In my Eyes- that Song

It’s when I hear that song from that John Cusack movie

I get the same feeling whenever I watch some good romantic

Comedy and wonder if that will ever be me with that girl from serendipity

or the woman who demanded that her lover love dogs.

I’d say anything and do almost anything to meet any of the women who get the assassin from Grosse Point or Lloyd Dobbler’s blood racing

I come back to the song and melancholy reverb of Gabriel’s lyrics

While dreaming of wanting to make my life’s goal the action of loving another person.

It’s when the music runs down my spine and the drum beats my heart

And a soulful voice sings my blues for lost love and desires for beauty and

Soft kisses and steamy windows and the rain falls on the roof and

The whispers and gasps fogging my visions of the most romantic movie

I have ever seen

Say Anything Song

Unlike Palin - I am going Vogue- watch out MADonna

Style

Fascination with clothing and the body is filling it.

Watch the way the clothing flows as the body moves.

Turn now turn now on the runway.

Obsessions with these forms of women

Reshaping rearranging then renaming

Creating new visions every season

Rarity or perfection to mark the times

Obscurity, conception in design or pattern

Turn now turn now on the catwalk.

Making faces with colors shocking pencils

Blush now facial, in and out, flashing bulbs

Now it’s clashing remember to be absolutely dashing

Heels stride along the stage clicking clacking

Turn now turn now.

Stand Still

Alone in the face of adversity,

Friends are not friends in truth,

When mob popularity overrides loyalty

The pressure of peers kills love.

Stand still in the multitudes

One among many, alone in the crowd

Another’s tastes, the others interests

What everyone else says to be true.

The echoes of their laughter

All about you, surrounding

Their faces become masks

Twisting and snarling in delight.

This joke, this song and dance

Self-gratification and hidden shame

Condemnation and leering sneers

Still used and never forgotten

Standing still as their words

Swirling like leaves around you

They cannot harm you nor can they stop you

Think what you want, and just be.

wordsplay

Words play havoc in my mind every time I sit
down to write them from time to time, bit by bit
until dawn and an idea forms  around the emphasis
on the latter piece of a dream, was it a dream
of just something in my head or I might have read.

Poems are like cesspools of drowning desires
choirs or moments that might have inspired me to
write anything  other than a feeling, looking for rhymes
rhyming rhythm where did I leave the thesaurus
before  I  need to add another word to  this chorus?

Poetry is often  forced out instead of finding  emotion
another way to avoid any notion of decency or drama
making up words would be easier than just looking for
another word that couples with Mama or comma, though
coma has no comparison with anything but  melanoma.

Words  playing with word-smithing, trying to make
this poem move to  make it shake, make me appear
that I am a writer or poet and  not just another snake
do  I have what it takes to not appear like  I needed
4 verses to justify my means to ends not end in 5
lines of sudden cussing  or curses?

A quick poem

Faster faster fast
so fast that the last bit is  already past.
quicker quick pretty darn quick
so quick it will never stick- could make you sick-
Round that  curve in 60 or less
gone in 30, back  in 10
Never was here don't know when.
Speeding like a thought on wing
words slurred by sound more of an idea than a thing.
I can type @ 15-20 WPMs,  How fast is this Poem?
I can't  even  counts that many REMS.

Song for my cousin Wayne.

I feel driven by the miles between us, now the distance is time more than miles.

You were my mothers other son, my other brother, the one I could look to in times

Of pain, and trouble.

Now who will I look to?

Who will I call when my mother cries, when clouds storm these Tennessean skies?

You were the best that Man has to offer, upon your shoulder you carried

The honor of family, the obligations of love and the respect of your cousins and

All your brothers.

Michael van Vuuren

I will truly long for you Wayne who I called Verlin.

Sunday, November 13, 2005

the passion is the love I have kept for you.

She kissed me softly silken and slick with warmth

and I returned the favor, newfound joy and old pain

amongst the memories; new hopes arose and

As I looked into her eyes emerald sunshine

sparkling with fire and passion, I found myself feeling

new love and new desire.

The kiss was the first in many years that lingered there

upon my mouth, on my face.

Later I watched her sleep on my couch, I was glad

that desire and lust had not driven me here

but a truer love than time could tell

or a heart could sing.

I love you I whispered, with all my heart,

All my soul , all my life and with all my love,

knowing that we are as one

heart and life

Now as sleep takes away my vision, I pray that

the passion is the love I have kept for you.

She & Me

                                                                             

Sexist, chauvinist, feminist

She drinks coffee and I tea.

She looks up from her magazine

As if to accuse me of its content

As I shrug offhandedly.

She swears,

I smile,

She is she and I am me.

