Rootless Poems

the loss of dream time

The Loss

Dream time, lazy and long, is over
It lasted a generation
But real life
Came and stole the colors
Home-baked bread, no more
Everything is easy, shop-bought
and taste of the average.
I know of a woman who stole
Flowers for her son’s coffin
It stood there in the snow
Grave diggers on strike.
But a bouquet doesn’t
Mind, know why they are needed 
Rootless and decaying anyway
So let the mother be, she didn’t
Do anything wrong, just rearranged
Flowers bought in a shop for a grave
They had too many for her son’s
Whose no flora in the world could hide
Hide a mother’s grief

Lost inside

I.
I stumbled down a corridor of screams,
Where shattered children claw at broken glass.
My temples bleed black rivers, thick with dreams—
Rootless thorns that pierce but never pass.

II.
I was a star torn open in the void,
An angel crushed beneath its shattered light
Now I crawl through wounds I self-employed,
And swallow silence sharp as night.

III.
Dreams gnaw my spine like rabid beasts of bone,
Pages ripped from lungs that choke on breath.
I speak no words, just bones turned to stone,
A syntax forged in the furnace of death.

IV.
Time’s razor splits my chest in two cold halves,
Its walls drip names I once wore like skin.
The moon forgets me; my shadow laughs
I’m lost to all the selves I’ve been.

V.
I dig for voices buried deep in scars,
A fossil tongue soaked in salt and rust.
I vanish in this hollow prison of stars
Where loss is hunger, and hunger is dust.

I Am A Black Man In Florida Buried In A Unmarked Grave

they built a ballpark over my bones,
laid asphalt like a priest's last lie—
no headstone, no name,
just beer guts and baseball caps
spilling nacho cheese
where I once bled.

I was twenty-three,
shot twice in the alley behind Leroy’s Bar,
the paper called me
“suspected.”
that was all they needed.

the morgue forgot me,
the state ignored me,
and my mother—
she wept
until the flies outnumbered her prayers.

now they cheer a double play
while I sleep beneath their roars,
rootless and rotted,
a ghost who never swung a bat—
but still waits
for justice
to round third base and come home.

Lost in Shade

Lost in Shade
 
 
I am a blur in the mosaic, painted, not placed
a borrowed hue in a gallery of dream and machines.
Voices whirl like prayer wheels spun too fast,
each syllable a wind that forgets my name.
 
Skyscrapers bloom like cold steel flowers,
rootless, like me, fed by wires, not soil.
I chase the scent of home through alleys of memory,
but find only the dust of vanished names.
 
My past is folded in a drawer no one opens,
forty winters pressed into brittle silence.
I carry nothing but breath and a blank refrain,
I am lost in a shaded world
But with no shade of my own.

Tarn

A mountain tarn,
a deep-water eye,
high and blackly gleaming.

A scramble down slippery scree
to look within,
then a tingling apprehension
of being too close
to an unbalanced footing,
one that is a lip between
tilting ground
and an entrance to nowhere.

I can't say what I expect to see,
not the bottom of a mountain,
a dazzling sky-window,
or the depth of my soul perhaps.
What I see there,
quickly buries a teetering image
into a fear-fall.

Grains of time,
tumble rootless into my mind,
imbedding themselves
in each drop of sweat.

Dizzily I grapple back up,
the whiskers of my beard
stretching toward a pebble
that was not yet tumbling
into a directionless creation,
or a momentary extinction.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Note:
A 'Tarn' is a mere (lake), atop a high mountain. It seemingly has no inlet or outlet. "Sree' is an unstable shale that tends to slip under foot.

Serenading Soul

parched buds
in shriveled sapling
                    desolate
bloom dreams
          in 
desiccated dunes
as the aureate sun 
masks the mirage 
                    chased
taking the scorched life 
to the opal oasis 
          but
ending up 
in staking retreat
of illusion
          where
dreams are lost
in the debris
          of 
the palace of cards
                    collapsed 
in desert sands 
of destiny
                    adrift     

rootless vagabond 
                   wanders
in the wasteland
          of
wrecked sandcastle
mentally metamorphosed
                  shapeshifts 
          into 
a lone player 
of puppet show
                  depicting 
the panorama of life
                  unlived
performing ordained
to the dictum 
of stringed freedom
                  enjoyed 
in artificial act 
                  axiomatic
of lingering life
          obtuse
perfected within
psychic sanctum 
of patience
                  instilled 
sensually by 
possessed passion   
                  persistent
to dance 
                 entranced
to the symphony 
          of 
the serenading soul
                sublime

Empty Shells

Empty shells I find on the beach
     can be looked at in two ways.
 In one aspect, they are seeds of death -
    the only tangible remains of once-living creatures
        now planted randomly in the sand,
but also it can be said that
     rootless - they still blossom beneath the sun
with their beautiful spiraled patterns
         as flowers from the sea.

