Details |
Robert Woolridge Poem
By committing to nothing, one retains infinite options.
I have hid inside these words for moons and seasons and New Year’s toasts.
The lone wolf roams fertile pastures unfettered.
The thrill of the hunt.
The chase.
An empty bed is the hope of a new body’s sleeping curve.
Tomorrow becomes yesterday.
“The mystery of mysteries is the gateway to marvels.”
I stopped looking long ago.
The faces have blurred into a montage of emptiness.
Come and go; came and went.
I never bothered much to be bothered.
There aren’t many memories
And I am thankful for that.
Wet fingers and licked lips’
Blood on my hands.
Wasted time.
The years run on like a favorite sitcom gone bad.
It all should have been retired years ago.
It is easier to stay afloat and roam the big waters alone
Than set up camp on an island and face a face.
No problems.
No worries.
No connection.
Freedom is all that you cannot commit to
And who surrenders to nothing is he who lives in frigid shadows of fear.
Maybe I have never truly known warmth.
I walk the streets like a war-worn shoulder.
A little cold, a little distant, a little too silent.
The words I have are recycled fragments of someone else’s life.
I don’t offer much.
Poker face.
Can you read my concrete stare?
I have an entire universe hiding in my back pocket
But I’m scared to show you.
It’s been so long since I groped or even fondled my own life.
I’m not sure what I do or don’t have to offer.
I just keep making bets and upping the ante.
Copyright © Robert Woolridge | Year Posted 2005
|
Details |
Robert Woolridge Poem
So it finally tracked you down.
The sting, the rush, the nods all caught up
Added up
To three days alone with no resurrection.
The cross to bear was all yours,
All ours,
Now.
Your words, your voice filled my life for over a decade.
They played in my car, my room, my head off and on.
I grew up under your influence.
I tried to sing like you when I was alone.
I tried to imitate that low, bellowing agony,
The screaming madness, loud and angry.
It was rough and beautiful like a slit wrist in warm water.
You were black magic to me.
I ate a “rotten apple” today.
The realization that you will forever “stay away” tastes nasty and stains my mouth.
And the “nutshell” is that brilliance doesn’t always make you brilliant.
Needles and damage can’t even capture my thoughts today.
Yes, your pain was self chosen.
Truly, you are now “the man in the box.”
Your voice is crawling out of my speakers on this gloomy Sunday.
It dances and weaves slowly, thickly through the smoky air.
This beer is the first of many toasts I will make to you throughout my life.
Here’s to talent.
Here’s to waste.
Here’s to a soul misspent.
Here’s to “just a taste.”
Here’s to pain.
Here’s to rage.
Here’s to the insane.
Here’s to a modern sage.
You saw your own end.
Today is truly the beginning of a Mad Season.
It is the beginning of another hero lost from my world.
“Lifeless dead.”
I think you knew more than you let on.
You knew the risks and rode the horse bareback none-the-less.
It was always your choice.
I wish it would have been mine.
The thought that you will never write another lyric
So that you can wail it out into a dirty world
In an effort to cleanse the sins
Absolutely
Kills me.
I never got to see you live because
The addiction limited you.
I feel betrayed.
“The River of Deceit flows down”
And the polluted veins finally made their way here today.
One night, on the verge of madness,
Lost in addiction,
You made me realize the price.
You made me understand.
Your words,
Your voice,
Kicked me in the heart.
“Slow suicide’s no way to go.”
I kicked it all and came out on the other side
Clean and stained.
Alive.
I have always owed you for that.
You told me to “Wake Up”
And I did.
Knowing that you never will or can will always haunt me
Like your words, your voice.
In Memory of Layne Staley
Copyright © Robert Woolridge | Year Posted 2005
|
Details |
Robert Woolridge Poem
It's the sleepless moments that define me:
Shattered
Unresolved to the illusion of affluence and prosperity.
Addition involves numbers...
Margins, profits, realty
which
Marginalize the prophets under the reality
that the bottom line hangs
Righteously
Above
those on the
bottom.
Color is never as important as the color
Green
Which stains and devours
The red
The white
The blue
Metaphor that is "unalienable" or "manifest destiny" or more clearly
A "Dream" we are too comfortable living in and for and with
While
Suffering stirs just behind our sight "by the dawn's early light."
It is 6:12 am.
I am awake, again.
Angry.
Unapologetic.
Un-American
because, I feel,
Deeply,
The cries of humanity,
Drowning
Out the illusion of
Nationality.
I dream no more.
Copyright © Robert Woolridge | Year Posted 2005
|
Details |
Robert Woolridge Poem
In more archaic times,
Full of fiction and philosophers,
The people would have
Believed
Poseidon opened his angry mouth and sucked in the tide
To reveal
The naked, secret, bottom of the ocean
Giving a horrible vision of his
Vindictive Wrath
Just before he released his destruction upon the wicked and innocent.
And it made sense to those left living.
Their gods were malleable, mercurial, mystical.
In more sophisticated times,
Full of morality and religion,
The people celebrate the
Immaculate conception and birth of the savior of man.
Meanwhile
The tide sucked into the bowels of the deep,
The bottom of the secret blue was revealed
for an instant
Before murder was released upon the wicked and innocent.
And it makes sense to those left living.
Our God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent.
Copyright © Robert Woolridge | Year Posted 2005
|