An eerie stillness enshrouds,
the street I lodge in,
lone shadows loiter and lounge,
dark ink creatures peep
wet croak from a gaunt hermit,
slumped on granite bench,
faint cry from flitting figures
estranged by night chill
In seventh grade’s uncertain glow,
She sat outside where shadows grow.
Backpacks slumped, the sunlight waned,
While restless truths could not be named.
A thought slipped free, both shy and sly,
A quiet murmur: I think I’m bi.
The friend leaned close, her gaze intent,
Questions sharp as the day was spent.
How do you know? Does a girl’s soft face
Haunt your mind in a secret place?
She shook her head, though deep inside,
The truth stirred fierce, refused to hide.
Two girls in Python’s tented gloom,
One kissing the other’s skin in bloom—
A spark had flared, both hot and sweet,
A memory time would not defeat.
Curious—nothing more, the claim,
A verdict wrapped in quiet shame.
Yet there beneath that fading sun,
Her truth had bloomed—its fight begun.
My eyes followed her. They wouldn't behave.
Her strut, her smile, a wicked challenge gave.
The angel on my shoulder warned, "femme fatale",
telling me kindly, "this time, let me make the call".
But I couldn't stop my feet, as I approached her -
or my lips, as my question broached her,
and my digits recorded her digits like a slave,
possessed they were, as my angel tried to save
...me. He slumped on my shoulder in defeat.
He cried as I phoned her and agreed to meet.
There was no devil on my other shoulder.
He was inside me, making my heart smolder.
My angel had wanted me to flee,
but, despite a moment of hydrologic uncertainty,
the devil made me do the crime,
but it's not so bad. I'm glad the boy is mine.
Now a knight without a horse,
And his sword without a cause.
With the falling of his kind,
Shall there be truth, he can find?
With head slumped from all the pain,
Memories lost, no picture frame.
As he stood upon the mound,
With no fragments to be found.
Watching his world as it falls,
He screams out, as if he calls
For the pieces of his life,
Finding none without due strife.
This warrior full of war,
No sky left in which to soar.
He then sat beneath a tree,
Hoping death would set him free.
(7 syllables per line) (memories counted as 2)
They gather where the signs hang crooked,
under gaslight glare and broken clocks,
where the barkeep’s eyes are twin shot glasses—
fogged, but watching.
Gin Lane rolls in on tired boots,
her laughter sharp as shattered glass.
Beer Street hums a fatter tune,
slumped in booths of sticky leather.
They meet at the hinge of last call,
where poetry is slurred and prophets mumble.
A jukebox wails old revolutions
to a crowd too drunk to notice.
The walls are graffiti'd with regrets,
phone numbers of ghosts,
and chalked-up debts no one will ever pay.
Outside, the world is coughing up history,
but in here, time stirs with a muddler.
The bar is a church with no god,
only spirits, and the faithful who sip them.
Some come to forget,
others to remember louder.
A woman in red sings with her back to the room.
A man orders another round
and trades his name for a tab.
Everyone claps when the glass breaks.
Midnight hits like a bottle to the head—
the bouncer shrugs,
Beer Street staggers,
Gin Lane pirouettes into the dark.
My exam is over and everyone is plugged in on phones
earbuds in, except for him, who sleeps, slumped on desk, bag in front
with me the only one who can hear him snoring.
The vague and the abstract turned into a contract,
adrenaline junkies, now joined in a dare.
With hands up, no screaming, they’d both go careening,
defying gravity at the State Fair.
What started as amity morphed to calamity
enough that the riders had panic attacks.
When they reached the summit, they started to plummet
just as a mutt ventured onto the tracks.
The new rollercoaster got hot as a toaster
as the conductor stomped hard on the brake.
With no time for acting, they heard the impacting
of metal on flesh as the mutt flew the lake.
To worsen the matter, gratuitous splatter
was added for gratis to this ruinous ride;
they grew more embittered once they had considered
those patches of hide from the cur that had died.
The horrors receded as they both conceded
while parting the last bits of gore with a comb.
They climbed in the pickup, and with no further hiccups
slumped up the hill slowly and headed for home.
When I was little,
life was supposed to be filled with laughter,
sticky fingers from melting ice cream,
and afternoons lost in make-believe,
toy cars and plastic dinosaurs battling in the living room.
I’d look up at the adults, safe in their tallness,
never guessing that one day,
I’d be the one holding up the walls.
Instead, my afternoons were cluttered with sighs,
echoing through a quiet house,
where I’d drag your slumped figure from the front steps,
breathe in the stale scent of beer that clung to you
like a second skin.
Eight years old, trying to stand tall enough
to be your keeper.
When I was little,
Mom was supposed to pack my lunch,
Capri Suns and fruit roll-ups,
instead, mom wasn't ever there
I was busy slicing bread,
rationing out the peanut butter,
making sure my little brother had more than crumbs.
I’d wanted crayons, chalk, new paintbrushes, OH! the pink bike, and maybe an iphone
but my pockets held grocery lists,
my hands chapped and rough,
scrubbing dishes, sweeping floors,
Searching for that imaginary line
that had been drawn somewhere
between us:
the parent I wished for,
the parent I became.
