hope

Five nights of hurried flights
ten years of solid pain
I want to end the places i've been
I want to stop the rain
I work to press my mental stress
through the tattered screen
I know I can within some span
learn how again to dream

Mental Illness at Christmas

I look about this December morn
my hair screams asunder
my graying stubble two days long
my clothes spread out like fallen leaves
brown and wrinkled
I somehow stumble about the ride
I bow down to the industrial clock
I really wish I could find a hole
The solstice gray it weighs me down
a heavy blanket over a gasping wick
It’s a blurring purple that I can’t escape
I’m done, I’m finished, it’s over

no title

I type my way through the abbreviated world
Eat my ham and cheese on split top whole-grain
Clear my throat with a bitter latte
Reason with myself over my very existence
And still fight to understand what anything means
It seem to happen so easily and innocently
(For other people that is)
If there really is a God, why did he make me crazy?
I guess in need to read again the Tao
Where the answer is no answer
Where the purpose of a vessel is its emptiness
Where…oh well.

7:48 p.m.

Why can’t I make my poems
Flow down the stream
Like little maya angelos?

aisles apart

Stare me down with your dark browns
Your oatmeal liner and jet black lash
Grab me with your melting curls of chocolate locks
Your mocha cheeks and burgundies
Bowl me with your luring smell
Your morning pillow scent
Bling me with your golden rings
Your skin tights and baggy hipness


I will look down within my lap
Swallow my lusty inclinations
Succumb to my lack of worth
Not seize the moment
but watch my heavy hands
As you exit the bus
into the evening rain

I am seven...

I am seven
And I can climb a tree
To the very top if I want
But I don’t because I love my mother
And it scares her
To see me up so high
In the tree

I am seven
And I can bake a cake
And layer it with frosting and sprinkles
But my father tells me,
“You cannot bake until you are ten!”
I don't bake
Because ten is way far away.

I am seven
And I can read chapter books if I want
But I do not because my older brother
Says I’ll get bored with it real quick!
who wants to read and get bored?


I am seven
And I can cut the sleeves off my shirts
I can cut and I think I will
While no one else is watching!
And when they ask I will say
“sorry, I’m only seven”

ode to manevolence

I APPROACH YOU AS A FOX IN THE NIGHT
I PLAY TOMFOOLERY ON YOUR REASON
I DO A MAGIC SHOW AND YOU BELIEVE
I CONVINCE YOU OF MY SINCERITY
AND YOU TAKE AN EMBATTLING STAND
YOU SPREAD MY POISONOUS VAPOR
YOU DRINK FROM MY ENCHANTED CUP
ONLY AFTER YOU HAVE TURNED TO ASH
WILL YOUR CHILDREN’S CHILDREN
TURN THEIR RUDDY FACES
AND WISH THEY
WERE FROM A DIFFERENT LINE

The days
and dots
that litter my sight make me happy.


Most people aren’t aware that I could be dead right now.

(Well, we could all be dead right now, but my case is a little different.
I won’t go into that. It’s mainly a sidebar for my own reassurance.)

Nonetheless, I often wonder where I would be
If my paintbrush didn’t float this way
or dart that?

What would my canvass look like?

I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me.
I like my painting in its present state.
I like my days and dots.

Friends

I fight an inner turmoil of my own mind. I really need to give it a rest, but can't. Like right now, I should go lay down on my bed and just lay there, but instead I feel compelled to fill this blog. I don't know why my mind won't shut down; why it won't leave me alone. It's as if my life were the sensation of thirst and the only beverage was syrup.

I think it is my few friends that keep me sane. My friends know that I'm obtuse and they don't judge nor do they seem to care. I owe a lot to them. They give me that sip of water I need from time to time.

A tribute to mom

A old lady with a cracked voiced used all her empathic energy to state:
"It's a mother's duty... to live... for the life... of their child!"
Simon and Garfunkel, "voices of old people"

I know mothers look at the world from a different vantage point then men. So I can't fully grasp the concept of motherhood. But I look at my own mom and all the things she has done- bookkeeping, accounting, floral work, painting, and probably a hundred others I don't even know about. I see all of those accomplishments and all I can think about is how she handled her role as a mother. She has been far-reaching in all aspects of support, and her supply of concern and compassion seem endless.

Thanks mom! I hope you have an enjoyable birthday!

