It may be the end of the world as I have known it.

 It was the Best of Times, it was the worst of times, it was like another collection of some cliched words that rhyme. 
It was like song lyrics that made no sense to anyone who wasn't singing them, full of silliness and shouted with zest and phlegm!
It was the end of the most unlucky year in recent history.

If you don't believe me- just see how many people didn't get married. It was like being 13 is something to be feared. Good thing the end of the world has neared. We gathered around a great big lighted ball and drop it while everyone cheered.

 We were just getting close to finding each other as our lives spiraled and slid out of view. I might have found the time to find someone just like you.
The Winter closes around my restless ghost and I look out into the coming night and know that it is for somebody like you I would miss the most. 

 As the world goes to hell around me and the chaos reigns supreme, I close my eyes and wonder if I will still see you when I make the pretense to dream.

I run out of smarter things to write and fall back on my favorite, screaming.

It works for me since I find that all is not worthy of redeeming in my life. I will look into the post apocalyptic world soon to come. Like the fading promises of the last days now lost to all but the stubborn some.

Had I found the words to use here at the end of this bleak December. I would remark on all of those brighter moments

I should remember.

As it is or as it was, I here on the edge of time, at the very border. As I look into the abyss of the unknown, I realize how much of my life has become-  

read the picture.
Now, I know what you are going to probably say.
Mike, it's not the end of the world, the sun is going to set and then it will just be New Year's Day.

Sherlock gets it. No argument here

I say wit and eye rolling aside

It's still over there and I stand at the bleak

and utterly unknownness of this 

vast Divide.

Feeling the Fool

This is the house that Jack built
before he went uphill for some water,
he probably never even realized that
he ever had a crown before Jill
went up there with him, before she
pushed him down.

This is the grave filled with guilt
where Jack did lie before the truth
came out about his trysts with
Jane. Jill will never be the same
Jill will never look the same
as she is now somewhat
insane.

Jill will never look at the well
quite the same way twice
Just another level of irony
from thinking that you should
have been made with something
more than just sugar
and spice.

Saying what we mean to say
takes something more than
foolishness or the just being
brave, some things aren't black
or white, sometimes it's easier
to stay angry and blame it
all on the knave.

It is so tragic, it's almost a crime

It's December 9th and I wonder if I should try to remember
where I was or should have been. I sometimes wish that what
I heard and what was seen would no longer be preserved
in my memory.
There were words spoken, promises that were broken
tears amidst the shouting, crying amidst the fighting
there may never be peace, no way of righting the
wrongs over the years.
It was raining almost always raining, the weather was draining
what little happiness there could have between us
remaining. I said, she said, I did, She did little before
the conversation went dead.
Why does it rain more on Mondays than any other day
why is it so bleak in so many little ways
today it's like there's more water falling down on me
than there are droplets flung up into the sky by the
humorless sea?

How can my life unravel in under an hour
how can anyone given such a dreadful power
so that my heart and hope and fear are in your
hands, I look to the west, the way the Sun went
out of my reach far away from my demands

Are you going to leave me after all this time
are our lives just subject to the verse and rhyme
it is so tragic, it's almost a crime
that the irony of all I have written
is like the missing happiness I thought
I had turned out to be sublime

The Sweet side of Melancholia

Some things cannot be forgotten, no matter your intentions, no matter how hard
you try to ignore or pretend that the feelings are gone, the feelings remain.
I woke into a morning that was just two shades brighter than the sadness
that I felt within. Why? I wanted to ask- to scream, why do I feel such
misery when the sky is clear? why do I feel a pain that can't be erased
with a pill, with a drink, with suffocation as if holding the pillow in place
will erase the tracks of the tears that I would have cried if the
persistent state of grief now that I feel that I am alone again as I have
always been. From birth until death, the moments that come with
seconds of joy ever surrounded by the crippling fear that the
love that holds off the darkness will not last long enough for me to
believe, ever to have believed that there would be a state that would not
be filled with regret that I said too little, that I had said too much, that I had
been too honest, that I had not lied enough, that I tried too hard,
that I had left here alone too often.
Some things are only remembered when the failure of what you can
accept becomes a reality that is more than anyone can take or even
want to makeup since you somehow feel that your pain is not valid
enough for anyone else's pity even your own. That life has not dealt
you a fair enough hand; that dramatic irony was meant only for you
as a reminder that you were too blind to see that she was right there
in front of you, that her betrayal of what you thought most important
was not as important as getting in one more I love but exhaustion
overtook you and the sleep that followed promised relief but gave you
nothing but dreams that were not as good as you would have hoped
and you wake to the silence of the empty bed and empty sheets that
strike you all at once as shallow and cliched as knowing that you weren't
the first to feel them...
When does it occur that this is what you had wanted when you turned
away from the light, were the shadows going to welcome you back to
the comfort of despair, did she deserve that lack of trust- did you not
want the happiness that you thought you deserved or was there
something more than then the melancholy that still persists every
time you close your eyes.
I still close mine.

