so many times:
How long ago, when I was very young,
He and our neighbor,
Art Pribnow,
Up before the sun,
Engaged in tractor battles
(Dad was very sure he won).
My father woke those mornings,
Early 1960s,
With the popping cough of
Worn diesel pistons
Clattering out white smoke...
Then blue and black,
As engine heat and friction
Tightened gaps,
Sealed compression,
And the motor steadied into an even roar.
Across the county road
Our only neighbor led or followed suit,
Sending smoke and sound
To drown the morning songs
of meadowlarks and robins.
Fifty years later,
Dad laughed in recollection,
"We started rising just a little
Earlier each day.
Started up our tractors
In a sort of game
Called, 'Who's out first?'"
Six became a quarter of,
Then five-thirty backed to four.
One tractor or the other roared,
Early and then earlier
To be the first to pull
Into the waiting fields.
When three-thirty came around
My mother shook her head,
But if she said a word,
I never heard.
These battling neighbors
Even started engines up
Before they ran,
Milking buckets swinging,
to their barns to chore
As early became earlier
in the little farmers' war.
One day in town,
By happenstance,
A meeting came between the two.
My father, being younger,
Had energy for more,
But old Art Pribnow shook his head,
Grabbed my dad's hand and said,
"Let's stop this foolishness
Before one of us is dead!
I don't know about the hours you keep,
Or what got in our heads,
But I admit, I need my sleep!"
The farmer battle ended then.
A hand shake and a smile
Between two farmer friends,
Created country lore,
Remembered here a little while,
As, "The Early, Earlier War."
Jun 20, 2014
Jun 20, 2014 at 9:04 PM UTC
she described it as ice
in her chest
like
a lance that tightroped from
her chest to mine
fought over at the breakfast table
because her end was bigger than mine
or mine had more blood than hers
or she always got to look at my good side
and why couldn’t I look at her without laughing
mother always said it was a blessing
that two people were so close to each other
not through birth
but by journey
and life
and happenstance
two people that tasted grilled cheese the same way
that heard the same voices of joy
loss
despair
but always stuck to the roof of the mouth like peanut butter
and not the generic brand
no
the 10 dollar organic stuff
two people that couldn’t help but
crack jokes at the dinner table
when everyone else was talking about
death because
what is death without life?
she would ask
and everyone would go silent
and float up through the
limitless sky
while we stayed grounded in
the life that whiskey brings
sister
if you ever hear me calling
know that I’d give you the bigger half
every time and that
you may borrow my three-hole puncher
without asking
because
I love you
and love stitches time without holes
and moments without the train station goodbye
and the rocks
well
they will always be rippling the stream so you
can go whitewater rafting and I can write poems
about how you fell in and found
a fleck of gold
Feb 12, 2016
Feb 12, 2016 at 3:56 PM UTC
~for lovejunkie, who loved this poem best~
*so many reasons,
so many stones
yet unturned,
for each poem
a season,
for every season,
a given reason
eyes, dimmer,
hearing, harder,
memories, ha,
disappear as fast as
footsteps upon
my island beach
this then
my log,
of places momentarily visited,
capturing the of,
of me,
the exactitude of
where, when and what
I felt
what felled me,
the long and lat,
of the attitudes
of breeze and currents,
the happenstance that carries
a desperate soul
eager and afraid
to remember*
"how fragile we are"
*so memorized records here,
for his storage and his places,
both filled and unfulfilled,*
***poems, nothing more,
flawed each,
product of a flawed man,***
here, for all to see,
most of all,
for the man,
to see himself
when the eyes of his mind
at last be shuttered
Apr 10, 2016
Apr 10, 2016 at 8:06 AM UTC
i imagine pulling over at a canyon
seeing the day they took all the pictures
off the wall when she died
i stop for a picnic on a scar
from getting too close to the junk
but you made it and making it is all that matters
i see the ends of your hands
as 15th century cartography talks to the hierarch
a promise of platitudes
flat and lacking grandeur
how on that plane it knows
when you turn them over
like pages of a book
and secrets pour out
they don't tremble like they used to
haven't had an earthquake in years
not even a tremor
not even happenstance could stop me
from gawking at the pile up on 64
how outwardly looking
in you don't look like a "wreck"
your hands remind me more
of a car crash without the quotation marks
Jan 20, 2014
Jan 20, 2014 at 9:44 AM UTC
Happenstance to the melancholic gives leave the sin of pride.