The Roots of Time

Stone cracks itself when the immovable
is broken by pain.
Stone trees grow in stone locked caves.
All that is not stone wanders rootless,
yet they abide in that same furnace of time
that has long shaped the stones.
Stone outlives,
unlike we who walk upon it.
On that last day
stone will have outpaced
the bones
of the fastest horse.

Connections

Sky looks beautiful with clouds
azure skyscape impressive though,
starlit sky illumines forests of night.
Short or long, verdant shade soothes
a tree, single or in clusters pleases.

A spring or meandering stream 
carries trillions of pooled droplets
yet, a drop of water slakes thirst.
Flowing water-ways jubilantly join
emerge finally as a mighty river.

Uncles, aunts, grandparents cared
children loved lullabies, stories told
enjoying every moment of the phase.
Parents happily shared and cared for all
a family stood firm as a vast empire.

A radiant planet may mesmerize  
yet, constellations overwhelm all,
galaxies tantalize faraway humanity.
Segregation slices, roam rootless
self-centered folks rudderless!

The Lost Tooth

she is felt still

a tongue tip
recalls her grave
it speaks tenderly

i had her crowned
yet such a royal regalia
did not suit
her innate modesty

she was a tireless waitress
who served up
treats and sugars
with a candied Mona Lisa smile

a love lost is not rootless
yet it must speak from a hollow filling
the heart of which
turns upon cavities of regret

decades later
i eat
these empty words

yet still enjoy them

The Unwinding Shroud

A tapestry lightly stitched,
a Turin shroud of time.

It is a vision of our birth and crucifixion.
a Jesus still ascending
while travelling our own via Dolorosa.
I glimpse of a Christhood rising
within both I and you.

Now the weave unwinds,
threads twist in a rootless wind.

Father, a spool of memories is unravelling
is it a nativity or an extinction?

Linen soaked in life or death
stains the same.

Quantum math

The boomeranging echo
deafening to receive
retro rockets smoking with the effort to retrieve

What dignity affords

Approaching the singularity 
Where mathematics misbehave
Infinitely distorted space and time discovers I am brave

For this the final frontiers inimitable calling to me softly astral plane

Rosie the robot
Taking on a life of her own
Worlds beyond comprehensive control boweavil seeking her home

54321 Houston we have lift off
Winging through the atmosphere this star dust studded loam

Made for growth this rootless vine ideal it seams to roam


Nomadic maiden trying to ignite fire with sodden sticks
In a van down at the river
Still up to your old tricks

This hardwired struggle release

Return oh Viking warrioress
You won this fight at birth
Now sail with pride this prairie schooner when you return in peace

Rest my sweet Rest
For you are lightyears or a softly spoken word away

Prepare for your reentry
        at last     
Your coming home

Her Immortal Sweetness

Her words were rootless,
they were buttercups churning in a cyclic wind;
sweet if you like sweet, but never deep enough
nor strong enough to be hurtful or loving,
Her poems came with the bland smile
of a sociopath.

Naturally folks considered her an angel,
one sent to us by ever-loving poetry gods.

Dead now for many years
she is read avidly by latter day acolytes;
the tepid tapioca of her words
turning many a fan doe-eyed and limp
as if they had just been shot
by an arrow straight from cupids ass.

Inklings

They are the “inklings”
Of a thought
Taking form
Faint etchings
Slowly scrawled
Scratched out
Born again
In halting hope.

A matrix of dots
Roaming an arid plain
Searching
For shape, form
and purpose
constrained
within edgeless boundaries.

Inklings,
Children of thought
Feeding on the rootless
Scrub grass
Of ancient strictures
Smearing their frustrations
On the castle walls.

John G. Lawless
©4/12/2023

Home From the Sea

Home from the sea

The night in the hallway paled into a yellowish screen
showing a black& white home- movie ca. 1963
a memory time machine had sent him back to his years
of youth to meet people long since gone.
A family sat around a dinner table with people he knew. 
His 125-year-old father was not there; he never was
a nectar-drinking Colibri, exotic as a Christmas present
never given, the one in a toy shop, a red firetruck with
wooden wheel.
And him? He had gone to the sea, and when he returned
it was not the same as before; a certain distance had
emerged after that whenever he came home 
from the sea, the distance from them was ever wider.
They had known him as a boy but had not seen him grow.
He sat in the living room, rootless, a stranger they
Somehow were related and spoke politely to him
because they knew he would soon be leaving again.
A nurse shook him gently; are you awake?
Yes, mother, I’m home from the sea.

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