Throwing Stones

Obviously I don't know what I am talking about because
my mind was made up before I opened my mouth and 
your objections, hell your opinion- took backseat to my ego
while I droned on and on, and then having made my point
I slammed the door in your face.
Feelings?
What do I care for your feelings if they aren't the ones
I want you to have because it's not about what you think
I said that was so offensive but rather what I think I meant
and no, your tears are little more than a distraction from me making my point before I crush what little hope you had for us being friends.
Throwing Stones?
No, I don't think that I have heard that phrase...enough lately.
Obviously I never just throw stones. I like to think that I am completely fair in judging you since your opinion stinks and the fact that you need to be kind is just a thinly veiled act of weakness that I want no part of because sticks and stones do break bones, but words are far better weapons if you want to crush someone's soul.
I am rubber and you're glue, whatever matters bounces off my ego and sticks, like a rusty knife, in you. 
One day those stones are going to hurt those of you who threw them more than your targets who you have bruised black and blue.
One day those stones will bite back and your words will fall on deafened ears who will not stand by while you assassinate anyone who disagrees with you.
if you doubt what I say, go ahead and prove me untrue.

It's December and Advent has begun.

I am thinking about how much poetry I am going to try to write this month.

I am going to do another A Poem a Day in May next year. Which was harsh.

My favorite youtube singer/songwriter is back and I am pumped to compose like mad.

I wanted to post her most recent. This one is a good starter if you haven't heard her before

She's got an Indiegogo Campaign for her debut album. I signed up for the 8 disc signed perk.

I am a nut. She's a muse, my muse.

Danna Richards Debut Album

Go taken a listen.

But I digress. 

So if depression doesn't get the better of me, my relatives don't have to commit me to spare their own lives when I decide it would be better if I had been an orphan with no family, THEN

I will be writing more poetry.

I almost wish I had done this for Advent, I am late by 2 days already (The PADIM was also late).

I am just not a very Christmas Jolly old soul.

Still a plan for next year.

This year I am resolving to write more poetry in December.

I guess we will have to see how it goes.

Thanks for coming here to read my work.

I hope it has helped all of you as it helps me each day.

If you just stumbled in and are confused. This is Poetry According to Mike.

I am Mike.

Welcome.

Links to prior works on your right.

I also have a odd menagerie of other blogs over there.

What is Lost

*listen to it as you read mine.

What is Lost...

It's sometime in the morning, somewhere before the dawn

breaks into the twilight that comes after the moon

passes from the cloudy skies obscuring the stars

that were there before I went to sleep knowing that

there would be something I had lost when the light

comes creeping into my bed room and I can still

stand the empty sheets

the place where you would have slept, 

the fears that you could have kept 

the moments of doubt that were left

are all I have now here bereft of 

my tears like echoes of "I love yous".

It's like memories of a relationship in my dreams

falling soft like feathers fluttering through my mind

like the words that fall from my lips like drops of rain

meanings without implications, desires midst the need

that you wanted from me and were lost when I stopped

trying to fight from the minute that is all I have left 

to blame in the end

All the ink and all the paper on the table

all the justifications, all reasons to enable

all the maybes and all the endearments fail

I am alone and I cannot offer any apology

that is not static, repeated or stale.

the ones that I have loved are now all that

I have lost, it wasn't old nor was it anything

that I believed to be true- 

it was more like my whisper that I wanted to

to find what was constant, what could have

been as simple as saying

I love you.

The Love Song of Albert Hempstock the 45th

I sometimes dribble a dibble when I quibble with my one truer than blue love.
She is the most highly engaging hovering presence around me more than above
I and we are amidst such amore' and such- words fail to be write
it is the love song I want to sing except that I get confused although
mostly and really only at night.

I often sit around piddling about some thoughts so base as to be fiddling
with a verse or three or four or five, which is to say that it is more middling
between constraint and conscience that I have found to be my life.
She and by that I mean we are so close to each other that I could almost
say I want you so to become my wife.

I play harp to the violin and piano to the great big blue bassoon
she laughs at my antics as I declare my feelings almost in tune
under the stars and her window which is to whom I proclaim
such hot and firing, filled with utmost desiring, the mass of this passion
which is more than a moon nor whatever is in a name!

So he sings of his love song into the darkness of night
that lover of love, the writer of passion and delight
Alfred Hempstock, in love with an amusing myth
that we all can find things best left undefined
this is the 45th suitor after all and thus he
must be forwith.

So go get the girl, it's almost a cliche
or something almost sexist, yet pardonable
before the twilling shrilling twilight
bleeds forth the lost romances
that songs often replay.

These are the words that I want you to hear

Sometimes I find the need of a certain darkness to fill my dreams
sometimes I lose myself in the mists that fill the spaces in between
sleep and waking thoughts that consume the presence of my days
shattered plans in some many frustrating frivolous furious ways
now I shudder, the cold of night creeps into my restless sleep
like the memories I want to forget like the pain and pleasure
that is mine and only mine to keep.

I find the solace like songs that are filled with mood and with words
a movement without substance, a state of being without the absurd
I cry without the display of the burning of my salty tears
something is forgotten like the passage of all those years
between what I thought was the truth and what I knew
as the lack of patterns in my youth, it is the method with
which my own words can play at these poetic attempts to attend
to which  that I can express with my meaning in hopes that the
final lines of which can hope to make amends
to guess my purpose is scribbling along this virtual page
of my hopes, my longings, my happiness and my rage.