Inbound reconnaissance tells not the bearer of influence.
Squeamish at first: a foreshadowing of calamitous bonding.
A space between the mark of corporeal and the ethereal; a stringent hiatus
That which rattles the concrete foundation of morality is scarcely a malleable recourse.
Regret stains the unfounded soul: an enigma of ephemeral perforations.
A separation of the unmitigated humanities; misandry topples the writhing snake.
Impact; a cleansing of the maker's flaws integrated solemnly.
Complacency arrests the administration of the abhorred; unbridled is the autonomy of a guru.
Ambivalent giftedness burdens the reliant and haughty.
A flick of the tongue brings forth the cinema mortem.
Castaway: alone to wade in the sea of obscenities.
A temporal causality allows no mourning to abscond.
Negligence is not the enemy, but indulgent wrath.
Hesitant: a stroke of qualia begets the end of a maiden.
Feb 6, 2014
Feb 6, 2014 at 11:13 AM UTC
A Workplace Rendezvous
My eyes
Always found hers.
Mischief,
The dangling host.
She was one
Of my workplace peers.
If it went any further
I could be toast.
Those cinnamon eyes
Of hers.
Butterscotch candy
Peers back at me,
I feel so dandy
Shoot me some brandy.
I see the loneliness
In hers.
Her cleavage
Cuts to the chase.
Happenstance now in place.
Our eyes did dance a duet.
Her words are the coquette.
Mine is a cadet.
We grabbed a ruse.
A pail and mop with a muse.
When we reached
The men's restroom
The coast was clear.
The sun shining above,
Holding a frown.
Say hello to the clown.
We fast break the court,
I dribble up and down.
She passes back and forth,
I shoot for the town.
We score at the bell,
That breaks the spell.
Our lunch break
Rendezvous
Was a first.
And last.
We filled our thirst
With
better scotch
we toast.
Logan Robertson
10/6/2018
Oct 6, 2018
Oct 6, 2018 at 2:16 AM UTC
The warrior is powerful,
The warrior is strong,
The warrior does not give up,
The warrior fights on.
Though chaos reigns around her,
She will not fall to tears,
No matter what the circumstance,
She'll face up to her fears.
The warrior is confident,
The warrior is true,
The warrior will stand her ground,
The warrior lives through.
Regardless what the odds may be
She always shall prevail,
No matter what the consequence,
She'll strive and never fail.
The warrior is adamant,
The warrior is proud,
The warrior will show no doubt,
The warrior roars loud.
Whatever fate declares to be,
She will not lose her way,
No matter what the happenstance,
She'll live to seize the day.
Nov 30, 2015
Nov 30, 2015 at 3:41 PM UTC
Writing,
for you
--is a river
a revelation
a sleepless constant gift-- so out-to-see
in a flimsy boat
you built by mathematic rote and laced with ivy
to hold together ******* boards of crazy
with the ease of breathing
Your giant storehouse
wealth-of-words
Your granary of data
the grist of
Music
You imagine wine
from mind
almost without limits
You command it all!
Dancing
in the grapes of moonlight
with tides of words
Their endless-- almost blind
come-ons and gone
in waves!
(my sullen heart)....
still stays
I am digging here
in a low spot
seeking water
with robins and a sparrow
in the puddles
Awaiting rain
Flipping-off the muddy shallows with our wings
I suppose their songs
will count for something
Tasting happenstance
of bugs in flight
maybe catch a firefly or two
at the edge of day
Tearing half a worm
from weeds...the brown of drying grass
near the small lagoon
collecting
'neath my car
Hiding
in an afternoon
too warm for flight
resorting to a place of shade
to smell the fresh-mown
sweet grass
Riding with my training-wheels
in the parade
Like a fool between those bikers' “Hogs”
Turning down my street
by mistake
laughing at the dead-end
of it all
Pulling poetry out my ***
___
Jul 22, 2018
Jul 22, 2018 at 2:33 PM UTC
---
Once upon a time
In a land so far away
There was a wretched kingdom
Were a vampire held sway
He was very ancient
Handsome as a knave
Dressed in black and silken garb
Was said to be quite brave
But such a cruel creature
He devoured the towns
The soldiers were all petrified
Would not defend the crown
So the King of the castle
Searched both far and wide
For mighty men of valor
To defend the countryside
Finally up north
He found a daring band
Of golden headed Vikings
To defend his failing land
The company of Norsemen
Could not be laidback
They rallied their army
And decided to attack!
