Belated Words

Write On!

  • place

    Context can not exist without place
    but even an airless nothing is place
    humm…you would be dead in such a place.

    But you are still there, your remains, right?
    You can tell I don’t do philosophy
    my head’s not in the right place.

    When my wife berates a spider or fly
    for being in the same room as herself
    I proffer an ill-considered smirk

    “Everybody has got to be someplace”.
    She eyes me as the fool I am coolly
    commanding I kill the poor thing.

    Forced to choose between one or the other
    insecticide or disobedience
    puts me between a rock and a hard place.

    This is not going the way I had planned
    I had foreseen a gloriously drawn
    depiction of the natural world and

    of the need of awareness of man’s place
    in the flow of things toward perfection.
    (whether created by the roll of dice

    or by a divine is irrelevant)
    but no my muse has put me in my place.
    Perhaps another day another place.

  • The hummers are gone

    The hummers are gone; they left by moonlight.

    There was no need to sneak away; lodgings,

    food was free into perpetuity.

    Perhaps the anticipation was way

    too much for tiny drumming hearts to bare.

    Maybe, they could not sleep like us, as kids,

    wide-eyed with thoughts of sunny surf and sand.

    I would like to think they darted passed our

    window as they were going, peeping at

    our dreams as we re-imagined our own

    migrations; our reasoning’s back and forth,

    battered between the same locales, misgivings

    and some forgivings, the same trees for years.

    We have our instincts, too, craving the trees.

    They must have offered a chirpy goodbye

    because I woke knowing something was gone,

    lost or forgotten but unsure of what.

    Do they rendezvous with old friends and kin

    or do connections, commiserations

    languish….falter in pursuit of nectar?

    Costa Rica! If we could go on an

    Eco-tour, we might sip the same flowers

    and they might zip-up to us tweeting their

    apologies for leaving abruptly.

    They did not have to pack, just lift and leave.

    Wouldn’t it be great to rise in air

    feeling all weight dropping from rising feet

    not having to worry about the dogs

    or what you’re leaving in the frig to spoil

    or if the bills are all paid or if you

    show enough affection and concern?

    They left three days earlier than last year.

    I marked it on the calendar as I

    cross off every day anticipating

    ….or is it gloating over surviving?

    I’ve got to stop this crossing off of days.

  • 1972

    You will learn all about yourself when your

    freedom is severed, or better, surrendered

    in protest of perceived, unholy folly;

    putting your fate in the hands of The Man.

    “Hell no!  We won’t go!  Hell no!  We won’t go!

    No more war!  No more war!…” ad infinitum;

    chants do return “trippingly on the tongue.”

    •

    (more…)

  • Let me go…three times

    Haiku:

    Let me go gently,

    like a welcomed breeze at dusk;

    a graceful exit.

    Let me go..

    Let me go….

    Between pulses of pain,

    frozen in a paralytic millisecond of bliss;

    like a mammoth in ice,

    mouth immovable in mid syllable,

    forever

    about to say something memorable.

    Caregiver’s Lament:

    Let me go after you are gone

    if only for a little while;

    when you are gone I will revert,

    with little regret, even joy,

    to indulgences I postponed

    that I might be here to sooth you.

    “You are my reason for living.”

    a cliché so misunderstood,

    has more to do with love and sad

    obligation undertaken

     almost unnoticed ….but freely

    and that wears, tears and can break will.

    I crave to sniff, sip and savor

    my hot, old bliss, irregardless

    of how fleeting or injurious.

    I give you all the world I have:

    my true love without resentment;

    I have your gratitude and love….

    which barely suffices at times.

           

                

  • In other people’s hands

    We’re forced to place the ones we love

    in other people’s hands; we swear

    we love with our languid smile

    on lips drawn thin by telling haste.

    A fat-faced, name-tagged enigma

    led you away to join others

    for the help and time we can’t give.