Sometimes I feel like I can run a million miles into the black
with red marks like scratches crisscrossing other scars on my back
I sometimes find my rhythm in the reason of smaller things
like the delicate promises of hopes with its fragile wings
and then my heart find the words that can make it sing
and then my heart sings and I know that it was more than
some fancy that I once had, that I have substance in my writing.

I look to the sunrise and coming warmth of your touch
touch me now with whispered caresses that could mean
so little but still hold weight in the what matters so much
I wish you were here in my life and in my waiting bed
or that I were with you where ever that is instead.

Now I am here while you are still there
I want you to know that I still care
even between the light and the darkness of fear
these are my words, this is what you want to hear.

It's like another song

It's just like another song I heard somewhere in time
along the pathways that lie tangled in my memory
like roots entwined with my desire and need to
really move along with the chords of the guitar
that plays in my memory, and the tears that crawl
along my cheeks as the pain burns them for the loss
that comes with the end of friendships and the absence
of love in my life. I want that Fast Car,
I want to drive to fast that I can escape my guilt
at not being strong enough to endure the rejection
that comes with miscommunications and mood swings
that drive meaning and consistency like music chords
falling like rain drops from the strumming of the last guitar
that can take my heart away
to another place, so I can forget her face
so I can tremble in the space of a few lines
of poetry trying still to find some measure of
what comes and goes as my life without the
thrill of touching someone else and find myself
alone in the long night. It's like having a few
dreams that are left on these pages like the
remarks that come out whenever I find the need to write
that remind me that I had a moment when there was
something more than the empty pavement that
make up the backroads of my mind.
don't leave me here, don't leave me behind

I remember when we were together
was that happiness? was that what
the older folks call good times
among the tragedies that accompany
the best minutes between one word
and another rhyme?

I will do all this again tomorrow

So now the darkness finds meaning in the emptiness of definition
now that the truth is without a doubt somewhere beyond my reach
now that the night has no stars to speculate on our fates with nothing
to pass down judgement on, nothing to teach, nothing to preach
forever is relative only to the means and the ends we are willing
to sacrifice all in hopes that our futures are no longer within reach.

So now the moment comes when even the music can no longer fill
our souls with light and hope and only the despair of knowing
that you quit to early is growing as are as sure as our fears are
becoming transparent like the blotches of ruin are finally showing
in our resolve to find answers to questions unasked and thus
unanswered untold no longer from my lips like lines of empathetic
poetry flowing.

So now each of us are as isolate as the pin pricks above in heaven
now that the gods have fallen and their myths are no longer missed
like the rain upon which like many small chills passes untouched
unkissed, I look out from beyond this our solitude removed to the
last hope fading from where our loves and hatreds are summarily
dismissed as vague superstitions riding piggyback upon such empty
sentences as "I need you" or "I can no longer live like this always unhappy
always pissed.

So now I find that my words fall on the ignorance like snow falls
down in a winter discontented between people who do not hear.
Only to find the shocking melancholy of the many things I will
one day find that I fear. There is no rudder to my purpose but it
matters less in the shallows that I can no longer steer my purpose
to find the meaning as it falls upon the defeated hearts and the shuttered
ears.

I look to the horizon even as the bible would look unto these hills
is there help to come from where I wrote some words of sorrow
will there be enough comfort in the comportment of wisdom that
I can neither steal nor borrow, there is only this moment in the starless
night before the sun will rise as our mother turns forever or next to it
again even as my pen stills in anticipation that I will do all this again...
tomorrow. 

For JKC. A moment.

I once came across a silvery stream
that led me here to this waterfall in my
dream
The pools were deep and filled with fish
the rocks were mossy and smooth with
lavender's kiss.
The place was filled with shadowed delight
the sounds filled my soul with the bountiful
sight
Gaia's green surrounded me there
would I remain? would I dare.
The fairy's flush, the thrumming of the thrush
the splash and crash of the wet rapid rush
a moment I spent there one afternoon
was like the memory of you and I
under the Harvest moon.

Time is Immaterial It said to me under this tree.

  It's vast stretch goes beyond the horizon of my imagination
reaching out of the present darkness into the fading light.
  It's reach encompasses all I hold dear, as if there is no
distance between the dawn and coming of the night.
  When we walk here in the mists between the worlds of water
and the shattered worlds scarred by eternal fire
  There is little more than this a few words to mark down on my
page lost beyond some mysterious hint of desire.

  Were we friends in ages past, as we wandered among the stones
far and near, wide and narrow, from pillar to post?
  This ever present war we are fighting with our lives flutters
like some moth holding steady between mortal and ghost.
  This is to you my ever present friend haunting me as often as
any memory can do as I shuffle along this mortal coil.
  Watch and wait in the shadows ever patiently persistently
hating what cannot be loved like a machine with no oil.

Now this poem is done
Now there are only the words
Now is the time of the midnight sun
Now I can be somewhat absurd
Now I know where we begun
Now I know that you have heard
Now I can see beyond all my yesterdays
and tomorrows are little more
than the fading lights in disarray
like the mists, like the view of the shore.

Just another teenage love poem

Let's set the mood.

let the wild insane guitar riffs began.