They put no garlic round their necks
No ash stakes did they carry
They knew not the vampire ways
And so they were not wary
But oh! What valiant men!
They made quite a sight!
Scaling the vampiric castle walls -
IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT!
The vampire, Vlad the terrible,
Made a crimson flood
Destroyed every one of them
And feasted on their blood!
It was before morning
The darkest witching hour
Vlad finished dispatching them
His countenance was dour
Then a light came streaking
From the pitch black sky -
It was a Valkyrie!
She made a fearsome cry!
"You! Vlad the terrible!"
The ghoul looked up, aghast!
"You feasted on my Norsemen -
But I am here at LAST!!!"
The mighty female warrior
Shook back her golden mane
"You've killed many villagers
But won't do it AGAIN!!!"
The brilliant armored woman
Faced off the evil lord
He laughed, "You cannot slay me!
No! Not with that sword!"
"And for all your armor
What do you suppose?
Your sweet delicious throat
Is slender... and EXPOSED!!!
The Valkyrie laughed
She threw back her hair
She let fly her sword
It scissored through the air!!!
The dreaded Vlad was impaled
But NOT through his chest
Through his very garments
The great sword came to rest
To a TREE the monster stuck
Like a fly caught with a pin
He could not free himself!
And he saw the rising SUN!!!
He struggled against his cape
He'd have none of THAT!
But Vlad could not break the sword
So he became a bat!
Up he flew to escape his fate
But a ray of sun broke through
With an arc he burnt to spark
IT DESTROYED VLAD AS HE FLEW!!!
The Valkyrie, triumphant,
Cried out, "it is I!!!
For when there is a battle,
I decide who lives and dies!!!
I decide the outcome!
Tis not by happenstance...
Won't see you in Valhalla
*You never had a chance!!!*
So ended the battle
The Valkyrie WON.
The outcome was decided...
...Before it was begun!!!
SoulSurvivor
5/6/2015
May 6, 2015
May 6, 2015 at 11:50 AM UTC
What an ironic place of mind
When something I've wanted for awhile
Finally presents itself
And I'm overwhelmed so intensely
By anxiety and sadness
How long have I hoped to meet up?
How many times had I mentioned coffee?
Yet here I am
Three days before I see you
For the first time in a year and a half
And I feel so sad
It's as though
I am finally mourning the loss
Of someone who was my best friend
Finally letting myself feel about you
All of the things I've repressed
It has been a long time
We both must be so different now
What would that mean for this?
Do we meet up once
Play a game of catch up
Then resume the path of strangers?
Or do we try to be friends again
And run the risk of pain and heartache?
Does our intense shared anxiety
At just the sight of each other
Signal a similar message
A similar desire within us both?
Or am I stuck within a fantasy
Lying to myself that this could work
That you could be in my life again
We were not made to be lovers
And I don't believe in happenstance
I do think we came together for a reason
Just as we've become reconnected now
The city may be small
But this has to be more than coincidence
You were my best friend back then
And I know I hurt you deeply
But part of me hasn't stopped believing
That our lives staying connected
Is something that's meant to be
And I know that
When I'm sitting anxiously in my car
Outside the cafe where we're set to meet
Thoughts racing faster than my heart beats
I'll have to fully prepare myself
To find out that you disagree
Feb 7, 2019
Feb 7, 2019 at 12:50 AM UTC
Does evil change? Does it mean
something different to
each passing generation?
I rather think it doesn't
but instead wears some
dark mask to disguise hatred.
Looking into the future
it sees a people
who have abandoned their fight.
Subdued by unfortunate
laws and happenstance,
disappointment is normal,
until the cruelest evil
is met with a sigh
and casual acceptance.
Take heed that circumstances
that appear to have
improved beyond improvement,
are most dangerous to those
who are still oppressed
by lingering prejudice.
Jul 8, 2014
Jul 8, 2014 at 11:05 PM UTC
Halfway between Malta and Saco,
Highway 2 stops a minute
To look back...
Beside the road
A little shrine waits
The traveler:
A stone, naturally shaped
To form a sleeping buffalo,
But etched with lines to emphasize
The dozing buff's back and sides
And drowsing head.
Nearby, a 1920s entrepreneur
Saw money to be made...
