UPON WAKING UP

Bright colored shades, I cannot see;

Blurry spinning faces, I cannot read;

Obtusely worded signs, I cannot feel;

Black and blue bones, I cannot heal;

Moving darting objects, I cannot steer;

Faintly muffled sounds, I cannot hear; 

When suddenly on shaky toes I rose;

To find my frozen heart, in comatose. 

TO MY FRIEND PETER

Dark, tired, sopping sobs--can you see these eyes?

They, as yours too, are unfamiliar with the night.

Of passing, leaving fables my ears know lies,

As though this give not the sharpest smite

Like blunt nails driving arms, two ends across,

How can this story’s ending be quite right?

This mouth, which flowed song but an hour ‘fore,

Chokes as wails of pain splinter at my throat.

My infantile mind, equipped not with this in store,

Fails still to grasp the sound of this minor note.

When the door flew closed I felt the Winter cold,

A chill unlike the saddest poem Poe ever wrote. 

A fragrance as foul as Death’s I shouldn’t know,

Its searing scent’s so strong it burns,

Like poisoned roses that in Spring can’t grow,

Or when our warmest Summer finally turns,

To dead leaves, bare trees, frosty yields of dark brown fields,

When with wishful wails my torn heart yearns.

‘Before you meet your ends and travel on,

And be dressed this time by me with worldly eyesight gone,

To depths unknown you’ll go, with a heavy burden and bearing load,’

But God, My God, down this path--down this road?

WALLFLOWER 

It is something about the air,

Or this rugged wooden chair

That lends one concessions

Of coffee shop confessions.

The girl’s statue, so serene,

That sits here in between,

Fills this empty room,

Once full of empty gloom.

Her dark coffee cuddles 

And her up-done hair huddles

Around her criss-crossed poise

Deafened by her music’s noise.

My stares jump out in rage,

Caught against this flat glass cage

As I scream out whispered woe’s

Dismissed as secondhand no’s. 

The words of her book smile, and

As my heart pounds I rile 

When her shadow claims the seat

And I am left in sad defeat. 

In haste was her walking,

In hiding was my gawking

As the unnoticed went on away

With my heart-felt, heart-lost dismay.

Should I have rolled up my sleeve

To at least create some reprieve

Of the fateful but frantic

Cry called romantic?

A DISCUSSION OF LOVE AND HATE

“Pa, I got a somethin’ on my mind,

Say, I got a question on my mind!”

“Then quit your lingerin’, boy, let me know, and

Always ask, for the wisest men have inquiry.”

“Well, there are jus’ somethings I can’t--

I jus’ can’t quite grip or get to fit my sight.

Like how can one hate, or state distaste

Of another for the silliest things?”

“You are just like your ol’ man;

I’ve been yet to rake and gather what man leaves

When he shouts out words of leavin’, going, gone,

‘Cause even the most hateful have hidden humble hearts,

I swear.”

“Do you mean to say that all people got a lil’ good,

A bit of love but they can host at most some hate?”

“While even the selfless could count their self less,

Even the most beloved could be loved more.

Grab a pen and have this written down days hence, that if

Love is vocation, then we shall work endless nights,

In particular those for riders who drink drinks alone--no tip,

For, for them our love must not end, a cup filled past the brim.”

“And do we not deserve to get loved by them back?

They may tip their hats and go on past,

But what’s the point if in the end we get not a pat on our backs?”

“Those that hate use misjudged rifles to guide their fate,

And it’s sad, so sad, that they spend their days

In perpetual fighting and chin-up, chest-out walking,

But son, that gives us the gift to unload loads of love

From our hats to their hearts so that one day,

When the sun rises and the rooster crows as it always does,

They’ll know that fear will lose and peace will win,

I swear.”

“When one kills love shan’t shine for them,

For the men who war, surely it aint fair for us

To give out what freely we got to give?”

“Boy, that’s just it--we gotta give!

Even them, I tell you, the farthest out,

The poorest and the richest, and for

The doctor and the sickest, son, let no man

Escape the light of your love, and when you yell,

Let your shout be songs of rays and stars,

Drowning out the haste of even the loudest, most spiteful hate.”

“I will let my tears be many and my wails shake me

Before I accept the hate and lies I’m always told;

I will lay down my life for my friends and love, always love,

I swear.”

“Now that, my son, is a life all power, to treat love as man’s greatest friend.”

GIVING IN AND GIVING UP 

I wish I was an optimist

I wish I could release my fist

I wish I wouldn’t always look down

I wish I would learn not to frown

I wish I wouldn’t stress

I wish I wasn’t a mess

I wish I got a break

I wish I was by day awake

I wish I could sleep at night

I wish I had that right

I wish I cared less about it all

I wish I wasn’t subject to the fall

I wish I wouldn’t in every subject fail

I wish I didn’t see it all so pale

I wish I found it far less hard

I wish I had that ace of spades card

I wish I wasn’t always caught in worry

I wish I wasn’t always caught in hurry

I wish I could see my fault

I wish I would have trials halt

I wish I had more to love

I wish I could release my dove

I wish I could just give up.

A CREEPING THOUGHT

The soreness of my throat

What difference do you have

From the barking in my heart?

The coughing of my mouth

What point do you make

From the sick in my soul?

The pain in my brain,

What line can I draw with

The ice in my mind?

A FAR OFF THOUGHT

As the train pulled away the man watched

For miles, and miles, and miles,
As his wife went into a withering image of white and of grey.

“I’m beginning to think,” said that man,

“That the greatest problem of humanity is

Distance--from family, from lovers, from God.”

For friends aren’t to be apart in holes,

But to be a part in a whole--puzzle formed from piece by piece,

Peace that Separate does not know,

No, not alone but welded and melded and held alone,

That part of the whole.

And “I’ve been told too, that two will come together,

Whether the weather of that week lends them the time,

Or the dime to make the flight on the wings of weak, fragile night,”

The man cried nigh on a thousand petals of overused trite. 

“Deep in the soul’s restart, won’t we always hold with

What we’ve been told, that the heart has it’s home

Of which reasons do not know?

And in dire haste, we lie in the these lies wondering,

Why our sole question from heaven and earth

Is met with a ladder of rungs, shaking our mirth?

“All my life I’ve heard: choose Him or choose her!

So I’ve gone with the latter and been lost as

A part of that hole.

“I’ve never been one to crunch the numbers,

Or count my steps and watch the compass rose,

As I drop with grave thoughts my life in a haze

Whilst her face fades into withering white and grey.”

Distraught we trot with this thought, that

‘What’s mine isn’t ivory and gold, not to stay nor to hold,’

When this definition is deaf in notion of the fact

That of great seas we’ll see that with clouds

We won’t part but we’ll hold, that

We are part of that whole.