When I was young I used to think that love was meant for everyone
But those days are gone.
Wow, that is a cliched as you can get. It is isn't just moody but when
you want to write about love and failure to love, you have to give as
good as it can get.
Poems like songs about love and sadness, Hope and madness
truth or dare, find a bottle to spin it, kissing in a closet then hug
pretend to confess.
Our love, that sweet emotion that messes with the mind and
confounds the soul. Is this all we can show that enough spilled
ink that is now being replaced by desperate text messages
scrawling misspelled conjectures of passion unfulfilled.
When I was younger than all of this, I found as if by chance my very
first kiss. it was too much like a fairy tale, much has changed
in life and relationships. I remained true to my beliefs that
hope and promises would not fade not break that her words
would prevail.
Even with all the phrases being restated and recreated.
Even with every movie being remade and desecrated.
Even if you have heard it a hundred times or written it into
a thousand rhymes.
Even if you I say I love you, he say I love you or she says I love you.
It doesn't stop it from being, at the end of all things, tried and true.
It doesn't stop us from saying it again as one thing about Love is
that it is forever fresh and eternally new.

So is the pain and the tears and the days of  sleepless despair
over the loss and heartbreak that follows poems around like
a storm clouds in the melancholic air.

This poem is all about you...except that it isn't

This is my life, this is the story of my life, this is really only about one particular way I used to look at my life.
This is a poem about you, Sherry, except that it really isn't.
You know the first time you tapped me on the shoulder to ask me if I played D&D and what that was like and my heart sang because the most beautiful girl in the world had just talked to me and I tried in vain of something witty to say and all I came up with was a clumsy shy yes, "yes I do?"
No you don't. 
For one thing it took a boob and nose job, dieting, working out like a crazed person before you started talking about being as beautiful as I had always believed you to be.
For another thing, you were so smart except when you weren't and that was probably because they good looking boys only paid attention to you when you were whacky and acted like a dumb blonde.
It always confused me to no end why you would stop being the girl I was so in love with and put on this other girl like squeezing into a pair of too tight blue jeans. Always ready to be the butt of a joke, always bursting at the seams.
This poem is more than what it seems, it is also how you stomped all over my dreams.
At best this is a rant about how one sided the biggest and often most important thing to happen in my life was. It is also the sad understanding that how overrated my credit was where your failing were concerned. The truth be told, you probably never even knew that I sang every love song with your name interjected in place of Jenny, Kelsey, Melany, and yes Sherry. 
This poem is all about you- except that it isn't. 
It's about me.
it's about me throwing away the most precious emotion I had to offer any other person in hopes that you would stop one day and like the storm clouds clearing up in the sky, drop the milk in the middle of the kitchen and say to no one in particular. "Of course, now I see!"
It not about you, save that you broke my heart more times than I can count and turned me out into the night to face my utter failure to grow beyond you and find someone more deserving, someone actually worth all the tears and suicidal tendencies.
It's not your fault, no one deserves such sweet empathy.
It's not your doing, if you want to look at it that way, it's my problem really.
This poem is all about you...except it is really about the lack of you and me.
There is no way I can hope to make you pay
just like there was never more than the few moments we played D&D. 
This is a poem about a very near thing to tragedy-
but thankfully this is a poem that is not really about you.
It is a poem about realizing there was more to life than one unhealthy love, that there is more than all this to be.

Trio

Her heartstrings thrum as her bow bends the music to the crescendo.
The shrill feelings flow with moments of joyous pain, filling the room sweet
sad refrain.

The violin sings its melancholic lullaby until time stands almost still while the world slides
on by

His breath roars into and out of the cold brass pipes

an echo of an echo,

as if arrogance could be removed in a swipe 

 Replacing the metallic presence sounding deep down inside this horn.
The staffs and clefs reverb their disdain and their scorn.
No trumpet can ever hope to replace,

 The solid winds that the hornblower summons to fill this space

 The piano with its multitude of ebon & ivory keys stands between the two egos like a storm over ships
on the tossing seas.

Hear it rumble the bass,

Hear it roll over the chords

It surrounds the players

in its virtuoso, it knows its own reward.

The best of its companions, it is simply grand

perfectly playing

 second or third chair in the band.

Each of these pieces are as brilliant

in performance of their own part

The trio is it's own symphony

the triumph of the Art.

SCAT - This is one way I feel

Scat
This is one way I would express what I feel
in a completely Ski bi di bi do bap bap doo
way. It's like making noises when there is just nothin'
left to re re be ba do ba do to say.
When I cannot say I love you, I just go all wa wah 
I dada dah lah de dah rah until the words fall
free from my lips

This is the way I sing to you, as my minds races
around allalala reppidy do ve doo as I watch you
move in time and my heart does back flips
Shimming around in that dress that rides along
with my imagination to the swing of of your ooh 
lah lah hips.

This is all I can manage to getta gotta getta go
run and my tongue thins thick between my teeth
as I try again to shebe do dah alla mo da sing
the way that the masters sang until the music 
comes along and I hear you memory slides
between the notes that my scat is trying to play

skip bip bip blip as my heart rattles out in time
to my voice. Ski bi bi bing I skip across the stage
in defiance of gravity, in defiance of my age
I will ski daddle with the best of them as you
move in time to the ski da da bah bah bada bull
lull of this the music of my mouth.

It's always like this when I see you in my dreams
in my arms, like a vi da voom kind of ski bi bi de
run across the room until the music takes away 
all that is real as it see see seems. This much is my song
this much is true. If I can do then so can you.

