Like the worst ice cream with a rotten waffle cone.
Ashes I bemoan.
Like a soggy magazine I used to read.
I tore it all up indeed.
In the epicenter of dreaded days.
I’m funneled through this haze.
That urn in the living room seems to squeak and squeal.
Yet never a ghostly reveal.
I wish he would come out of the treacherous ash.
So I can do something rash.
I could scatter the ashes anywhere I wished.
Surely he wouldn’t be missed.
But keeping him, trapped on the shelf.
Helps me reach a higher self.
So I can give him grief while he’s trapped in there.
Remembering he lived and died in despair.
He’s like keeping my least favorite ice cream in the freezer all the time.
Which is my only crime.
Can’t say that about my old man.
But at least I dumped his horrible van.
There are fingers that pick daydreams
along the banks of this blue electric river.
Eels swim with it’s black-magic ballads
attaching a powerful charge to the swell.
Along the banks of this blue electric river
bullfrogs and alligators provide a drum.
Attaching a powerful charge to the swell
the luminous melody gains its fine edge.
Bullfrogs and alligators provide a drum
chomping at the bit for the celestial.
The luminous melody gains its fine edge
as the intention gains traction to build.
Chomping at the bit for the celestial,
you’ll do almost anything to wield it.
As the intention gains traction to build
mountains of stars swirl into a funnel.
You’ll do almost anything to wield it,
eels swim with it’s black-magic ballads.
Mountains of stars swirl into a funnel.
there are fingers that pick daydreams.
Is this a picture
of the crumbling edge of a new day
or a snapshot of its departure?
I photograph daylight
as it leaks into the plastic hearses
of empty bottles.
Moths undaunted by a sickly sun
turn carnivorous, seeking morsels
of whiff and wisps.
The world keeps wearing its clothes
though there is less of everything,
colorless rags hang up
along thorny margins.
The earth wallows
within waveless mists and shadows.
All is gray and astray,
the way an old man’s peppery hair
is whipped by an ashen air
funneled through hollow lands.
Somewhere
beneath an unseen horizon
scarecrows croon
over sunflower bones.
Written: May 07, 2024
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
he peppered peony
petals, poems ...
past my path
scattered starlight, songs,
moonstones …
spaning my spine
friendship fell
in felicity.
hush the bee hum in
my hooters were hazel
Begonias bloom
bound
silent songs
strum my sternum
funneled fairly
fetching forward!
fettered
gramophone of love
I’m lost.
It’s nothing new, I just sit around and overthink, overcompensate, over complicate, overwork the brain but it has its limits.
I see now what I do, how I am, who I become when I’m lost. It’s crazy though, you see it, you feel it, you know it but still you dare to ask me what my thoughts were.
I can’t answer, I’ve been chasing the answers for years and still I have yet to see the light at the end of my tunnel, funneled from the beginning of being lost.
lost, is how I feel without you. It’s been 3 days now and still I feel as if we’re hanging on by a thread. I hate this feeling of being; being lost, being crossed yet again I pour another glass of champagne because for in this moment, I feel found and not lost.
Lost, is what I feel, and I know I’m not helping this feeling by overthinking, over complicating over working, but still I can’t help but needing the answers I’ve been yearning.
How I hate being lost sometimes, but how I love finding out more about my damn self.
Old man wind pulled back the ocean waters
and funneled them into his watering can;
sprinkled them across the state;
over-watering every garden in sight.
A flood, six inches of water invaded my basement;
a three inch wading hole in the street and
a fortune in appliances and furniture was lost.
Afterwards he painted a rainbow in a cloudy sky and
started over again.
His tantrum lasted for two weeks.
Long ago I entered slow,
Plenty time for me to grow,
Far above I started round,
Circling to down below.
At the top I had no bound,
Being far up from the ground,
Feeling now with my descent,
T ’was a faster speed I found.
Round and down I further went,
Something now it would prevent,
Downward sloping, thus remained,
Not a way for an ascent.
Down below, I felt constrained,
Tighter circles that I gained,
Being now, far from the top,
Almost near the spot it drained.
Out the hole that I did pop,
Followed by a quicker drop.
Then again as if to stun,
I came to a sudden stop.
What I found when I was done,
Others that had also spun,
Varied paths that we would go,
Before we funneled into one.
A dark and faceless bedroom
consents to talk with me awhile.
The brain buzzes on
being its usual endless
blunt toothed saw.
The body belches and rumbles
as it tirelessly works to produce
the odd snort or snore.
All is a normal stasis on an escalator
speeding to nowhere,
Just the random outtakes
from under-rehearsed thoughts
dropping like dying mammoths
into tar pits of forgetfulness.
Beyond all these moving parts
is a soundless voice,
a voice I realize I had left somewhere
returning now to show me
where a loss had occurred.
It was there at a bifurcation
in a nowhere place.
that two voices grew deaf to each other,
but now in this instant
the voices have become
a synchronized dance of one.
