Belated Words

Write On!

Tag: poetry

  • Memorial

    Separation is the state of final

    acknowledgement of the absolute.

    Existing in relation to all, you cannot

    complete yourself but we will be here,

    remembering your name, speaking humbly,

    offering colorful ribbons and tears.

    •

    Sacrifice is the act, the act that ends.

    Who made the choice is not the point to argue;

    you were chosen or made the choice yourself.

    Whether the cause was just or not or moot,

    something was required and you were loss.

    Now, you  have that knowing that eludes us.

    •

    Placated, soothed by ritualistic words,

    we read hollow text and embarrassed by

    uncouth grief and the shriek of loss we pray,

    speaking of the Ultimate Sacrifice;

    we whisper the name of that demigod.

    Here….we will never have that knowing.

    •

    Guilt is the word, the word that tells,

    leaving no room for elaboration.

    We wrap and place your bones with no dreams in

    The Cave of the Devoured Prolifics.

    On occasion, we hear their soft clacking;

    lighting short candles, we appease with chants.

  • dusk

    Coming at twilight…..

    unprotected by incandescent glare,

    techno drone or numbing, sitcom silly,

    caught outside by unfinished task,

    imminent darkness compacts still air

    with golden, thick light…light so thick,

    you can twirl it with your finger.

    Only an owl dare perturb about,

    —who-who–whoo…..who-who-whoo—

    such an amorphous loneliness.

    Dusk envelopes and gently whacks

    me, gently but firmly…whack!

    and I, compressed to a singularity,

    wonder at my condition of choice;

    my solitude, my isolation worn boldly;

    amulet or albatross?

  • Benediction in the doctor’s office

    They climbed the steps one behind the other:

    the mother in front clutching the rail,

    daughter behind watching her mother’s feet;

    easing each wary step by simple will.

    Similar print dresses passed the knees hid

    partially, overly muscular legs,

    but the plainness of their faces needed

    no paint; from pores and creases slandered as

     unsightly or crude, benevolence glowed,

     turning heads, almost in deference, drawn

    to look and nod….even the rude and vain.

    As the daughter signed her in, the mother

    with a glance choose me to sit beside.  Blessed;

    I followed her lead.   We talked of children

    and having cared for our mothers in need.

    Battered hand’s skin still tough, cracked, told of toil,

    perhaps by choice, likely by circumstance,

    but not one complaint against her life passed

    full, unadorned lips, only sweetness and

    praise of goodness and kindness of others.

    Her name was called and with daughters’ help she

    rose smiling, touching my hand in farewell.

    I had glimpsed in her full moon face answers

    for questions I could never even ask.

  • For Malala

    It seems they revel in being reviled;

    those who want to be hated will always

    relish the atrocious, seek our disgust.

    That is why they provoke us to attack;

    our outrage caresses their ecstasy.

    Some call them animals but the only

    creatures demeaned is the wolf and the fowl.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Haiku….Relief

    Syrupy air rinsed clean,

    squeezed out tight and huge to dry

    in a gentler sun.