Set up a happenstance hotel
Beside the hot and sulf'rus spring,
And "Sleeping Buffalo" was born
To "heal" and to amuse
Odd tourists in their wandering.
Not much has changed...
The old buff sleeps,
But now inside a little pen
To keep the tourist vandals
Safely from his way.
The old resort is open still...
Same rusty pipes and yellowed walls
And rusty water
Warm enough to stain
Unlucky bathing suits.
(The smell's enough to force
The bather to the bath as medicine....)
On my way to other places
I have stopped along the road
To meditate beside the old stone bull...
I understand, a little,
Now that I am growing old,
Tobacco offerings left
Beside the sleeping stone.
Though not a Pagan,
I can feel the distant Ways
Before our Western ways
Made tourists of us all.
Dec 18, 2011
Dec 18, 2011 at 10:43 AM UTC
Her orchards I often dream,
buries of my eye,
lost in my fairy book
of beaten pages,
of sunken tears and of mind.
I kept turning the pages, racing,
racing,
looking for her,
between the lines,
now gone,
gone ... are those
lovely high hanging trees,
elegant and so berried,
swaying and smiling,
her,
her saintly smile,
haunting,
yet shadowing me forever
in my mind.
Each page turned, a sad tear falls
deep and deeper,
for the pages are blank.
Her absence ferreting out
blackness,
skeletons and silhouettes,
the pages turning,
weeping ...
my heart pains
for the book of love
unwritten and unfinished.
The wishing well of ink unspent.
Her essence forever corked
from my heart ...
I now lay arrest,
peas in a pod,
aberration and distortion,
for
lovely those high hanging trees,
elegant and so berried,
gone.
Sullenly the music plays
to a different song.
Indelible was happenstance,
our chance encounter,
a special one at that,
puzzlement lays a longer shadow
... of why she walked,
without any words.
Logan Robertson
11/09/17
Nov 9, 2017
Nov 9, 2017 at 7:35 PM UTC
"Boy were we wrong! We're the oddball. We're the freaks." --- Dr. Michio Kaku
We looked at trillions of those stars and knew,
that somewhere out there was another Planet Blue.
Those were not canals we saw on Mars;
optical illusions, lensed figment memoirs.
Stare into trillions, space mind overwhelms.
Rimbaud entrapped in countless ethereal realms.
Not the goal of evolution, merely happenstance,
the search for elsewhere leads a merry dance.
Planets a dime a dozen, yet no Goldilocks Zone
produces signals bearing SETI transient tones.
Birds more subtly impact our lives,
than do the aliens our universe provides.
Aug 14, 2018
Aug 14, 2018 at 1:16 AM UTC
If there was a truck
that hauled nothing but good luck
in the back of its bed
or maybe a tractor
that carried happenstance
in it’s bucket
or a van which
passengered
devine kismet…
I’d give them all a call
and have them load
and drive
and haul
it all to you -
and dump
nothing but good luck
and fortune
on you.
All **** day.
Jun 26, 2010
Jun 26, 2010 at 3:38 PM UTC
I feel like going back to those days,
when I could feel and not fear it.
When I didn't know the world's ways
and I didn't yet need my fighting spirit.
When I could simply have a romance,
nothing complicated or categorized,
that would come up by happenstance
with no limits needing to be devised.
I miss those days, I could awaken
find another body next to mine,
and not even be mistaken
in thinking this won't be the only time.
I miss those days with a passion,
too often I feel like I'm crashin'
straight through the mud and the dirt
all the pain and the hurt.
I render my poems inert,
when I stare in the mirror,
see myself crying and dying,
insanity getting nearer.
I one day hope to rise from it all,
stand from the ash, proud and tall,
but I know that after I do
I'll eventually once again fall.
I miss those days
in more than a million ways.
Watching my eyes glaze over
thinking about days over
again.
I flow my heart into this pen
put my soul into what I write
now and then.
I know I'll be that happy once more,
I've got that joy kept in store,
for a future when I suture
this wounded pride and mind.
I've got a stride in mind,
for when I return.
See the surprise in their faces,
I bet they thought I would burn
up in the anger like butane.
I'm just too hard to contain
and I walk through cold rain,
thinking about once upon a time,
through sweat and grime,
You were mine, I was yours,
now it's vice versa.