The disgruntled mess of a boy slumped over his diary
——————experiment 4—————————
If you are reading this I might be dead
So as far as I can see
I seem to aging at a normal
It seems to degrade at dusk or dawn
Time seems to catch up on itself
Don’t use time lord as a description too who’y
I can stop time
It’s weird I seem to have free motion in it
Stopper I guess we could put that in the maybe pile
On experiment 2 we did have Weird Position day
So get serious
My movements seem to cause ripples
The emirate from initial stop but then cease why
I reenter usual time
We could call it unusual time
I seemed to have stopped dreaming
but feeling refreshed
Vitals seem good
Height and weight unchanged
Reflexes within normal ranges
The scar on my legs seems to continue to disappear
Might be some kind of countdown
Need to ration with experiment usage….
He slid his hand across his book strewn desk
His fingers grasping a cold can
-I can stop time he laughed at the empty room
The drip on its side no longer drops….
The disgruntled mess of a boy slumped over his diary
——————experiment 4—————————
If you are reading this I might be dead
So as far as I can see
I seem to aging at a normal
It seems to degrade at dusk or dawn
Time seems to catch up on itself
Don’t use time lord as a description too who’y
I can stop time
It’s weird I seem to have free motion in it
Stopper I guess we could put that in the maybe pile
On experiment 2 we did have Weird Position day
So get serious
My movements seem to cause ripples
The emirate from initial stop but then cease why
I reenter usual time
We could call it unusual time
I seemed to have stopped dreaming
but feeling refreshed
Vitals seem good
Height and weight unchanged
Reflexes within normal ranges
The scar on my legs seems to continue to disappear
Might be some kind of countdown
Need to ration with experiment usage….
He slid his hand across his book strewn desk
His fingers grasping a cold can
-I can stop time he laughed at the empty room
The drip on its side no longer drops….
No one lit a match.
no lamp spilled,
the air kept kindling its hot heart,
it pulsed red all day
The heat-heavy evening slumped
toward a simmering earth,
clouds began to roil,
they swirled,
they broiled in a death dance
of fuming dragon tails,
a wounded flickering
that lashed out blindly.
We laid down our souls,
they were too hot to rescue.
We were weary, too numbed
to be either beasts or humans.
When the sun slowly fell,
carving its way
through the dark rims
of fiery hills,
a smelter of sweating rain
cut the strings of our voices
and revived us not.
I realized with tearful eye
all my friends had left or died
Thinking I was now alone
I slumped down on a bitter throne
When I awoke a voice was calling
from somewhere deep inside me
I strained to hear what it was telling
with words so soft and yet compelling
Then suddenly I recognized
a voice I’d yearned for all along
For in the dawn of early morning
I felt the Lord Himself aborning
It was easy in the end,
to get up and go out
into the garden
and feel the patched sunlight
shine and blink upon my face,
take in the crisp smell of damp
earth and leaf
left after the rain.
I could still be slumped
in that chair, inside, beset
by aches and pains.
A few taken steps has me
here, outside. The narrow circle
that held me in my own mind
has stretched to the far fence,
a strange, new world
has flooded in.
I can no longer tell
where my boundary is,
my limits don't seem defined
by skin. It's over there,
somewhere beyond the fern,
even more distant
than that branch
hoisting its leaves into the air.
Nor do I know
where my center is,
or the person at the core
that keeps me in orbit
around a name.
Rather I am five senses
wired to somewhere,
no more than what I take in.
It would be good
to remain here and not go back.
There's an appeal in the idea
of self dissolution, to be
a boundless no-one.
But there are those that I love
who are not here
in this gated, reclusive space
and who care for me in a world
where my aches and pains reside,
back inside and within
the circumference of who I am
...He fell to the snow, choking his last breath,
Dalton watched despite his own fading strength,
Barnes dismounted and walked over to him,
said, “I see that you have found Miller then.”
Dalton just nodded. “They children they had,
I set them free, and they are running west.
You have to find them and help them get back,
they all are so young…weather’s not the best.”
Barnes nodded and said, “We will go get them
once we get you hauled up, onto a horse.”
Dalton shook his head, whispered, “It’s too late,
there’s nothing you can do for me anymore.”
With that he slumped back onto the cold ground,
the rattling growing loud in his chest,
both the marshals frowned, and tool of their hats,
as Dalton went limp with his final breath.
They told all the people of what he did,
and the tale went around for a while,
even though he never got his revenge,
Dalton still managed to die with a smile.
Death comes close in the night
when shadows grow and sleep envelopes, relaxing guards
who snore slumped in corners
their spears and shields useless on the ground,
their dinner crumbs of cheese and bread
just laying there for the rats to nibble.
Amid the sleepers and nibblers Death glides
like a mist; oppressive and still, and dead
leaving a taste, a scent, an air of such an otherness.
The rats scurry off
and the sleepers shift within their dreams
caught, held and slowly suffocated
till the last breath of Life is gone...
Then what does Death do?
The old shapeshifter wakes
and puts on the face of day.
(first published in my 4th book of poems BEGINNER'S MIND, 2019)
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