Dedicated to the Scatman and Sinatra.

sometimes it pays to be inconsistent

Sometimes it is not unusual to find that consistency is not
the laissez faire- in fact now one is surprised or even
cares when your communications ramble in and out
of texts and messages from phone to PC.
Sometimes I find it unlikely that any conversation ever ends
since you hard make it worth the effort to make some
impish amends when you interrupt or go silents for a 
few acts or days as that may depend on whether you remember you were talking to him or her and if you intend to leave it open
to some further reason to return to the point
Sometimes is is a play on words to see if anyone gets the point
without getting their collective noses out of joint, I mean its
more a game to play in between posts than search for another word to rhyme like anoint. If you can work that one in here you just won
it unless you remember that the point was to not be consistent
to any extent, then you would appreciate what this poem really
meant.

There's no Anecdote

So here I sit here considering what happened that would make me want to tell the story of how it had to happen. There's no Anecdote.
I met her on the subway or maybe it was the noonday train? It was mostly sunny that morning, that is to say that as far as the cloud cover went it wasn't likely to be spoiled by the apparent lack of rain. There was some flowers growing wildly from a crack in the sidewalk, her shoes were scuffed from running, her socks were white matching the graffiti on the walls behind that were marked with messages written in chalk.
Did I remember her smile, her lack of feminine shape, the old coat she had slung over one shoulder or the way her hair caught it the reluctant breeze of the street? How is it that you remember that she was flat chested or narrow hipped or had all her teeth, but not the color of her eyes as she glared up at my surprise that I would be fortunate again to find her down there to meet?
It is really only happenstance that make it feel like the Russian roulette equivalent to the randomness of chance that I would think to take down anything on note.
You see I was there. I did not really think I would find that she would care. As I said before there really is no story here, just a matter of the lack of it- there's no anecdote.

She glared up through the bangs of her brown hair that I could almost imagine she blew in puffs of righteous fury as if I really had some nerve to be standing there. I remember trying to smile because I wanted to love her just in the moment between opportunity and  the sudden melancholy of future despair. There was no means of imagining a future for us, I was old- she so young that only those who would declare us both perverse could find it in the tiny chilled hearts not to utter some disparaging words like the unwished for curse as if that would somehow clear the matter or even the air.  I know she looked at my lack of taste in clothing and then with just something like a trace of a gentle sneer moved forward to dismiss me from her path and exile me to fall in with the rest of the world that she would reject out the mock casualness of someone too often hurt by the cruelty that comes from passion and fear. For some reason, I cannot begin to fathom even in seconds of fragile lucidity I reached out and softly touched her hair. She froze like the cliched deer caught in the nude in the headlights of some pervs imagine to mouth "Oh shit" unmoving in her desire for flight in a moment when against all reason of defiance she did, in fact, find some miniscule reason to believe that I could be so bold- that I would even dare.

She said nothing as she reached up to my hand as if to strike it from her presence like some tentacle of disease before it could infect the space that surrounded her face. But she just brushed the lock back into it's designated  place. Her hand collided with my own as if by accident and the contact stopped time, as if the science of this crumbling spot of concrete could no longer stand to hold our collective feet. My heart slammed into my ribs as our fingers crossed and i want for the touch to last for the rest of the day, for the rest of my life in the minute or so to transfer the body's heat. Her eyes went wide at the moment when her lips unpainted push her grimace back in search of an impish grin. our pupils met with such force that my breath sucked itself back into my lungs and then she spoke the only words that I could remember to this moment when I could write them down in digits of ecstatic tappings- she said 'For the Win." Then our hands grasped hands. We breathed as one. Science lost meaning and our thoughts spun away like scattered things fleeting. Such was the impact our our two hands at this meeting. I wanted to say something profound as my brain started screaming some words that failed to articulate what we both must have been dreaming. Then her hand slipped away as our shoulders bumped me back onto the crumbling ruin of the city's scene and i whirled to face her smile fading away like the lasting echoes of the now forgotten words I wanted to speak as if I could not begin to say as if the die had been cast or the ballot not even dropped in for a vote.

As I said before and will write it down for all to read. It was so fast there was no time for it to be even a story. It wasn't something I can declare for what it was. There's no anecdote. 

Running Amok

“to make a furious and desperate charge"

Here, there, everywhere.

It's somewhat ecstatic, 

fairly erratic, like conscience 

racing out into the night

yelling like a hooligan

in and out of sight.

Blood chilling on the street

cars are burning, windows

are crashing as chaos reigns

complete like horrible children

throwing tantrums for whoever

could be watching it all on TV

I call you from the kitchen, my

love, come and see

It's an epidemic of insane distortions

like a movie out of all reasonable

proportions, I cannot see a future

but it like a day without the sun

like there is no way around the madness

nowhere for you to run.

untitled

Matthew Lillard is in my Biology class
will he scream? Will he dance?
Where is his buddy Prinz Jr by any chance.
He might be going by another name
but I am sure its him all the same.

Matthew Lillard in my Biology lab
I can't get to leave he doesn't have a pass.
Now he's telling everyone about his fame
but I am onto his little game
will he scream? Will he pout?
Looks like finding Sean Michael Scott is
probably out.