Today's poem

The Asian Elephant with skinny legs
parades up and down my street
spread out like liquid of broken eggs
a bloodied puff of meat

The cheeta with a cotton tail
preys upon the sight
all mothers with their children wail
they know the season's right

The bitter snow of yellow green
is blowing from the west
a tattered boy now paints the scene
across the willow's chest

No light of bluish red
is filtered through the sky
No more words need be said
I wait my turn to die

Ars Poetica

The work is pelting in sleet drops
against my cubicle window.
I type feverishly, yet not so fast
I know that "get this done right away"
is only eminent but not meaningful.
Chatter and interruptions send
my mind into a dizzying array of direction,
and those streams of thought
leave papers and projects
scattered and strewn
and my boss yells at me with a purplish glow
and my coffee cup has long been dry
and the work continues to pelt.
Poetry is that bit of milk chocolate
dissolving in my mouth
with lips gently closed.
eyes gently closed.
with mind gently closed.
with work temporarily closed.

An ocean view

Scattered stones,
Sticks strewn
A metronomed wave
The white ball of a sun
The pervasive fog
They all stand still
As does a vessel in the distance
Anchored to the shallow ocean floor.

When I was a child my father told me much
About that boat named “St. Christopher”
He told me of its history, and how,
Steeped in tradition, it collected many
Lobster pots over many generations
Connecting one family to the sea
And to a livelihood.

It was my seamark in olden days
When I scattered stones
And strewn sticks
when my cares were few in the morning fog,
It made me proud to be from Maine
Though I’m not sure why

Now it rocks and I can barely see
Its pale-blue cabin dancing
In and out of sight
This boat, “The St. Christopher”
Now doesn’t mean so much to me
It’s nostalgic white-washed hull is
Faded by the salt

But many a tourist gaze at it,
Are mesmerized by it,
Worship it through their enhanced optics,
They seem to cherish it as if it were their very grandchild
I guess It paints a pretty picture in their head
That they can carry back to Kansas
or Illinois or New Mexico

To me its just one of many, lonely sea vessels
And its pale-blue
Dances
In and out of sight

The asphalt glows golden

I see a dim, diffused light from a swinging lantern
I hear the hoof clatter of the horse
whose back bears a rain-soaked cowboy
protected somewhat with a leather duster
yet still dripping through the dance of the night

I stand below the awning of Goldstein’s drug store
my core of aches holds tightly the little brown bag of PRNs
The city cabs pass by; streaking white, red, and yellow
horns blare their Doppler effects while happy couples
ambulate through and around the sidewalk puddles

The wet shiny asphalt glows golden under the lamppost
newspaper shards lay scattered like the day’s minutes
I think of my warm and cozy flat I abandoned for the rain
the hoof clatter grows more pronounced
yet I don’t want to look at the glowing candle

I close my eyes and force my mind into music;
I shut the door to the space around me
I live out the notes of Faure’s Pavane, Opus 50
then my brief sabbatical is over, fear rips through my being
as the wet cowboy dismounts his mottled mare,
hands me my ticket, and exits among the taxis

Flight Response

sometimes i want to dive under the blackness of my cat. curl up my life in the white fuzzy spot on his abdomen. melt my access into his cavity; bathe away a gentle heat from his conservatories. dont give me his mind, his agility, his predatory nature. his coat, his curl, my fetal state is all i need to end with.

A day at the pool

My eyes burn red in the cool-blue, chlorinated water
My skin bakes and browns in the hot, dry sun
A skinny little kid does a cowboy backflip off the short board
An ice cream truck meanders by whistling its merry tune
and thoughts of Christmas are far from everybody's mind

The viewpoint of an innocent bystander

He wears a lime green sports coat
covered with wide white pin stripes,
and he don't give a damn
that his wild Irish rose blooms from his pocket
It's only a rose and it stinks
His sweetest desire is it's euphoric nectar;
it can stink and he can stink
and he don't give a shit!

A Kite over Potter Lake, November 14,1990

A kite flies among the cottonballs
It is black and wears a long tail
If one squints, it looks like the wicked witch of the west
flying over Kansas
getting ready to write:

SURRENDER DOROTHY!

with her broom.

a Kyrielle Sonnet

I walked through aisles of blue green
Sea foam floating yet hardly seen
A quick pace in the blackened light
Sandy dunes that layered the night

My ears rang with horror unknown
A sub-sound of ocean wave drone
While winds blew the grains up tight
Sandy dunes that layered the night

The moon gave me a peaceful glance
But would fear approve its advance?
Or would terror rule my delight?
Sandy dunes that layered the night

I walked through aisles of blue-green
Sandy dunes that layered the night

In the vein of "a million little pieces"

(You’ve inherited grandma’s house. Grandma’s secret journal is discovered. What does her last entry say?)

All I could think of for this question was Grandma Tidwell as a little girl



A small, young Polish girl;
now old and dying in America,
her body decaying into the future
her words swelling into the past
uttering more vividly
the haunting melodies...

Perogies baking in the kitchen
Papa walking behind his vending cart
and soldiers dying by the back stoop.

Why such a memory for the last entry?
maybe the memory of death
was the painkiller of life
and the journal, a place
where both could walk hand in hand