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Nat Lipstadt Nov 2014
early risen,
life's au courant
contextual issues
are all bad bus driver dream driven,
visualizations of sonograms
of erred memories,
road forks, unwisely chosen,
incorrect in retrospect,
look back notion thoughts,
and fears of the
good works in process
never finished,
these are all the best ****
too early,
highly reliable,
internal/infernal
alarm clock

waken only to plod the dark,
upon the cool wood floors,
without any slippered coverings,
closet buried unavailable
(no treasure noisy hunting
in the dark permitted,
while the party of the second part,
yet sleeps)

the floored bottom chills
do not succeed
in comforting a mind
instant awakened-enflamed
by a long lived life recalled recapped,
of inaction and interactions,
thrones lost by
choices guided by fear and not
risk,
that in summation,
too many debtors-in-possession
of rose colored
minus signs

so the companions constants,
these well-worry-worn floors,
now refuse me,
no more to repeat,
what all too oft
they have before,
wisely spoken:

too early, man,
too late, fool,
the answers
required/sought
upon our ashen wooden countenance
cannot be elicited nor derived,
go back to bed
there, perhaps,
find what you need,
somewhere,
between the day's rising orb,
the Lady Luck of
a woman's heat,
the grand canyoned
Pachelbel cannon,
the Bach adagios
soulful sweet,
the answers could begin,
the endings,
perhaps can find
you and show
the restart signs positively
new directional


yet obedient to the old nether-wisdom
of these inanimate intimates,
(that are classified now as
sourpusses &  ex-best friends),
off to
back-to-bed,
self-dispatched,
arriving amidst the departing darkness,
being infiltrated by new day
dawning light suffusions,
with coffee armed,
pillows plumped,
all done with
church mouse quietude,
lest I wake the
party of the second part

into bed returns
the prodigal son,

uh-oh,

the poem ***** stiffens

cannot be refused,
it offers me
this challenged relief and a challenged
pleasure:

Subtext

commandeering and commanding:

dispense what you cannot say,
but wish for all to understand,
teach them how to write the literary
subtext
of one man's life


his fantasies *******,
thoughts of world-over trips
upon which his poems trip,
thinking thoughts
of meeting you
first time and fittingly,
reunions of longtime knowing
mutual souls, the lovely perfection
of the guarantee of
better days past
and better yet,
of better days
yet to come,
of first embraces,
longingly overdue,
but happily
familial familiar
even upon initial conception

motioned potions notions
of what he would do
when that lottery ticket
comes true,
seeing hazy
visions of loined, coined children babes naves
as someday adults,
from a future past of
a collection of visions
happily well imagined

now in bed,
dancing (quietly) to a Strauss waltz,
all his sisyphean tasks unmasked,
and peace in his heart,
returning to supreme reign,
re-gifting it all forward,
in a subtext contextually
poem within herein

the coffee now cooled,
the mental dispensary instead,
has issued
a scrip
prescribed and commissioned

write yourself,
one poem,
overly long and rambling,
as always,
(knowingly he smiles at his own critique)
this poem
to be issued
from his ******-brain,
amniotic-bathed,
anointed and by appointment
to her majesties,
The Queen of Hearts
and the
Red Queen,
entitled:


Subtext

the scrip reads:
"take once a day,
life clarity should return
sooner than later,
which is to say
medically and medicinally
eventually,
which is far, far better
than never"

the meds imbibed
the coffee reheated,
and while
waiting for its effects,
the subtext of a man
who drinks drams
of lives of poetry
for all
sees his future dreams
and happily awaits
their completed execution
Sarah Watson May 2016
not many days had passed
since you first left
we were too far apart all the time
told myself it was
better this way
because my biggest fears
always traced
your bad lines
walking down the street
i see you across the way
and i try to
try and not to make eye contact
but i cant
resist the memories
locked in your face
so i stare
and for a moment
we get lost in each other
separated by a street
and so much more
you smile
and all the differences
seem to disappear
and i want to run
and be caught by you again
i want to come home
because you were the most
beautiful place i'd ever
made my home
but the cars flash by and
suddenly
you're not standing there
all i see is a trace
of your silhouette
against the cold october air
somehow we
recapped
the past 9 months
in a single moment
and you didn't care enough
to stay
so again
you just walked away
and i was left
standing
surprised
for the millionth time
Captured at last. My quiverful
did shake your ransom loose—vain price
of novel circumstance, rebounding
up the mudhills of the past,
up mires that swallow shoes and grief
us for a thimbleful of how
it really felt. You dealt your doings'
deal, wound up a scattered reel
of torments: roses on the vine
that fell on thorny wrists to leech
the somedays from your spreading wings.
Bare respite in the hands of kings
who deign to manage what good things
go wrong: one laughed and out went song.
Two stood and shook out lies. Three spoke
and gouged out others' views of yours
as empty summer eyes. Recapped
in major ways to generally fawn,
yet flip a nonsense-script
to hammer bad words home and sire
a signal-damning tome to scratch
ancestors' heads (as we would do
if we could meet them)—Mysteries
to greet them, burdens on the sleeve
of he who dared dig mud: I linger.  
What I free will sting or sear
or singe, but noise is what one makes
when stranded on the fringe.

— The End —