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Hans Dytian Feb 2016
Oh look!
A tree!
It's beautiful!
Nature!
Green!
The breeze blows!
Look at those leaves!
Look at the beauty of God's work!
The magnificence!
The wood!
The fruit!
The flower!
The knothole!
The...gum?
There's gum in the knothole?
There IS gum in the knothole!
Doublemint!
Pennies and figurines too!
Who would do such a nice act?
Oh...
Right...
Him...
The one hidden within.
He must really be misunderstood.
I wish we could meet him
So we would know the real him.
In memory of Harper Lee,  I wrote a poem inspired by her Pulitzer Prize winning novel "To **** a Mockingbird". R.I.P. Harper Lee
I sat by his bedside the day my father died.
The cancer that had riddled his body and soul now had complete control.

He fought kicking and screaming
the night the men in white came to take him on his final journey
like a great wildebeest struggling to get up on its front legs after being taken down by young lions. The way so many had said he
probably would since he fought his way tooth & nail throughout his life from the very beginning.

That night I sat on a chair at the foot of his bed staring out the huge ceiling to floor window of the medical centre at the many worlds hidden beneath thousands of rows of stationary lights and fluid winding rows of transient lights in-between and thought how the light of this window is just one of many thousands.

At that moment it seemed more like just one tiny speck in the vast star fields worlds above this city of light.

My father had spent most of his life just a short six-mile drive from here under the scattered lights of his hometown.

He turned to me and asked,
“That’s a big city. Where are we?"

Dementia had claimed his mind ten or more years earlier. It
slowly wound its way around his brain like a cocky snake
handler being choked by a boa constrictor unawares.

It seemed like it all caught up to his body. But it was good to see much of the bitterness and bad blood between us dissipated over the past decade.

On that night compassion ruled the day.

I could not say it then but it has been many years, where it seems compassion has forged with objectivity.

In a lucid moment he looked around the hospital room
bewildered as if he were a little boy who just woke up from a bad dream and asked,
“How did this ever happen?"
If only I could have told him.

Sometimes the truth cannot be spoken or heard. All I could do then was sit by his bed and lean in close to his ear and sing softly his favourite hymns. 

By morning his lifeless
dilapidated body lay in the fetal position. His once ravenous mouth now forever frozen looked like a knothole in a twisted cedar tree.

All I can do now is hang my head and think of how weak and frail we humans truly are.

Like compassion forged with objectivity, weakness and frailty forges with fleeting moments of strength. We forge heroes out of these moments to tower above
the pedestals the former is made of to somehow minimize the pain of this often denied truth.
©2017 Daniel Irwin Tucker

My wife & I were in the fortunate
position to put our life on hold and
travel to the U.S. to help my mother
and my 2 sisters take care of my
dying father. She wanted to keep
him in the comfort of his own home. We are so thankful that we were able to be there for five months.
traces of being Jan 2017
a storyteller's perspective, steppin' off the ordinary edge, into the unknown

An unsent letter lay on the rustic log cabin floor
A cold wind musta’ blown through the cracks the light comes in,
where it laid fallen, half *** crumbled, yet never a wadded ball;
never an unspoken thrown paper stone,  a befallen regret was all.
Silently atilt and leaning against the canted wall's slant
behind the gathered dust a squeaky hinged burl wood door

A timeworn tarnished copper wind up clock roosted,
an old lip smirched coffee cup time stood still;
an empty bottle of gin sat near the bed post headboard
where the ink stains and blotted spillings let the memories in.
Stained pages torn and bent like fallen paper wings
returned to the unread sender … postage due,   south a heaven sent ―

A sullied envelope, gnawed and mouse chewed,
for a nest of new beginnings ―     
                                                          just read:                   Lydia  ...  
                                ... followed by a scribbled empty heart               

The time aged brown tattered tablet paper left behind
stifled like the unread heart it holds upon the threadbare pages
of smudged tear’s ache and spilled gin

