Belated Words

Write On!

Category: Poems

  • Ambushed

    Just an old man on a fast, healthful walk,

    I was ambushed on quiet Magnolia Street;

    my assailants, two boys, seven or eight,

    flaunted their plastic guns from their dead yard.

    One sprayed me from the hip, old-gangster style,

    the other, took careful head and chest shots,

    leering at me with deliberate calm.

    Refusing to ordain their murder play,

    the chest/clutching drama/death of feigned pain

    on a twisted face, which they demanded;

    I threw them my pain and a snubbing of

    their killing fields, a dam/you/glare as only

    an old man tired of rote/learning/games can.

    Incessant perforations of the air

    by forced/breathe bullets pursued me far past

    my escape around the corner to Oak.

    Their muddled voicings of derisive taunts

    rent the air for my refusal to die.

  • The Winds Lament

    The leaves are fallen and the wind laments

    their leaving for they mark his passage

    painting visibility on the ethereal.

    My face and ears feel a cold breath

    face/on as our directions collide

    on this sunny yet cold, empty street.

    A chime to my right sings winds intent,

    his hope to fly till the tumult of his birth

    dissipates to calm, allowing him to lie

    and rest quietly as a wreath on a grave.

  • Rose Box

    Oak and Cedar Box

    Natural, unstained, just shaped by my hand;

    every so gently, my fingers caress

    your lustrous, polished surfaces.

    Is it your innate beauty I cherish,

    or my own creation I so admire?

  • weather rant

    It seems to me, man has changed the planet and thus the weather and I don’t see that being reversed.  I am not a very optimistic person, I guess. But the earth will survive; life will adapt,some species may perish (even man) but others will take their place. I see it as part of a natural process.  All life, as we know it, may at some time become extinct on earth but it will be a process (though aided by man) out of the control of man.  Man’s belief in his power, both for creativity and destruction, is, to me, arrogant and delusional.  That is not to said that we should not be striving to correct the damage we’ve done and feeling great shame for what we have allowed to take place.

  • Leaves

    Should I be raking leaves; they’re piling up?

    My yard sleeps beneath a saddle-brown snow

    complete with two/foot drifts snug around shrubs.

    The paths and spent flowers seem content though,

    resting without pressure to be well-groomed.

    My eyes tell me this without judgment of

    their own; leaving the decision for me.

    Taking my cue from nature, I chose to

    lie fallow and rest beneath a rich snow.

  • Fawn

    Along the bank of a singing creek

    drawn crouching beneath tangled laurel

    to a sandy cove by a sweet stench,

    I found a fawn, awhile dead, untouched,

    inches from the water’s edge.

    Her pliant, serene/cervine body lay melting

    molecule by molecule      returning      ascending

    and her soul held wake above      wafting

    among lustrous white laurel blossoms.

  • Squirrel Narrative

    Spiraling up and up with scratching speed,
    the squirrels pursued each other around
    the rough barked pine faster than my eyes could shift.

    I lost them in white sky glare and tangled
    needle mass; raucously harsh, screeching calls,
    marked them before their leap to a neighbor oak.

    The smaller fell, spread-eagle in air;
    missed! I thought, but spasms of tail/tick-tock
    and tendon/claw snagged a limb-tip easing
    his plummeting fall to stronger growth.

    Then, daring pursuit, the parent raced on,
    intent on schooling squirrel ways without respite;
    tree to tree with chattering leaps of faith.

    From limb to power line the parent jumped
    beckoning the smaller to follow fast; the pupil,
    leaping, slipped, then swung upright and froze:
    the taut wire of risk lay suddenly clear
    in the vastness of white opened air.

    Father/mother? chastised hesitance with
    warnings of dark omnipresent beast,
    and ran the unforgiving wire quickly away.

    The rodent/child, doubt crushed, wavered and fell,
    clawing apathetic air to the street
    where he lay and twice twitched, perhaps with thoughts
    of soft/leaf nest and of drinking water.

  • Maybe, it’s just me, but…

    My mind can not comprehend a meaning.

    Surely, you merely, poke fun;

    content to tease less agile minds

    ……………..sliding words along,

    a string of pearls nicely strung,

    glossed with an aura of interrelated-import,

    advancing only themselves across the page.

    The meter, the sound, the flow is sweet

    but what do you…. so delightfully…… decline to say?

    Do you at night giggling safely in your bed,

    berate yourself for naughtiness,

    or…..crying, fear your efforts wanting?

    Listen…there!…. Listen.  Are you repeating what you hear?

  • The Mower

    Still…I feel the spongy dead-stop of my swing

    of blade against the harden broom-sedge tuft.

    Higher, I reasoned, taking another swipe

    with a sling-blade taller than my six years.

    Golden grass flowed with the blow yielding only

    dry flotsam with straw scented disappointment.

    •

    So strange….memories lingering half-centuries;

    others just a day, a moment, or never really made.

    My first remembered ambition: to lay low

    that field, expansive then, for no particular reason

    other than to see it felled…..to smell accomplishment.

    Stubborn grasses or allergies brought tears

    and abandonment of blade and pride; both

    flung down hard…..then dreams for years self-thwarted.

    •

    Now….walking aware, overstepping briars,

    through fields of desiccated, swishing grasses;

    hand, palm down flat, I caress resilient sedge tops.

    My blade, bright with sharpen glints, shouldered.

    I’m ready to swing with practiced ease but

    only for purpose and with reverence for grasses.

  • To the mirror

    Listen! I’m talking to you, he said to the mirror.

    Help me decipher these fragmented thoughts:

    From the very beginning…..we are locked

    in isolated minds…..simmering hot

    fibrous solutions arcing sparks like a

    grinding wheel dumb of its rotating self

    throwing holograms of tricky, bland light

    for billions of pied elucidations

    by flawed, chemical collusions painted

    by chances’ whims of perception, fated

    to pursue that umbilical link …that

    elusive oneness to the flow of life

    from which I was lovingly, sadly torn.

    And we all know it exist….doesn’t it?

    It’s so simple: allow me nirvana,

    that whispered agreement, “Yes, yes, I know!”

    from some entity divine or simple

    as skin touch, hand clap or burning leaves smell.

    Place your fingers on your temples: it’s all

    just biology.  Did you feel it?  There,

    that repulsive hairy rodent bumping

    burrowing stifling muddle-headedness

    that dead fullness……is it a corruption

    in the spasmodic spark shower itself?

    Are capillaries constricted, neurons

    lacking sufficient flint to strike words……thoughts?

    I do know ideas are snagged in transit,

    wedged in dead-end deformities, bouncing

    off walls, flinging echoes of frustration.

    Those random un-sensed possibilities

    struggling to permeate my consciousness;

    who knows what brilliance never surfaces?

    Is our hard hunger only the seeking

    of what’s trapped below; god or peace only

    those stifled sparks sending S.O.S. calls?

    A logical progression of thought was

    just chopped, (I felt the dull blade; my throat aches)

    severed just behind the tongue an instant

    before a flash of fluency rose up.

    Listen I’m talking to you!  he said to the mirror.