Objectified, materialized, typified,

She smiles darkly while I grin sharply

She reaches out to grab my paper

Very intent to see the drawing

I have done so carefully

She mumbles,

I chuckle,

She wants to be me as much as I she.

Idealism, realism, everythingism,

She spills her coffee and my tea

She looks back at me smile dissolving

Like the stained ink on the table

Of my penned possibility.

She curses,

I sigh,

She is still she and I am still me.

SHADOW DANCE

Dance through shadows

feel the rhythm and beat

spin in darkness

dance now, move your feet.

Move like waves swift

to the shore

Move

until you dance no more,

Spinning

alone in the light.

Flashes of movement

in black of night.

Dance through shadows

under the starlit sky

power in motion

dance until you die.

Spend all your energy

'til your body is spent.

Mean what you mean

'til you know what it meant.

Dance like a dream

in waking sleep

feel your emotions

now let your heart weep.

Dance in shadows

toes to the floor

jumping to leap

hoping to soar.

Dance in the music

move with the sound

until the reason you dance

can be found.

One moment of glory

one dangerous chance

and in these shadows

you can dance.

 found her at deviant-art love it. hope photogrpaher won't object

Not that kind of net.

Safety net
Give me a word for love and utility
and I will write a poem about the honor of humility
Give me a name of the perfect mother
and I will show you that you can find no other
Give me a moment that is not filled with love or regret
and I will find you a mom without a safety net
Give me a day, a period of grace
and I will give you a poem in its place.

Running Amok

Running Amok

Here, there, anywhere

Ecstatic states of conscience

Racing out into the night

Blood chilling dancing on the streets

Cars burning hatred churning

Growing up in children

Watch the epidemic growing

Can’t see the future coming

But it’s darker than the sunless

Day as we run here, there, everywhere.

If my life were a poem…

If my life were a poem, then could it all be put down to metaphor and rhyme?                                      

From my birth to the day so present the distance seems immense, though an older man

might laugh at this announcement and tell me I had not gotten out of the garden gate yet.   My youngest years are like a legend is to the Bard, full of wonder, tears, and mystery.                                                       

So separate I have become from that small smiling child that the loss is like an abyss that     I have no bridge to cross it with, nor can I glimpse more than a shadow of the other side.

If my life were like a song, what instrument should I choose to play it with?

From my first love for a teacher in the first grade of my education then a tour guide in an Asian land and a girl named Kim in a southern darker place- I loved them all as fervently as any boy could. But it was the green eyed wonder that has been my chorus ever since           My early teens were fantasies, lies and soft touches of innocence mixed with lust                   such memories now glide through my head when at the time they boiled in my blood           humming such sweet tunes in the South African wild and summer nights

If my life were to be written down in prosaic form would it be read like fiction?   

From my torment and angst that a teen only would know, the fight of rage, the newfound maturity that comes from lost childhood, the forgetful father and a time of selfish gratuitous justifications.

Alas my youth were the stuff of horror as the fury and madness of it ran me like a wild beast. Remains of failed passion thrown at the feet of girls and their absent cruelty, the lost dreams and unrealized promises broken in hopes of childlike romances, stolen kisses and their distant laughter in the falling of leaves, such sadness and despair now as it cries for me of the past in this winter air.

If my life had been like a play, would this player have his moment on the stage?                   To strut and rant in sound and fury before someone asked him to exit the scene.                   Would I get to have my moment of truth with the Sheri I thought I knew instead of silent anxiety without ever feeling the softness of her lips, the smell of her golden hair or the fantasies of the shadows and the loss of time or reality that keeps her hidden there in my memories.

If my life were a poem and I was the one to write it could I be true?                                         Would it be clear full of simile and English in form, would the grammar flow free or be forced into shape? Would you read it and think that the mistakes were mine to make?                                                                                 

 If my life were a poem and was not just put down to my superstitions of fate would I always be remembered as the child who always arrived a little too late?

Two Friends

I have known a few good men.
I have had a few good friends.
I have walked in the company of men better than me
I have seen how they could make me free.

One found me in the darkness and brought me into the light.
Another showed me that even the moon shines in the night
One, I have known most of my days
From him I have learned to mend and mind my ways.

One has been my savior and my friend
the other has always been there for me in the end.
One has reminded me to be true
in all the things I say and do.

One has told me often of how precious life can be
celebrating all that is here and now until eternity
Both have been the best among all my friends
both are what I aspire to become again.

One has brought the other back home
He will look after me no matter where I roam
One I know I will see one fine day
but until I do, I can tell him that I still can love.

I loved you always, Ray.

Three Darker Poems on a dark & gloomy day

First there must be fear. “Not me, please not me.”

