Best Upended Poems
walled isolation
when a relationship hits hurdles
gripped by the unfamiliar
a stillness that caves in on us
our small spoonfuls of conversation lack direction
closed pod, defensive
my near muted pleas to break free of holding back
for nothing good brews in brooding
sucker punch of speculation
health shifting
the enemy, a diagnosis
to map variables, unknowable
our dreams having no scale
de-stabilized by no surety of self
we hide behind silence like a well placed curtain
balancing on slippery rock sickness
life altering
words perishable
numbing
a fall-to-pieces stillness
like a windowless white room that traps the urge
to breath
Poem composed: October 31, 2021
When pressed to take sides
to 'answer the question'
To choose is to cause to divide ...
The solution, of course
to no one upend
is to answer, 'I don't know
~ it depends'
Cabs crackling surrender
Before settings land
Dawns edge working from eve
Her lasting clay
I'm hear
In class
To paint
And understand
My musing
Tara Gendron
Of Santa Barbara
I was boring first
Then Tara's recital
Now juliard and exhibition New York
A blind reveal
Gaeity Opens
It's Aerosmith crazy meeting
guns n roses don't you cry tonight
The halo program
Saint child in passing
Deliberate New York Paint stations
Dead bourbons walk
Captured and Captures
Calls answering before touching tones
As innocence creates defiled creature
In abandon
Rare entrance of mature isolation exits
Eschers Criteria falls
As fall in season
Abandon aspect of perception is fault
Coercive insertion is natural here
Olivia's Pails
Visiting Olivia Wildes star
Her starved flat
In New news cameo
Poor ignorant
In a shelter
First allowance
Ownerships expense
I painted her didn't I?
She weeps wrong
So much poverty
Illiterate
She knows nothing of arrival of running
Water
The meaning
Building
From street side rubbish
Attempting control
Freedom is beyond life
She is male being
Without civilization
Army of the Danube
As Irish
In fence
In pale
Scot
Resign
Brit
Intended upended
suspended
upside-down
on trapeze by knees,
is caught,
catcher-clung
flung over
and righted,
as it is to be
the rooster slept late
no hen laid an egg
on vacant street corners
no transient did beg
the sun beat down early
not a whisper of breeze
the stench of blue trucks
smoke, filth and sleaze
shops shuttered tight
bars and chains all in place
sidewalks bare and deserted
no rats ran the race
the stars did yet twinkle
well into the day
the moon sideways grinned
at the fetid buffet...
i glanced in the mirror
a slope stared at me
all my dreams, all my hopes
ground into a scree
____________________
Note: All the city trucks
in Chicago, where I live,
are painted blue.