I am translucently unilingual
through my mouth and ears.
An oceanic speech
funneled through a shell of self.
This is how the All speaks, said one voice.
This is how the All listen, said the other.
A third voice said:
and here is the holiness of silence.
Now...
The pat-down at O’Hare is intrusive.
I don’t look at the probing hands
or the dead bored eyes.
Schools of out of depth aliens,
are funneled through small holes
in an invisible net.
Then...
The Ellis Island cop is also bored.
He speaks ponderously,
as if the boy had no more wit than a fish.
Now...
I carry a man-bag over my shoulder,
it holds my documents.
The customs officer talks to me
in a sign language made audible
through pursed lips.
Then...
Sean looks up from his low-brow cap.
He dares not speak
least his tongue reveal
a patois of Connemara peat.
A crumpled birth certificate
is produced and stamped.
Now...
He studies my papers,
thrusts them back without a glance.
Then...
Sean keeps moving;
waiting to be pulled back,
not knowing
that the future will pull him back anyway.
Now...
Outside the terminus, Americans depart
in checkered cabs for Atlantis,
and other undocumented places.
~~~
Thunder walks away on carpet slippers,
wet leaves cockle and whisper.
A backwash of sound lingers,
a rustling of mulch
as if a mouse were nibbling a bible.
"I want to search for the perfect mountain,"
you say, lying beside me in the dark.
You don't mean a real mountain.
I don't know what you mean.
The rain ends at dusk,
but the sodden sky keeps falling,
it splashes where your body,
is deep and deafened.
This thing I am doing with myself;
I have seen horses do -
nostrils full of shock and rage,
a question funneled through
foaming arteries.
That night I dream of hammers on pitons,
the clicking of carabiner;
your hands grasping my features
struggling to climb above me.
We are the storm
we - writers of the verse
eloquent or terse
for better
or for worse
in prayer
or in curse
We hone the tip
sparing no thrust
lest weaponed words
slow gather dust
not battles need
but battles must
this vortex raging
funneled thought
releasing demons
never caught
scattering
on trembling page
cold dreams and fears
coming of age
We are the storm
John G. Lawless
©5/4/2019
As I stood by my Father's bedside,
watching his life flicker away.
It occurred to me that life's long ride
comes down to just one day.
Everything funneled into a single breath,
one last touch from a hand.
Then eyes close to greet death
as soul glides across golden span.
My mind raced to remember all,
to separate from the blend.
Every moment to recall,
the beginning to the end.
My hand swallowed up in his hand,
as we walked on a child's path.
Or rode on shoulders broad and grand,
while in all his attention did I bask.
As the rebellious years began,
wisdom he tried to impart.
In my mistakes I took my stand,
while his love stood strong in heart.
It would take me becoming a father
and living through a parent's fright.
The ups and downs of two sons and a daughter,
to realize in it all he was right.
Now as the family gathers for farewell
and places father next to mother in the ground.
What he left me I am proud to tell,
a code and a standard no greater found.
9/23/18
A parched wind
still circles the dust devils
corralling them
in funneled fury.
The old rooster
atop the barn
squeaks
as the weather changes
as do the joints
in the old blue jeans.
Hard black coffee
bubbles on the stove,
her apron hangs
a memory
on the chair,
an old screen door
shudders,
slams shut,
an old dog curses
the dust.
Bowed heads watch
as he laces his boots,
reaches for that
damned hat,
sips the last of the coffee
runs his fingers
across the hanging apron
whispers
“I love you”,
sets off to worship
in the shrine
of their lives.
©5/7/2018
for Laura Loo – Best Free Verse Poem In May 2018 Poetry Contest
A parched wind
still circles the dust devils
corralling them
in funneled fury.
The old rooster
atop the barn
squeaks
as the weather changes
as do the joints
in the old blue jeans.
Hard black coffee
bubbles on the stove,
her apron hangs
a memory
on the chair,
an old screen door
shudders,
slams shut,
an old dog curses
the dust.
Bowed heads watch
as he laces his boots,
reaches for that
damned hat,
sips the last of the coffee
runs his fingers
across the hanging apron
whispers
“I love you”,
sets off to worship
in the shrine
of their lives.
©5/7/2018
submitted to – Hillbillies Bybillies and Blowbillies – Poetry contest
sponsor – Caren Krutsinger
A HANDFUL OF MEMORIES
So pleasant — hands through sand,
cupped, funneled and fetched.
Kodachrome of colors,
combine to dazzle the eyes
in a necklace glass bottle,
a rainbow hue, carried with pride.
The beach spread like a blanket near the sea.
Toes squish in the self-made mud.
Mom never minds as you wash out sand
in the sudsy waves.
Sandy crystals of the mind
dazzle in sunlit memories.
Diamondesque dendrites worth
more than all the world’s mines.
So pleasant — hands through sand,
cupped, funneled and fetched.
4/21/2018
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