Thursday
April, 19, 2012
Sometimes, it's nice to go back to a poem after... years and look at it again... where does it work, where doesn't it? That's what this one is.
i
i’m counting
shadows once again.
Disgusting
habit yes, i know.
As my sins
sink below oblivion,
There’s
really nothing else to do
here in my
teeny-tiny room.
Thoughts
rolled up,
and sheltered
deep in arms of elms
one finds the
morning crows now
whiter than
the night approaching
in the dying
sky.
Pointless
moonlight
lurks along
my windowsill,
sings silent
songs to me
in sleepy
notes that use to be
quite
pleasant to my ear.
But i, a withered
vagabond,
belonging to
a beggar’s world
who now has
aged beyond
himself and
greets sweet night
with nose and
thumb
and battles
on with
a slightly
sweet ho-hum
and falls quite
out of place
within a
universe too vast for him.
Or so it
seems as i roast myself in
effigy beneath
the glowing embers
cascading
from my cigarette
dying long
before they reach
the carpet of
my ever-present gloom.
Doom on top
of doom
fills the
corners of the room
with scary
creaks and groans
that whisper
to my soul,
“ You are alone.”
My bathrobe
needs a wash.
But crusts of
food
and coffee
stains
and frayed
cuffs
feel too much
like
the warm womb must have felt
way back
before the shadow
came a
calling with its doubt
and found a
pleasant seat somewhere
inside that
fetal mind of mine.
It sat there
as still as a stillborn dream.
Evict its
ass? No, Alas, I couldn’t do that!
It had always paid its rent on time.
i listen to
the junkies
stumble down
the stairs,
Thumpity!
Thumpity! Thump…!
Down, down
into a needled darkness,
ghostly
off-white hoodies wandering….
Where? I do
not know… or care.
i long for
quiet streets and friendly neighbors
a brightly
colored hula hoop about my waist
so I might
lose the excess weight
that’s found
a foster home
around my
already ample belly.
“Whoa, Nelly!”
for Classy
Freddy Blassie
finally
penned Miyako to the mat
and the
referee slaps, “One… two… three!”
The rest, of
course, is wrestling history.
But back to
this dimension…
She has eyes
that milk kindness from my rude lips;
she sucks up
all the air from stale rooms leaving me
so
breathlessly in love! So painfully glib her slurs,
her mispronouncing
Shakespeare’s words
with a gaudy
English accent that she thinks
is so
alluring.... and accurate.
But her love
knows not love when said love
denies my
dreams in dawn’s weak light.
No gentle
touch upon this scorched, dry skin,
no kisses wet
upon my balding head.
A thought for
love? No, no pretence
at all from
love. Just old days ending
neither with
a whimper or a simple… BANG!
Just life… going
preposterously on...
while gently…
calmly coming to a halt.
rrw 4-05-08 (rewrites 4-19-12)
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