Aug 31, 2014
Aug 31, 2014 at 9:38 PM UTC
~
In ode to all who succumb
through wayward passages
lined of scribble notes
dripping ink’s savagery,
staining cursive patterns
in Sylvia-like depressions
Jarred bells ring
down lost tunnels
around each dark corner…clang
from steeples we chase
and beds we lie
draped in sadness
and shapes of
poetic happenstance
Tear drop vinaigrette
spiced of leftover lifetimes
drizzled on leafy desperation
bids a tired farewell
before time collects
the deserved rewards
Aug 6, 2015
Aug 6, 2015 at 1:10 PM UTC
Diminutive minutes fly by and imbue.
Ennobled, hungers the second hand.
Verbose and loud, its villainous ticking;
Oxen heavy, that kneading sound,
Under skull and depth of dreams.
Rescind the mad lives we vitiate;
Enchanted by hollow, fear of ghosts,
Dancing in a pitch waiting room.
Happenstance for insomniacs,
Ogres and dark shadows howling
Unapologetic at the light and moon.
Riot of the quiet, against daylight
Star: quarry in the void of night / time / dark.
Jul 16, 2018
Jul 16, 2018 at 11:54 AM UTC
England you had your chance to dance
on soccers biggest stage with France
you had your chance to advance
but you fell to Croatia's lance
how two stricken spears quelled the romance
and now cinderellas laugh at your trance
as a sorry Big Ben now sits in a prance
while the Croats sip your tea and perchance
To continue.
Oh, my. Now Belgium takes third in your belly up dance
You reign now like a fish at the surface with its sad eyes askance
Where did it all go Big Ben, the spirited stance
Sigh. To wait four years lost to be tickled with waning happenstance
Logan Robertson
7/12/2018
Jul 12, 2018
Jul 12, 2018 at 4:58 AM UTC
Hark verily my indignant venipuncture retrogression
Saudade anthropomorphic coveting empathic repression
Bask wholly in its self indulgent verbose serendipity
Happenstance to necromance enigmatic anonymity
Applied psychology catharsis my make believe aggression
Dec 16, 2012
Dec 16, 2012 at 6:15 PM UTC
Somewhere in Vermont
I see the sky
Stars scattered
like lighting bugs back home
Clouds drift,
Cold breeze,
Threatening rain
Shaped like an unfamiliar constellation
Headlamps shine
Some red, some blue, some yellow
Some bright, some dim
There's a presence here
Neither scary
Or threatening
Or even mysterious
People breathe,
A guitar sounds,
Pens scribble
Each in unity with the other
Somewhere in Vermont
People write
Separated by space
Their own thoughts
Spilling around them
Combining as one
Yet still
Individual
Brought together
By happenstance
They breathe together
as
One
Oct 26, 2015
Oct 26, 2015 at 11:35 PM UTC
An introverted saint
An introverted saint named after a saint
Who died for rebirth of faith
A ******* is very intuitive and alive
Like poem
But that’s not who you really are
You are running away from your past
Your pain you took risk to give rot to a friend’s innocent body without why
The way it glows how the light holds you in silence, taking care of you
Experience the energy of where all life began when you met a friend
And yet you keep it so close to you
So you don’t have to be afraid of who you are... you might lose your mind you refuses to take it factual. A ******* wants to spend the cell with who he is.
A ******* sees an angel for the first time is a friend when he told a friend is an angel without a ******** feeling in unclearly to complete desirable to be aware
Know your purpose feel your birth
Hear at first faintly then distinctly is a friend’s a state of harmony
The sweet strains of our union
Our friendship heats up the cold universe,
And give your tired desperate heart you lost your introversive
Purified by our kisses, are eternally healed.
It’s destiny by the way it’s weird feeling
It is magic?
A ******* is a weak man that he is extremely hazy
the way narcissism made him lack.
Your brilliance
Your heart is very weak because of flattery
You are not afraid in the world you get hidden away from a friend’s sight as light that from your introversion compare with extrovert in experience
But you can’t cook to save your life for who you are, you are so desperately to erase in anything with good thing come in your timeline to move to make sure you are safely where your home is with you
To believe in something that’s all around us
But hidden from our sight
The gift of the faith that destiny is willing to create us to be purpose to meet in happenstance that who we are
Life can be kind and zealous
Because you are beautiful. —They move me.
An introverted saint
Nov 15, 2018
Nov 15, 2018 at 6:08 PM UTC