Then chase, no escape from his eyes

Confrontation follows no. I want to no.

But fear, the fear is choking all words away

The violence against the body

Punched heavy into the abdomen

Not enough air left in the lungs

Gasping and shock and denial

His hands knotting hair

Head pulled back, shoulders

Forced down to his excitement

Made powerful pushing hard

Against his denim jeans

Slapping starts as the back of his

Sweaty hands strikes both sides of the face

A cry whistles between loosened teeth

Again he hits and again as if he

Keeps time with the music of his screams

“Goddamn bitch! Fucking whore! Teasing slut!”

He violates privacy, he destroys hope

He is so cruel that tears are meaningless

Pleas and sobs become silent behind

The ruin of teeth

Heat is the discomfort of bumping the

Yellowing bruises that mark the skin

Like a map of where his hands have been

I feel loss but cannot know how much

I can only associate it with dying and heartbreak

The revulsion of self is like the rejection of God

Wounds that won’t heal remain fresh and open

Wanting death, hiding away in the shame

Tangle of sheets clutching in stark fear

That his hand is wrapping around my heart

Sorrow is the pain- sharp in my chest

Behind locked doors that afford no security

I try to imagine what rape is like

But I cannot see it through her eyes.

Lacey is the best (most positive, new, honest) source of healthy advice

Wikipedia + Rape= definition overkill but has helpful stuff

Talking about rape is always a touchy subject, apt to widespread misinterpretation. The hardest thing as a writer is being cuaght between rape fantasies and rape realities. I spend time thinking about how I would understand things as a woman as often as a man since I often write in both POVs. When I play video games I often choose a female character over a male becuase of the differences to me. I want to see how people treat you differently. The first time I did this was Tomb Raider- but the first real experiment into doing this was World of Warcraft (the deception was double edged- I learned from a man's POV how both women and men (boys and girls) treated someone they assumed to be a woman. I recognized that my experience would always be limited because there is always something unfathomable about being a woman versus a man). Years ago I wrote a serious satire about rape from a man's Point of view. It made a lot of women very umpset- the chief complaint was that it glorified rape. It was ironic as the poem was timely since over the last 2 decades I have watched rape awareness grow and get outstripped by the rape-exultation/ glorification on the internet primarily although we are seeing an increase as well in TV (primarily in shows on HBO/Showtime) and in books and comic books. Misconceptions and alterations occur daily on internet sites where one finds both good and bad, right and wrong representations of it mixed into anime, webcomics, blog fictions and fan-sites as well as porn in all its popularity out there on the net. 
What is worse is that Rape continues to occur among people who have little to no idea that they are participating/spectating while it is occurring since the lines of definitions have been blurred by all this input on the act of it.

Rage

Rage- in it there is no hope, no life.

I am lost, lost to all things in balance.

Like standing alone against the wind wailing

My voice is screaming out of control.

Only hate remains, survival versus fear.

Lost.

Lost to love beyond the despair that I feel.

Rage like a cry in the night

Rage, I see red then black.

Rage is the beast in the darkness.

I stand alone in the crowds

my blood boils, my tears are crimson

my anger causes pain.

My souls is shattered, nothing remains

Rage, rage against the anger

It’s in my head, in my heart.

Lost,

lost to love and no one touches me.

Kill,

kill the pain, the past, the loneliness.....

if you look at me and the beast stares back

then you may wish you were alone.

Definitions of rage

When I was a younger man/boy I experienced Rage. A state of anger unlike anything I had ever known and unlike anything I now know. It was impossible to control and the outcome was seldom good and almost always bad. I overcame it, poetically I laid that beast to rest- although I suspect it still lives somewhere deep down inside of me. Today I am not a violent person but I recognize that I could have been.

The darkness grows in the mind

something wakes then smiles in kind.

What can move me to write, to see,

this, the sacred side of insanity.

Darkness deepens moving the rage,

I scream, I cry, I am coming of age.

Rage is maddening; the beast calls my name,

Blood in my eyes burn, burning like a flame

"This is madness!" I cry in my pain

fighting this invasion in my brain

Rage now whispers words of the insane

Love has left, anguish only remains

Blood boils, scorching my veins

until this passion peaks then falls like rain

Torrents crashing to a sudden death

leaving me sobbing and gasping for breath.

Emptiness comes in a semblance of sleep

The fury is spent, silence of sheep

Now in my memory the rage burns

guilt like a glutton to twist and turn

The fear of its dreaded return.

Rage now retreats like that of a bad dream

A moment of madness, mist and steam.

My heart bleeds love, and then the moment is lost

Insanity, yes, this is the inevitable cost.

