I sit here sometimes.
Just watching the sky turn into a masterpiece
of pinks and golds.
And honestly?
It hits so hard.
But it’s crushing, too.
Knowing how fast it all fades away.
Fleeting.
I look around and wonder
if I am the only one who actually noticed.
My mind goes too deep.
A single line from a poem can haunt me for days.
Keats said the poetry of earth is never dead,
but the world is just so noisy.
Mechanical.
I tried bringing up Camus.
I tried talking about Dostoyevsky.
People looked at me like I had three heads.
It’s hard to find someone who wants to go there with you.
Who doesn't mind losing track of time
in a discussion about purpose.
Isolated.
But the world feels a little less lonely
when someone else sees the poetry.
Oscar said we're all in the gutter,
but some of us are looking at the stars.
So if you're out there.
If you appreciate a good existential ramble.
Let's talk.
I'm looking for the gazer.
Sunny the squirrel fell fast asleep
in the rooftop gutter seam~
curled like a fuzzy comma
in a punctuation dream.
Rain dribbled down beside her,
but Sunny didn’t even stir;
guess gutter-naps are premium
for a sleepy little ball of fur.
Neighbors pointed upward~
“Is that squirrel okay up there?”
But Sunny just snored louder,
like a diva hung midair.
So now the roofline’s famous
for its napping woodland queen,
who claims the gutter nightly
as her five-star lodging wing.
There's gravel grinding in my gut; a godless gearbox of grief growling in my belly's black cathedral.
My heart hammers like hell's hooves, hauling the hearse of every hope I ever had.
I eat dirt for dinner and call it divine, choking on crumbs of my own creation.
My lungs lurch like dying engines, exhaling elegies of exhaust and extinction.
Every breath burns a furnace of forgiveness that refuses to cool.
The devil drums on my ribs like thunder made of teeth and tin.
My tongue tastes of tombstones and tar and a sermon spat through shattered glass.
Even silence stabs sharp sanctified hollering hymns of pain through the marrow of midnight.
I am the meat of my own misery devoured by despair divine.
And stll the gravel grins inside me, grinding and glorying in my ruin.
I rise from the rubble like Lazarus wearing a noose of night.
The gutter whispers my name through the teeth of tombstones.
Rain baptizes me backward, burying me in yesterday's dirt.
Every prayer I utter comes crawling back begging for mercy.
My soul stinks of survival-perfume for the punished.
Heaven spits when I shine in the slime.
Hope limps behind me, bleeding blessings in the bog.
This hard earth hugs me hard, jealous of my fall.
Under redemption's heel I was born-the gutter remembers my name
in a dirty clutter
day-old larvae wriggle
some in stark stench flutter
kerosene poured on them
sealing siphons of breath
lamp oil shuts their shutter
In place, smoothly flowing
protecting my abode
bottoms truly showing
how rain is steered away
along with melted snow~
keeps my peace ongoing
A channel for water -
but if your mind’s IN it,
you might be a rotter.
One who lives in squalor
may very well end up
in it as a squatter!
Cardboard and cold concrete;
The makings of my 'home'.
Soggy socks, blistered feet;
My harsh daily commute.
Pleading with outstretched hands-
I'm loved?. or obsolete?
* 'Poetry is in the House' Poetry Contest
* Sponsored by: Nette Onclaud
* Entered on: 11/6/2025
A drainpipe full of leaves
fallen like every dream,
as time silently thieves
moments of happiness,
gifting melancholy
like cobwebs on the eaves.
A torrent of words pounds
on roof of mind inclined
to shed them out of bounds,
aligning them to file,
like sheep through sorting gates,
to ripple poem's sounds.
Each fall it filled with leaves,
each year, the two of them
would climb up to the eaves
clear the golden blanket;
not this year, or the next;
and no one knows, or grieves.
Sexuality marooned jellybean pilfered spigot refugees vomit hazelnut in some static plain cloud cupboard.
A stifled hexed harvest, suffer the stagnant taffy contraception,
Oxidized gut-string lyre feeble mast crippled rod.
Shall you be parallel on the naked stem on the shrunken pagan altar?
Penguin whale jackal follicle carriage orgies
I have the cavernous trunk of thirst,
Permanently altered, famines, droughts.
Loosen your sticky grasp upon an evening so slutty bean Venus squaw chubby stone figurines
languid horny speed gutter bunnies.
let down cord straps drop fiddles kneel whip cable ties.
Snickering geriatric hags cupcake outskirts of one
Platypus settlement
• Soft like kisses
• Smooth like butter
• Such traits landed me in the gutter
• I stare at the lifeless body
•"He's dead," I mutter
• I pick him up and drove for miles
• 'Till I found a deep enough gutter
There’s a constant hammering
Alongside my bedroom window
Repercussions of a corrupt gutter
The maddening drain
Obstinately and persistently has refused
All rehabilitation efforts
There are no
drip drip drips
Only
Pound Pound Pounds
As water clashes with wood and metal
The clangor must be amplified
By a loudspeaker
To make such minute water drops
Sound like a crazed gongsman
Locked in a metallic chamber with a battle mace
With no distinct pattern
The piercing pattering
Thwack Thwack Thwacks
Proclaiming,
“You will find no peace here!”
And yet
Its constant monotone irritation
Somehow
Lulls me to sleep
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