There was snow.

As I lay dying in the snow, I could see the bleakness of the sky empty of life save for one solitary bird flying across my vision like a soul preceding my own.

I can remember how cold I felt, as if the snow were the warmth of my mother's embrace before I would be born into the coldness of the morning that seeped into my joints.

I felt the blood more than saw it as it abandoned my body, warm but cooling as it rushed out of my wound into the crushed ice around me.

I felt so alone as I waited for death as if he were an old friend that I no longer talked to, but knew would eventually come around if I would just wait long enough.

Then you were there running into my field of vision, the scream upon your lips like the shrill sound of emotion torn from a lover that has been forgotten in the past.

As I lay dying in the failing of the light. I found that I would not pass from this world alone. You were there and your touch reminded me of how we had lost so much.

Time slips aways from us, hours become seconds as you pull me

out of the cold wash that I committed the last of my life to meet the coming darkness, to greet my end.

I can remember the greenness of your eyes as they begged me to live, your tears are hot where they fall onto my skin

Is this what love feels like I wonder unaware that I have spoken the words through my parched lips until you blur my eyesight with the proximity required of a lasting kiss.

A Kiss before dying

I remember the burning pain

and blood

on my hands, my blood

I remember tears yours

and mine

on my face amidst your arms

I remember whispers

and snow stained

red, crimson red

I felt hands holding

tightly

I asked for a favor of

you

dishonored and pleading

with a god as cold

as the bloody snow

I asked you for a kiss

then moist heat

then nothing...

Notes: I wrote this in College when I still thought I would want to write under a pen name, utter foolery on my part.

I wanted to call myself The Knight of Shadows as if there was some mission I could pronounce with that label, as if it would have some meaning.

I wrote this after watching Dangerous Liaisons with John Malkovich. It's from a scene in the movie.

Sometimes I feel like a man...sometimes I don't

It's like when you are deep into a discussion and you forget what you were talking about because some woman walks by and you wonder what she was like when the two of you were in high school but then you realize she wasn't old enough to get out of the crib when you were in high school and beside that you were an awkward geek with no life beyond the confines of Dungeons & Dragons.

It's like realizing that every TV show you care about came after or before everyone around you and you are not sure anyone if that means that you are too old or too young or simply just the weirdest person you have ever known.

It's like walking down the street and seeing your reflection in a store window, you stop and stare because while you know its you you can't believe that you got so old or fat or bald or all three and then you just decide to go back to your imaginary self because you can still outrun the torch carrying mobs and rescue the girl.

It's like talking to a group of kids and realizing you've read more books than any of them and the joke you just made is so far beyond their experience that the only one laughing now is you and you don't know if it is from your humor or the despair that you crossed the invisible lines between coolness and creepiness and you almost want it back (whatever "it" is or at least was anyway).

Sometimes it's liking some woman only to find out she is really a girl and then not knowing what to say except something stupid as I figuratively backpedal for the door or shore depending on how deep I was about to get.
Sometime it's like finding a book really enjoyable and then trying to talk about it my an elder who then looks at you and says "why are you wasting your time on a kid's book?"

Sometimes I feel like a man...until an adult comes along and reminds me that Men don't spend the time I spend, read the things I read, watch the movies I watch, play video games, dream about love and compassion nor yearn for the unrealized dreams that only I seem to have.

I know I am not unique and then sometimes I don't
feel like a
man.

At the End of the Long Road

I walked the long road alone. No one followed even as I followed no one in particular

There was a lonesome wind that wailed off into the distance beyond my eye sight

beyond the edge of the horizon, on the cusp of the morning light

I looked back to find that even my footprints faded in time to the sounds of my feet.

I looked ahead for something called hope, for someone I had hoped to meet.

I am alone I said. There was no answer not even from the dryness between my lips

I am alone I cried out there in the world as if something in my soul had died

it wasn't completely true, so even as I said the words I knew that I had lied

all along my journey, there was someone who walked unseen at my side

I look to my old friend now as we stand at the end of this long road

was it some unspoken agreement, so sort of honor or unknown code?

My friend looks at me and smiles with certainty of  the invisible smile

I have been with you since you were born, I am with you every mile

We two are as one, sometimes you lead, sometimes I follow

Something is inside you, something sad, something hollow

I feel the distance fill me with a sudden sense of loss, of sorrow

don't fear- my friend says- there will be a moon to walk under tonight

nor waste your tears as it will only be cloudy with strands of sunlight tomorrow.

Flat Batteries

My car wouldn't start today.
It sputtered and died, who really cares anyway
it's not like I can get a jump for it
its not like I should give up and quit
I want to use the F word but lacked any desire
beside I am singing to the freaking choir.

My car up and died this morning like a boss
I almost felt something about feeling a loss
it wasn't so much a lack of desire to scream
as a reluctance to make it more than it would seem
It's just an old car with an older battery
it's not something worthy of much concern
or anything I would take more as flattery.

I was late to work and it only mattered to me
that is all it is and then in this flippancy lies
the final irony.

What to write on Wednesdays?