In the darkness the rage returns to the deep

and once again I wake to tremble, to weep

For the darkness takes the man out of me

I must forever watch or it will get free

leaving the beast howling in the night

to hunger, to run, and to fight.

Now consider, this and what I have said

and think on love, lost in the red.

On my 35th Birthday

How much have I changed since I wrote this at UT in the early 90’s, and how much have I changed since the last revision in ’99?

I have come a long way since my Bachelor’s, I regret every wasted opportunity but at long last I know the reasons for my loneliness and isolation. When I think back on those desperate days- my desperation- my emotional and mental anguish while I destroyed my body in safe sugar coated fashion; I wonder now how I survived. That and why my mother didn’t have me committed.

So here I am on the eve of my 35^th Birthday rewriting poems that once tore at my soul and cried out of my entire being. I am no longer depressed- though I still have depression. I am no longer the poet I thought myself to be. I would like to believe that I became more than I was- that I grew and matured at long last into the man that I always wanted to be and feared all the same.

This month I turned 38, and again here I sit now at my laptop pulling the final forms for print. I dread having to get all of the poems into universal font size. This compilation is in rough form, so endure knowing the book will look better. I hope the other poems in the reworking folder will join these soon. I cannot bear them in their current state so they remain unread unpublished.

For me the poems have changed because I, and the way I look at the world have changed.

For most of you, since you have never seen them before, it will be a new experience.

To all of you look for the deeper meaning rather than scratching but the surface of the rhyme!

Today, at least by American reckoning I am 43. Even the idea and meaning of all this has changed.

Blogging these works has changed them as they continue to change me.

Pieces

            Pieces

of memories   of you,

            pieces of lies   of life

and of our  love, mine

an unforeseen      truth

of         an        shattered

youth.

            Pieces of a heart

mine                yours

falling like snow         flakes

            colliding         then

coming            apart.

On the             ground

without            much of a

            sound.

            Pieces   of       pieces

like shards of  glass

            now     lost

to the               wind and

            the past.

Perchance to Dream

Perchance to Dream

If I dared to presume that the inner beauty

I can see hidden in your eyes

Would I be making something out of lies?

If I dared to write words praising

Your flush lips now smiling

Would I be fooling myself of your sincerity defiling?

But if I were to believe in the beauty

I have seen alive in you.

Would you turn your face from me?

And swear it was not true?

If I were to reach out to touch you cheek

Would you shrink away or refuse to look

At me or even speak?

If you were to sleep and in the night find death,

Would my words immortalize you in depth?

Or if it was I to die in the darkness of sleep,

Would you remember my words?

Would you think on me and weep?

To die in our sleep or to sleep in this dying

To wake in the midst of dreaming crying,

Calling out each others name

Are we forgotten, is this our hidden shame?

If I were to kiss your lips afire

With passion red, burning desire.

Would you laugh out loud in fear?

Or shiver at my touch, so passionate, so dear.

If I were to hold you close in sudden embrace

Would you push me away or

Unexpectedly strike me across the face?

If I were to love you without expectation or question

Would you still reject me at such an open suggestion?

If I were to ask you to return this my desperate love

Would you listen to the reasons I try to think of.

If I were to dream of you, my lady in moonlit splendor

So beautiful that no poet could capture nor artist render.

If I were to give you a rosebud so it would bloom

Would you keep it or would send it to its doom.

What I am saying is that I have fallen so much for you

It is something I have always wanted to do.

What I am really asking is for just a chance

To give me this moment for such a thing as a romance.

If I were to grow silent awaiting your answers to my request

Would my words rest in your heart, beating within your breast?

And if you were to grant me this chance to redeem

Than I would find hope the reason to perchance to dream.

On Passion

Passion

Death before dying

Like tears before crying

Doubts before trying

Like fears before lying.

Your cries echo in our darkness

Your face is painted with sorrow

Rainy blues bitter like my shame

Your tears burn as they fall on my skin

I want to tell you the truth

But it’s hidden in my lies.

I want to give you comfort,

But cannot as you cry

Passion without refrain

As water without rain

Profit without gain

As angst without pain

Every time you push me away

Solitude consumes our bed

My own lust betrays your love

Fear is breaking our hearts

Words have lost wisdom

Then fire loses its flame

Still changing still the same

Guilt is now my name.

This feeling burns in my throat

No words can escape

Nor from this written page

Nor from my mouth or fingertips

Paint

Broad sweeping strokes

To the left then back to the right

Spread in thinly definable flicks

Moving the hands up and down

Black on white splatters on canvas

Droplets falling face first

Cold like rain, thick as mud

Smearing dark smudges across

This work, the brush

Arcs in the air then streaks

Bright colors blue and green

Yellow curves up the red before

Diving back down into the paint