    You went away clutching your purse,

    soon to be taken from your hands,

    held for safety reasons…. like you;

    held safe with all your delusions,

    memories, visions, conspiracies….

    and those demons that set that fire;

    those tiny gelatinous creatures

    that taunted you from your closet

    forcing you to toss a flaming

    match in…. to send them back to hell.

  • an anniversary

           In front of the liquor store…

    Rain darts in jagged shots across the glass

    between weary swipes of squeaking, tired blades.

    The defroster stifles….but I leave it;

    let it fight the haze.  Maybe, it can sweat out

    this demon locked to my melancholy,

    my known genetic predisposition;

    this twinned self–tarred skin of me, entwined tight

    within and steeped in remembrance of bliss

    now forsaken.  For what….a longer life

    to be reminded of a craving want;

    of my own sad winter of discontent?

    This meninges, membranous bag for

    every muscle and bone and nerve and cell,

    every spark of thought, every common urge

    of me is immune to time’s cheap cure.

    Time is not a healer for everything.

    My eyes in the rearview beseech themselves

    and, stared down, blink a hard resolve….today,

    to pass on the easy and drive away.

  • September

    The chickadee does his cling and swing around

    the cones of timely opening bracts, the nuthatch

    his deliberate descent down the chunky barked pine,

    the arrogant jay loudly struts and flits about,

    as in a panic, as if to say, “Something is coming,

    something is coming!” But, that’s just his way.

    Three days of rain washed heated, thicken air

    to leave a cooled exhalation; an air thinner,

    more amiable than summers overly sweet cordial.

    A cathartic breeze rippled leaves, still green,

    exciting them with anticipation of float flight,

    of modeling the new season’s gaudy plumage,

    of wind scurries that will tumble and rasp them

    across their kin scrapping cellulose flesh away

    to dry fragility…..each to its veined identity.

  • Haiku….Relief

    Syrupy air rinsed clean,

    squeezed out tight and huge to dry

    in a gentler sun.

  • Grand Kids

    So sweet, the summer scent of grasses

    enveloping, floating them with ease

    across the yard, never touching ground,

    it seems, tumbling, cart-wheeling,

    timorous hand stands, “Watch me! Watch me!”

    Green stained feet squeaking on cool wood floors.

    Toes striving, pinching for purchase

    on chairs and thighs, climbing with moist aroma,

    lap squirming, so willfully loving.

    Flesh of my flesh of my flesh;

    joyous as salvation, and just as fleeting.

  • Thought provoking

       Thank you, Anne, for this!

    Anne at A word or two has nominated Belated Words for A Thought Provoking Blog Award.  Anne was the first to offer actual constructive criticism that helped me improve.  She is very talented and versatile, writing short stories as well as poems.  Please check out her work!

    The rules are:

    1. Thank the person who nominated you.

    2. Post the image on your blog.

    3.Share seven things about yourself.

    4.Pass the award to five blogs you enjoy.

    O.K…I am a retired “UPS Man”, both my wives were redheads, but both have now gone gray (not my fault), I am still and will for ever be married to my second lovely wife, our kids, two each from our first marriages, are now grown with children of their own.  We have a total of ten grandkids with ages ranging from one year to seventeen years old, but we do not babysit!!  We cherish our privacy and solitude.  I am painstakingly slow when it comes to writing but that is just the way it is…I do some gardening, renovations on our house and have built a few pieces of furniture.  This is typical ‘old retired guy’ stuff, I guess, but it, particularly the writing, keeps me halfway sane…..thats enough….I guess we only really reveal our true selves in our writings…all the above is really just the circumstances of our lives.   Oh, yes! I want to share my favorite quote by Abraham Lincoln, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open ones mouth and remove all doubt”  We all violate this every day, don’t we?

    I’m going to violate the rules and only nominate two blogs which I follow. They may not respond, but I want to let them know how much I admire their work. Check them out, please.

    eulonia country

    Awakened Words