The weathered rock hearth fireplace filled with spent ashes,
hand rolled cigarette butts, traces of an aching lament;
scratched up old vinyl records lay ***** and tired out,
from a time of sweeter fallen fences, a musical bliss, and
a lost angel's abandoned red slinky party dress,  
aside a busted off black velvet high-heel stuck sullied
in a hollow knothole in the ancient barn-wood floor
a sparkly pearl pink jewel entangled in a spider web

An unsent letter lay on the rustic cabin floor
A cold wind musta’ blown through the cracks the light gets in

The final unread words silently said:

                               "We lost our way,
                                  it all went wrong,
                                  it all turned bad"

                             ..."This is the outcome when someone you love  
                                  up and throws you away"

                             ...“I’ll reach out from the inside
                                  I’ll rise up again and do without”

                             ..."You went out into the world
                                  with an untamed hankerin’ ―
                                  like a carefree restless gypsy breeze
                                                                 and come back worlds apart"


The Unsent Letter,  
                          just whispered words to the dust in the wind
                                                            ­                        in quivering ink:

                             ..."how can I ever unremember you...?
                                  a thrown stone sinks wordlessly as a rock...,
                                  an old wood bucket with a rotten hole the heart,
                                  fallen forgotten, rock bottom as an empty well"


                                        just signed:   ...   ❤  August


                          *January 1st, 2017 ... august ... wild is the wind  ♡
postscript: trying to write outside my comfort zone box
                  this storyteller's perspective, steppin' off the edge the unknown
                  i did have fun from behind the incarnation of a caricature's eyes
                  some say "it's always about the writer"...what say you(?)!
.
Somewhere way down a long line of cars and roads on the opposite end of broken down gas station near a bedside tavern.
You were lost near a bushel of birds.
That chirped when you walked by.

And there was a cloud directly above you,
white.
Puffy.
Lost in the blue blue sky.
Only it wasn't.
It was shading you from the sun.

And you walked under an oak tree with a knothole in it.
Whispered your dreams in to it's trunk and walked away.
An apple fell from an oak tree.

Somewhere along the way you stumbled over the curb and forgave it for bloodying your elbow. The sunlight kissed your skin and suddenly there was nothing.
Like superman,
the sun made you strong.

And the radiance of yourself by the river as the logs drifted on.
Moon sparkle and bathe.
There was purity.
There were answers.

So said the squirrels as they squeaked about you in the branches.
I had another cigarette and forgot all about it.
-P.S.
K E Cummins Sep 2022
I’m trying to recall a poem or a prayer that I recited
while walking through the woods of my hometown.
It occurs to me that I’ll never get it back.
I suppose such things are meant to be transient,
spoken out loud and left to drift,
But I am determined to capture some of it.

So. Here in the woods
Branches droop heavy and black with berries.
I pluck to gather them and make of my hands
two cups from which saltwater spills.
I see a vision of the old and the new,
the here to come and the hereafter,
overlaid on the thick pine stumps.
That which has passed is not yet gone.
Like trees, we grow on the rotten bones of giants.
There is no king of the once and future,
Nay, nor queen. Only the rough tumult
of life that continues, and abates, and continues.

Here on the holly branch the spines sharpen.
The red berries have not ripened from black.
On the thorns I see blackberries still **** and red,
not yet sweet with concentrated sunshine.
I see the skulls of snag trees, the knothole eye sockets
where woodpeckers find their mealy dinners
and feast on the beetles and worms –
which shall in their turn one day feast on me.
So it goes, as it should be, as it will.
My vision shows oak giants long passed,
toppled and timbered an age before my time.
A thousand years hence they shall rise again.
Fear not; the axes of men wreak havoc,
but may only interrupt the flow, not halt it.

