*Sorry to carry on about this. My regular muse is gone and I can only write through the pain.
I sat at the red light that seemed like forever
As my life flashed before me, pictures, memories
My stomach burned with pain into my back
As I tried to accept, I will not escape the recent toxic exposure
Tears flowed with the raindrops on my windshield
The waiting wouldn't seem to end in this long time
I could only lose myself in the music that was playing
Then it was time to move, as the light finally turned green
I drove looking at the wet pavement for miles
Until I reached my street when I saw the bare trees again
I see them every day, knowing they won't be the same either
How does one absorb things dying from toxins all around?
In this changed world, I'm in some other place I don't know
Heidi Sands
7/4/23
Will we still have a skin to jump out of
when we are flesh no more?
Will we skinny-dip inside a thimble?
Will Summer rain still softly kiss?
Will there be Harley’s,
plasma shotguns?
Will most things
not be worth waiting for?
Is this old world a head-fake,
an insubstantial place
for our many bodily functions?
I may be a hologram of you
and you a naughty postcard
I bought on Brighton Pier
in 1993.
It’s just so kinky to think
I took you
and your hard riding passion
on my lap
when you were 62.
The dead move among us
looking for where we were.
Only occasionally
do time lines connect.
My dead dog
still sticks her wet nose in my ear
when I in my troubled sleep she visits,
but she is not there. she is off
tracking a ghost
twenty years before this man I am now.
Today I am on the doorstep of
of a Thai restaurant - I think I once lived in Thailand,
but it could have been this other person,
a younger one
who walked through time as if invulnerable.
I enter, order a meal in a language
I thought I had used up and put away.
Now I visit the words again,
yet even words forget
how I once spoke.
I am in this place
and you are in that.
I suspect you are in a different place,
one I have yet to recall, or visit.
Same goes for my dog, but now and again
her wet nose in my ear wakes me up
from a troubled sleep.
Same goes for the mean snake slaying Siamese cat
that scratched me to pieces.
I reckon that it still exists in some parallel universe,
still craping on some other
poor son of a .
Today I am on the doorstep of
of a Thai restaurant - I think I once lived in Thailand,
but it could have been this other person,
someone who lives in another dimension,
a place just a smidgeon from my left eye.
------
everything's in bloom
in the sweltering june
with legs of vine
and pools of wine.
with the taste of summer
and some other lover.
you pulled me through fall
with your once daily calls,
speaking exquisitely of my smile.
but with deliberate denial
your love did expire,
exiling my drunken desire
for some other lover.
the night takes control
of my heart-shaped hole
which you dug into my chest
as a means to lay rest
to the battle of lust
you left wriggling in the dust
to find some other lover.
after me there is no other.
I wander through my memory
The endless trail of what might be
To find a tale of once was me
And things I could or wouldn’t see
Each stumbling step revealed a trace
Another me some other place
Just one more thing I couldn’t face
The seething wounds of my disgrace
Twas more than merely memory
Or something loose I couldn’t place
I thought I saw familiar face
A face impossible to see
It spoke to me about a trace
A tale of all that used to be
When all the world was you and me
And all we did without disgrace
But all that’s gone for now I see
And all that’s left is lonely me
With echoes of what now should be
Now swallowed in a memory
some other thinking not mine
some other thinking not mine
sure they mean well they tell
they hoist the boom and bring it down on you
explaining to you just what you have to do
as iff the gospel is given unto men in paychecks
the 20 dollar bill is lord and master now to them
wear the gun invisible on your belt hide the bullits from the gun stock they make welts upon your sacrilege form the lines pay the penalty of time
bark your orders from the grave no one listens to your grace whiskey laced sermon now you see them now you do not see them shine on harvest moon of time is coming time is nigh near the starting near the ending of the time
judge me quickly judge me not guilty not thet eye did never sin but the sin must be forgiven men who who died and gave us the keys find the lord of all religion please do not call me the hooty owl again Roman Legions beck and call master of them all is money rolled money counted money paid and money kept from the destruction of the mention of the men who have no money all the poor poor men please who who not the hooty owl again doh ray me la teeh doh teeh doh hooty owl hooty owl teeh doh money not mine thinking some other
Whose woe wooed me woefully
and banefully banished my love?
I'll tell this tale some other time!
With all my longing long gone
and my heart hurting heartily...
Let me be,
I'll tell this tale
some other time.
Destiny ditched me dearly
and life left me in a lurch...
Let me be,
I'll tell this tale
some other time.
Squalls submerged my ship
and sunk me silently out of sight...
Let me be,
I'll tell this tale
some other time.
With friends fostering foes
and loved ones lying low...
Let me be,
I'll tell this tale
some other time.
If I tell this all-telling tale
You'll be named in naming names...
So, let me be,
I'll tell this tale
some other time!
"Your Best Free Verse Poem" contest by SKAT A
Today is not the day to change,
I fear my heart feels rather strange,
For ever since the day did break,
I could not strain; my heart can't wake.
The sun burns bright, it swells my skin,
The birds chirp loud of mortal sin,
Although she's left, I long for Night,
We weep alone, away from sight.
Tomorrow's moon waits still below,
For me, the morning sun climbs slow,
But now I do not wish to start,
The task that yearns to quell my heart.
Though someday far, I must conclude,
This sullen life of solitude,
It cannot be this westbound gale,
That lifts my heart and fills my sail.
have you ever felt
the drum
the hum
of your mind slipping way
like a thousand voices
talking at once
and all you want to do
is fold up and cry
and the silence strikes
at the same time
a wight sits on you chest
trying to stop your breathing
and you dream of
crawling in a hole and dieing
still you stand up
and fight the tears
everything subsiding
knowing your just have to do it again
idle quill
in
ink pot
resting
parchment
sterile
heart protesting
disclosure