It is a conundrum of the first order when I sit here in front of the this display
and confess with some dismay that I often come up dry on words to say
when faced with what to write on Wednesday.
I could blame Odin for this disaster, but it's only partly his fault for I must seek
to master the words to express my thoughts in the faces of smoke
and of plaster all the while looking for a way to find some words to
conjugate into a poem or haiku on Wednesday.
It is too late for the Japanese inspired verse, I have gone of my character
limit already to close to the point for it to remain adverse
so now I must recite my motto, yes even rehearse it over and over
again instead if admitting to the chaotic state of this my language
universe.

For Jordan, upon her Birthday

I almost never do this, I would like to say, this way I can cover up that
I almost always do exactly that, but now there's less dismay.
What is it, you may ask?
It is that I occasionally dedicate my poetry,
I answer without dropping my mask
of pure innocence and guileless devotion.
It is that simple- well almost as simple as counting the fish
in one of the oceans.

I almost never tell anyone I love them, it is often that way, since they
tend to freak out and read things and emotions into that simple
statement without delay.
Why is that, you might question me?
It is who I am or at least who I want to be.
I answer from behind that tree down the road, at the end of the lane
It is that simple- well almost as simple as trying to convince
the person I said it to that I am in fact quite sane.

I almost never write like this, after all what would people say
I also declare that I prefer the page and ink over this textual
input onto the liquid crystal display.
Who is it, you may think to inquire
It is everyone and someone that holds within the power
to drive my passions to fuel my fire.
It is simple as wishing for things that no one wants to understand
well, almost as simple as time and your expression might demand.

I don't claim to know anything or everything about you
if I was to be so bold, it would be clear that I am as untrue
as the rain when the sun is shining, as these words are
what will remain after I finish this poem that is only for you
with the little skill that is found in this my simple design
as complex as you construe my intentions try to define.

Finding Meaning in things with no Meanings

Where is the sense of things as we walk through this life?
here once was a man who sought out a single honest soul
in all of Athens, from what I hear he is there still,
dragging his lantern with it's batteries flat,
being trailed after by a bedraggled dog
with its tail between its legs.

If there had been any truth out there in this wide world
it has been sold and repackaged as something far more
appealing like twinkies or spam or freedom of speech.
If there had been a definition for practicality or even
a dogmatic sense of personal responsibility-
its been outsourced to a callcenter in Indiana
staffed only by dispassionate computers who
are two upgrade short of a human heart even
though no one has ever even gotten a patent
of such crap as empathy or compassion.

Have I found something to believe in that will
define my purpose in the grand scheme of things?
Then answer would be yes, I have but then
I would have to admit that maybe I was wrong
in believing that there was a purpose or meaning
anyway, what was the question exactly?

Oh you meant to ask me if I believe in Love?
then my answer would be, not yet, it has
not happened to me so far so I feel that
I am unqualified to quantify such a vague
and opportunistic idea besides I am still
busy trying to acquire the dream that the
world has insisted I should have pursued
all this time instead of asking such silly
questions like finding meaning in
things with no meaning.

It Always Rains on Sundays

It's like wondering if Noah is still getting a good laugh from that unpronounceable mountain

where the Ark might still be- because we are probably going to need it real soon.

Rain on Sundays are like God reminding the world that Saturday is really his day 

and that we have forgot that and just about everything else He told us to do

and be and be not.

It's like asking for change from a bored store clerk when there is nothing on TV

and going to the quick mart at midnight because you're afraid of going to sleep.

There was anything you really wanted to eat anyway and the coffee has gone 

stale beyond what sugar and creamer can revive or even a coke could resurrect.

It's like waking up alone in a bed that you were sure was just occupied by

someone that you loved or at least you were pretty sure you loved, that is-

of course, before the moment of realization that you have always been alone

and time has become meaningless with the certain understanding that 

the isolation is driving you crazy and it is something that even having a 

cat or dog won't solve.

It's like not wanting to leave the house in the morning, just go back to bed

and bury yourself in the pillows and sheets and defy the sunlight which is

not going to come out today anyway so what is the point of all of it?

There are reasons that life is this way but as far as you can tell you had

nothing to do with it or at very least are unwilling to admit that anything

could have been done to alter it in the first place.

It's like the chocolate being so sweet that it changes everything it is in

to some acidic miasma of disappointment and resentment that constantly

boils in your blood at the unfairness that consumes every waking moment

of your life and the only minutes of lucidity that you have is when you

stop long enough in the sunlight to understand that you are lost and lonely

and sad and since it is still raining you know that you are damned regardless.

It's like thinking the person that looks out from your dreams is crying 

until you realize that their tears are only raindrops running down the 

window pane separating you from their sanity.

It's like rain on Sundays, always raining, always.

Well, Technically it will be an Ode to you Adam.

This is not a list of what you should know about on turning 40.
This is more from one man to another, from one with virtual success
rather than actual success. So technically it will not contain sage wisdom
about how life could be or even should be as it is not much more than
finding out that life and the last 28 years has only made you less of
a stranger to me.
This is not a parcel of advice where upon the attainment of adulthood
mirrors anything more than the doctrine of understanding and peace
that could change only the small things that have happened across the
vastness of the Atlantic Ocean between what was and what is- as far as
you or I can see from a brief intersection at a school out in the world
far from the things we have understood.
Is it some Galactic irony that we, who were strangers from our first greeting
should find ourselves together again in the field that makes us similar almost
the same were it not for the insane need to laugh in the apparent face
of destiny which shouts out to us- NOW SEE HERE! I bring you a unity of
purpose in the very medium that you two are once again meeting!
I cannot pretend to know you from the data that is stored in our similarity
nor can I pretend to understand that we might even share in the plainness of
our common mediocrity. If you don't have the common ground that surrounds
us think in empirical terms of technology and the world wide web that laughs
at our collective fates, with such hilarity
I could try to spell it out for the sake of my idiosyncratic etymology
but then the effort would have be wasted in the words that I am writing
in your honor to say that we turned out somewhat more similar than any-
thing I could have ever guessed possible at our first meeting in the school
from which we both sprang and reconnects our cables like packets of small
bits and bytes making up this poem's mythology.