Again I stoop to pluck the fruit
And form two cups of my hands
From which juice flows like water.
The ocean licks the sweat from my skin
And I see a vision of the old woods,
the old ways, the elder magick
That will grow from seed tomorrow.
Hew my limbs in history, bury them in timber.
Let the barrow-mounds be a nursery
Where the thornbush harvest grows.
You have become like the specter of my youth
A knothole seeping deadly fumes
Surrounding me, embracing me
Leaving me intoxicated and defeated
In a pile of filthy belongings
Tethered to this pole of existence
Wrapped in disregard
Postmarked for the gates of Valhalla
Addressed to sirens of the flat rivers
And dropped at the feet of irreverent lovers
You are my memory and the end of all complacency
The beginning of a new chapter
In a volume to be published
Bound in leather
Taken from cows raised in pastures
Decapitated and sawed open
Removing vital organs from lifeless bodies
Supported by a hook
From which brain chemicals drip
And neurons fire
Through a convict with his blindfold on
Moist cigarette, dangling off his lips
Air breathed by love’s guillotined victim
Rattlesnake’s discarded skin
You take from me coconut’s milk
Fuel for foddering the future
And willingness to triumph in battle
I leave your kingdom
Hopeful for patronage
Seeking refuge, perchance amongst palms
Floating on what seems a sliver
In your filthy sea’s apathy
I bide my time, until delivered
Until my tawny encasings unravel
This was the draft for "Confinement." It may be better than what I reduced it to.


Feb.
MMX
Walking in the woods, I fell
Down into a knothole that lead
To another realm, unlike our own

‘Twas a wondrous realm like a twilit dream
Where the dazzling sky at night engulfed all
And satyrs who were young like me
Beckoned me to their sordid ******
Fountains of wine poured into streams,
And wood nymphs danced and bathed in falls
Deliciously drunken and sweet, calling me
To pick their flowers.

We caroused and we aroused
As we fired our slingshots into the sky
And watched the night shimmer with the
Comets we launched up and away.
I fired mine, foolishly unaware
That my target was the moon so full
I shattered my joy to pieces
And brought this realm to darkness

The satyrs howled in fear
The wood nymphs withered away
The fountains of wine turned into blood
And I was left drowningl
Until a glorious golden hand
Went from the moon’s place to
Shield me, carry me back to reality.
I awoke in a sweat and a shiver
'Twas always night in the Satyr’s Garden
Be it drenched with stars and ecstasy,
'Twas night, and night to remain.
How do you find me in these places?
Lost in my paradises where I'm never seen.

You follow me into the rabbit hole of my daydreams and
Fall with me into the arms of tragedy,
Into the arms of Gods caressing the mortal souls of Human lovers.

I'd take you anywhere,

We blink and open our eyes to the ocean around us. The sails pregnant with the gust of lovers lost. We stare out into the vast open and never cringe,
Not while our fingers cross,
Not while we travel vast and open together.

We could get lost,

Dive into the ocean and freefall to the bottom,
Physics simmer away as we float towards the center of the earth.
I hold you close as the light guides us into the abyss.

And we could aways come back,

Clasped so close as we slide upon the tectonic embrace of mother earth.
The magma heart swallows us whole,
And all there is is light,
And all I hear is your voice.
I walk towards the light and look out at the world from the knothole of a tall, proud oak.

I saw you climbing the limbs,
I watched in awe. How you shocked me.

One step ahead, even in dreams.
How do you find me in these places?
Because you're a goddess.
Tis' beauty incarnate, that everlasting and vibrant beauty.
It radiates from the soft and blushing face,
From the skin on your back,
It seeps into my fingers as they glide over your muscles.

Goddess,
Ever exquisite,
Forever and Ever.
Fly high aerial sailors , imploring the news of Spring b'side
morning flowers and grassy knolls , windamere mornings across the diamond studded snapping shoals , from the knothole of a hardwood tree , from a schooner in brilliant blue seas , from the golden edge of a garden periphery , from the starlit bridge across all eternity*
Busy bluebird perched on my farm bell
Sing of stories only you can tell
Sunny days along seedling pastures
Tales of love and pure rapture
...
Copyright March 16 , 2017 by Randolph L Wilson * All Rights Reserved

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