Poem – Page 8 – Poétique

Rifling

Rifling through all the money
Gifts with intention
After the wedding but worse
No way to thank them
Once they were received
No names attached
All the cards on the floor
The world thought
She was wonderful
Of course I did too
But then sometimes
Only money mattered
Not who gave it to you

A better version of himself
Then even he was today
But all he could do was miss
What he couldn’t have
Which was the thing that
Wasn’t ever there
Some kind of made up
Situation in his head
Now that’s what you call
A true headache

Best self now is to
Make it over again but for
Him not for her
Self love?

The lights were low in the room
Friends coming and going
What’s next? Sex or more booze?
A night walk to a friends
Drugs were on the menu
We had the hotel so no rush
Building been in the ground
Since 1911 made it a sure thing

Funny engaged on one block
And married on the corner up
Years later small town
Finish the night and swoon
Back to the room
More love before bed?
Is that a question?
Maybe tomorrow
It didn’t feel like she knew
How to love him just yet

Uncover

It takes time to live life
To reclaim it and make it last
All the hours we give up
For what we loved and what is gone
It’s fast, but the building is slow
Kaleidoscopic shadows attached to
Pictures in our house hanging
From the walls of our hearts
The bell tower echoes
A lighthouse beam shines
White sand trickles
In the back of our minds, a clock
Ticking away like our youth
Counting cactus needles
Be an atlas detective
All the hidden parts
Yet to be discovered or
Uncovered anything
Underneath our skin
Ready to soar like a dove

Munchausen

Seems no matter my approach
She is broken to my words
She is absent to the world
Not just me

Climb through the cobwebs
With a different approach
Find your way in even if
It means that you arrive
Nowhere

Guard the back door with your life
There might be an inner fire
Under control

Histrionics or just dramatics
When I’m doing worse
She’s doing better
When I’m doing better
She’s doing worse
Like some munchausen spell
Deriving from what is a
Needless suffering or lack of
Sympathy for the abject reality
Of being alive, just a sorry kiddo
Is all you’ll get

Leading up to the
Constant replay betrayed by
Some kind of sorcery that
Keeps me ever returning to
Your oracle of death

Surface

You can ask a million times
They’ll say “okay”
But it never gets done
Disrespect the considerations
Burn the grass drink your life away
Leave the air filled with
Their audacities

Behavior that is begging for
Cremation or non existence
Nothing left to live for or
Care about so the neighbors
Just continue on this way
How can you care when
You have so little to be concerned about?
I’m the anomaly in the equation

Close my eyes play the guitar
Sing myself to sleep
Maybe ask the moon
If he has any secrets to keep
Let my voice shake
Let the worst melt through
Into the cracks between
The bed and the wall

One more time we can
Collect all the memories and
Stuff them into a tin can
Give it a kick and see
Where it lands

Happy tears
Tired years and an answer
At the end of the hall
Glowing wonder
Ask a favor
Hope the better end
Works its way up
To the surface

Soak

It’s a deep soak or a
Casual underlining of
Nuance euphemistically speaking
All of us forgetting each other
I live as if I could die tomorrow
How do you live?

Baby grains and wheat stains
Rolled out into a papyrus
To record the memories
Unforgettable dreamscapes
That feel like reality
Questionably so

Trying our best at a cakeless walk
But still seeking the sweet
Holding out to be glued to
Temporary existence
In an eternity

What time is it anyway
It won’t matter who
After they forget you

Miséricorde

To be a participant in life
Not always driving
Sit back and take it in
Be not contained
By the desires of others
Fight for your exit

Red lines drawn down
Electric eyes up
Irascible prone to
Temperamental outbursts
Like a burning fire
Sadness always on the horizon
Little did I know that genuine
Happiness was always
Around the corner

Like a wet towel you
Can’t get out from under
Breathing in wet
Breathing out wet
With what we have left
How much more
Can the body take
What is resilience
If nothing exists
To feel love?

Just to stretch our legs
Walking the distance to
Get onto the other side of
Emotions we were never aware
That we were suppressing

Solve the mystery and mercy
Embrace the light that was
Once blanketed by those who
Needed to put it out

Point Manquer

Well you missed one, he said
You let some people down
So what
Won’t be the first
Can’t be the last
If you’re living

Alright I will carry on
Seek the distance, more thoughts
From a bird’s eye view
I helicopter over myself
Manifest a picturesque
Moment in feeling
Being perfect and
Acceptable no matter
What happens are we
Meeting in the mind
With the self?

We’re supposed to take care
Of each other what’s so distracting?

I have tons of energy for
The things I want to do
And zero energy for the
Things I don’t

See
See yourself
Blind to the outside view
Mirror, mirror show me the truth
I’m no mortician but the grief
Is real

Fortuit

My whole life I have been
Chasing after my history
Some shred of evidence that
This is where I come from
That this is me anchored

But to forget myself in you
Would satisfy every hankering
I do not like catching yellow
Looking indivisibly somehow
I gave many less shits about
How my actions were taken
Some of this is fantasy

But when we fought I felt
Like I was fighting for myself
Even the airport could hear
Us shake the walls with fever

Foreign countries sleeping
On my side away but never
Giving up we never gave up
But we moved differently
And on

Water is flowing under the bridge
And into the garden that I
Have learned to claim for
Myself even though so much
Of the verdant I planted for her

What to do for another
Vibrating expanding
Swelling heartbeats
Clever words misbehaving

On his way to unraveling the
Cocoon and exiting the nerves
On a slide to recover the parts
If who he was for her but
Now for himself

Make up the truth
Show up don’t show up
Existing for one next
With an invitation
For two

Agrémenter

Overcommitted to the paths
We create to get into the garden
Blanket and embellish all my wants
Comfort me with your words
Turbid brain what is your anthem?
For all the things he couldn’t do
For all the things he didn’t do
Saddened by the things he missed
That he also never knew about
An organ plays a dark procession
Like a church bell in his head
Making love in the background
It’s the only thing he ever wanted
To hear the sounds of birds flying
In the outside and a chapel wind
Dancing through the window
Gushing across his face as the ringing
Ecstasy of not knowing or
Ever caring about the things
He never arrived at for too were the
Gifts that the morning sun
Burned into his back like
A memory for recording
His time on earth light years
From a place that was once called today

Bavardage

I’m not your lamppost
Spurious at most when
We have to care so much about
What is the waste of time
But to just be happy for the cause
If we had something beautiful
To distract us couldn’t we
Care less about the world
That is impeding upon our
Inability to perfect or
Follow through with the plan
Knives in my neck
Piercing my back the physical
Figurative torture is enough
To sell it all and move to
A far away place where
We could fall in love
With life again in a different way
And forget about the things
We wished we had done better
Perhaps it’s crass or even crude
To say the words but to be a
Cunt to ourselves is the most
Outrageous ploy to fulfill
And destroy the inner sanctum
The harmonious fuzz that was
Always there to wrap ourselves
Up in, it’s just the expectation
To discourage the most vulnerable
Parts of ourselves to exist
Impossibility

Brain be quiet
Brain shut up
Look at the flowers
So unique the foliage
I wanted to protect it
Everything had changed
My youth graduated within us
Went away and
Still somehow it lives
In me like a memory
That I keep dusting off