I would that I had known you much more than probably is better
but then it is not in our cards, or expansions slots to betray this
little idea of mine down by a code to the everlasting letter.
I might have this- all of that to say
although I doubt it would have fit
into the box provided on this your
40th birthday.

For Adam Egdall (you asked for it).

Superheroes are Hard to Find

Out in the Darkness far above the street lights

we are the shadows, moving like ghosts into the night
we all want some measure of justice that we define
when life and death are at stake, when we cross the line
between good and evil to find the moment of truth
like when boys leave behind their ideals from their youth
like when we stop to gaze upon all we have done
down onto the actions that matter, those that we shun.

Choices are to be had, decisions that have already been made
do you stand out in the strength of your convictions
do you question the laws that everyone says must be obeyed/
Are you the hero of the moment, a matter for depiction
or are you something more than this our present fiction?

Run in the Shadows or Run in the light
this is our struggle, this should be our fight
Will you right the wrongs to be found
or will you wait until there is no more bravery
or even the freedom to say I can stand my ground

Take up your cause and wave it like a war flag
for it is the glorious combat that make what you
carry more than just a honor, more than just a rag
Stand up and be counted one of the brave and the few
against the world's expectations, be something original
be something new

Because if you don't, if you get left behind
you will become just another wannabe hero
that lacks any metal, or steel or even a mind
It is true when they all stand together and tell you
that Superheroes are hard to find!

There was a time once

There was a moment when the Sun broke through the clouds and light fell upon
the world like it does a thousand times since I have begun to walk upon this my
mother Earth.
There was a day, when I looked for a puffy white cloud floating in the sky like
some fantastic dragon lazily gliding by as I gazed up at her passage from the green
grasses upon which I lie.
There was something in the way the time passed that was as if my memory came
to life around me and I saw friends and family that normally I would never have
a chance to see.

It was on a day like this, so many days gone by that the years have faded like
sepia painted photographs pressed into a dusty unopened album taken off the
old wooden shelf to be revealed to a descendant that has yet to come to be.
I saw my ghosts and illusions of the loves and losses come drifting by under the
sun, under the motion of the birds moving like dreams upon the winds
of what I find to be true in this my mind's eye.
I called for my mother as she came running through the swirling leaves
in and out of the dandelions and rose petals that obscure her response if there
was one and then she is gone by.

I looked for my father but he never came to me in this vision of summers
to be and summers long forgotten yet not completely past.
It is like lemonade poured fresh from a silver pitcher on a hot Sunday
afternoon, ice cold, fresh bittersweetness on my tongue
It is like jumping from the rock over the mirror shining brightness of the
swimming hole of my youth soon to plunge into the chilly depths or awake
to the evening, the moon and her silent yet melancholic song.

Cast Iron Wolf

Cast Iron Wolf

Out of the darkness, comes the iron man running

into the light, the thunder of his passing shaking

the ground.

Did I only dream of the glint of menace in the glare

of his eye shields, was it only my imagination

that made it seem so real?

I run with wolves amidst the ruins of the only world

that I have even known, we are shadows racing 

towards the violence of the sound

Did I witness the path on which my life is heading,

nowhere to turn, ever the straight path forever

at the pace of the men of steel.

I find no mercy in this the race with no end in sight.

Is this my last chance to don the armor or to stand

in the sun under the stars in the night?

We raise our weapons under the brilliance of this

our final dance into the clouds into the sky

We raise our voices to shout with contempt and joy

for justice and honor making it our battle cry

Hear our howls as we charge into the melee of the 

fight, will we win this day for all that we hold true

or die in our ambition to be among the right?

I am only one man in this skin that shields my

intent, the goals of my youth unwritten unspent

for there is much that I still want to believe, to 

accept that I can want to feel...

Meanwhile I will keep on running to maintain 

this requirement to hold to this pace

until I come to meet with my destiny face to face.

On Coffee

On Coffee.

How many poets have sat down to write a piece of work and decided to do it on coffee?
Is this an ode to the bean that is more like a cherry pit that the assumed brown treasure plucked from this our Mother earth?
Will I find the appropriate words to capture the imagery from this caffeinated therapy that so many men, and women, have consumed before me?
Can I pull each line of verse from each sip of the bitter sweet yet ultimately indescribable sensation locked within the myriad of flayors?
What was my compulsion to convert from the vintage of my native teas to the concoction of New World alchemy?
Like the drips falling into the Coffee pot
like the aroma of forgotten places or spaces
that you only have wished to visit
like the people that you have only
begun to dream up.
This is my coffee poem and now it's time
to find another cup.