Tag Archives: poem

Our love is

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I don’t write you many love poems

Because we’re too alike.

We are both too sarcastic

To boast of Shakespearean attachments: there is no life without my love and all that.

That’s just terrifying.

No, our love is a fine friendship

Only slightly crippled by your bad puns.

Our love is perfect honesty without condemnation.

Our love is to give each other absolute freedom

And watch the other return again and again.

Our love is the ability to bring each other back to our senses.

Our love is when I let you have the last piece of chocolate

Or when you notice I’m cold and turn off the AC.

A thousand tiny untold sacrifices.

There is no obsession here.

There is only kindness

Generosity

A willing ear.

It’s a fond knowledge

That someone good

Is always there for me at the end of the day.

Villanelle – To the Razor

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I’ve never written a villanelle before. It was like a jigsaw puzzle. Something about having to pore over the lines so carefully removes me from the work by a few degrees, so I found myself taking on a little bit of a character as I wrote it.

 

To the Razor

 

You promise freedom but you’re just a hook.

Reflect my wasted life in your dark shine.

I can’t afford to pay for what you took.

 

Fishy in a bathtub, not a brook

I can’t believe I’m sucking on your line – –

You promise freedom but you’re just a hook.

 

There’s no reseating all the things you shook.

The friends and health and prospects that were mine.

I can’t afford to pay for what you took.

 

The brief relief of bright pain made me look.

My eyes are open now that there’s no time.

You promise freedom but you’re just a hook.

 

You shitty little con man. Thieving crook.

You told me you were peace but you were lying.

I can’t afford to pay for what you took.

 

Oh Jesus is it true my soul’s forsook?

A miracle: bathwater turned to wine.

You promise freedom but you’re just a hook.

I can’t afford to pay for what you took.

Laundry Cycles

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“After enlightenment, laundry.”

I love this proverb. It means several things to me:

  • No matter how much you try to think your way around it, the material world exists and must be dealt with.
  • When you attain enlightenment, you are finally capable of handling reality.
  • After you attain enlightenment, you’ll inevitably get brought back down again to square one.  Everything cycles. Laundry cycles. Heh.

I have a poem about cycles. I’ve referenced this concept before in other poems. Let me dig it up and see if it’s still any good.

…Hm. It’s not perfect but it has its moments. I’ll post it anyway. Maybe I’ll rewrite it one day when I’m not half asleep.

 

Death is like a birth

The quiet room

The person in pain

The inevitability

The climax

And the uselessness of those standing beside the bed

Their helplessness and inability

All you can do

Is hold the hand of the dying

And wish them speed

And wish them peace

And do the best you can

To make them comfortable.

 

The breathing labors

The breathing hitches

A moment of silence

And then someone cries.

 

Death is a birth

Out of the dead

Springs new life

First the microbial and bacterial

Then the insects and things without spines

Then perhaps a mammal will take choice bits

And a bird scavenges what’s left

Only bones and ligaments remain

A mammal breaks into the marrow

Insects and spineless things clean up the ligaments

Bacteria and microbes break down the bone

And we rejoin the earth

To become once again a plant, an herbivore, a carnivore, a human, a plant.

Everything in cycles

Cycles within cycles

Death within birth

Birth within death

Life in cycles

Crescendoes, abatements

Everything has been done

Nothing is ever finished

Everything corkscrews

DNA

Planets

Everything

And we are so dizzy with it

As we die,

Birth,

Die,

Birth

 

Of course this has been noticed before

The wheel of time

The Mayan calendar

The Golden Spiral

And it will be discovered anew

By the next generation

Forgotten

Discovered

Forgotten

Discovered

A Little Sad

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When I promised honesty, that wasn’t so much for you as it was a promise to myself. Every single thing I post is a little bit scary to put out there, whether it’s silly, or straightforward, or sad. I’m not sure why I’m being so strict with myself. Well, yes I do. I know that it’s good for me, and I know that writing is missing something when it is written by a person who won’t let you see past their walls. Posting about being sad is the hardest though. Vulnerability… Just the word makes me cringe. It’s so gooey sounding.

 

It’s easy to write a poem

When you feel something.

When passion rises

Words are cheap.

But when you’re sad

Every word has to battle its way to the surface.

I have nothing to be sad about.

All my needs are met.

I have people whom I love

And who love me.

I have access to all the chocolate I can eat

And the freedom and funds to do so.

I even have the Tao; something I can believe in.

I let go of resentment and guilt.

Yet still

Still there are days

When I am sad

And I can’t

Pin down

Why.

My sister doesn’t get sad.

She told me so.

There are people like that in the world.

There are also people in shitty situations

Who have so much trouble they don’t have time to be sad.

Maybe I’m not being true to myself somehow

Maybe I’ve inherited something

Maybe the happy people are the anomalies

And to be sad is merely human.

Maybe it’s in our nature to strive for more

No matter how much we have.

Maybe I’ll go to sleep

And tomorrow morning

Everything will be rosy again

As it so often is.

For me, the morning really does bring light.

 

It’s gotten better with age.

I’ve learned coping mechanisms

I’ve learned to express myself

I’ve learned to get exercise.

All these things make a difference.

But I guess there are some things

You can’t completely rub out.

Everything leaves scars.

On Immortality

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Who do you think you are?

There is no immortality.

Immortality is impossible.

Everything dies.

Writers who claim to immortality by their body of work?

Two generations tops.

But what if you’re a great writer?

Your work could last hundreds of years.

If you are truly great, a thousand years.

The culling process of time is cruel and relentless.

What about Plato, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching?

They have lasted millennia.

But nothing can be saved forever.

One day the library will burn.

There were great works, immortal works, before these were written.

Mankind has long existed

And long has it thought

And of these thoughts

We know nothing.

They are dead.

But

The ideas renew in us.

Stories are reinvented, retold

Concepts are worked out anew

The same mistakes get made

Over

And over

It is a parent’s pain

To watch a child stumble through life

It is our pain

That each generation must live a war

It is a country’s pain

To bloat, to weaken, to topple

It is a people’s pain

To forget.

In the end the sun will burn us out.

After that the universe will collapse.

And some say

A new universe will be born

And the same mistakes made over again.

 

We will all be forgotten.

We all only have one life.

We can’t even impress who we really are

On our closest friends.

An identity is transient

It changes with each emotion.

How then can a life be remembered?

How can a great work of art

No matter how perfect

No matter how true

No matter how it affects the people

Each person will read into it

What matches their feelings at the time.

One may read the same book

Two, three different times

And feel something different each time.

Nobody knows exactly what you felt when you wrote it.

No one can ever know.

You don’t even know.

Every new thought, your old thought dies.

Every new cell, your old cells die.

You want immortality?

You with the ever changeable identity

Which you deem so important?

You, who are already dead?

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