Poems: 081122 - November 8th, 2022

191022A
----------- 

Between news of wars
and the corpse cold ground
there are only the shadows. 

All of our false beliefs 
to whom it concerns 
and better times arranged. 

Carefully arranging things
as means to a pretense
that we are still in control. 

It includes the furniture 
and the placement of objects 
wherever it seems right to us. 

Settling for a familiar feeling
that unsettles everything 
in the forthcoming  days. 

Something collected together
sidelines of the fast 
and gone by into neglect. 

A falsetto toned address 
to the designated unwanted 
pullers at short straws. 

Whatever the mission was
it was long ago scrubbed 
and no one was debriefed. 

Coming from the supermarket
carrying the weekly specials
while counting other scores. 

You have mail it says 
and you remain hopeful 
at trying to sell old lies. 

That is all they left for you 
that remained marketable 
in the light of changing trends. 

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261022A
------------

Only the darkest angels
know any of the truth 
because meaning is given
only in the shadows. 

You called me up 
from where I was sleeping 
as if you had a use for me
but I am still waiting. 

I can only serve you 
if I feel that much desire 
as comes from what it is 
you always leave out. 

Such is the infernal game
we keep playing 
chasing each other around
margins of predicaments. 

Never quite into it 
but submitting as beggars 
for the sake of scraps 
from foreign experiences. 

It could be much more
if you were a brave 
little raindrop challenge 
to parched ground. 

You have made us 
no more than vapours 
clouding a hazed vision 
of a thin version of Earth. 

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261022B
------------ 

Taking our cues 
from harsh weather 
everything is torn off 
and broken apart. 

There are so many 
possible explanations 
though none of them is 
what anything is about. 

We could enjoy 
the times in between 
any then and any this 
but that would ruin it all. 

What would we really be
if we weren't each other's
individual sufferings 
followed by the blame. 

What is once ruined 
is forever ruined again 
in all the different ways 
that make for ruin. 

There are those above us
sure to prevent any good
could ever come about 
from our own passions. 

Hammer in the stakes 
and drive in the nails 
holding everything down 
until it is too late. 

Everything is in flight 
from everything else 
until gravitational collapse
into a common idea. 

Ruined becomes a habit 
readily turned customary 
to be taken up by strangers 
who fail to understand. 

I don't understand you 
and you don't understand me
but why would you even try to
if there is no profit in it. 

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311022A
----------- 

I became the longing 
you did not care to have
so you sought to be rid 
of that same feeling. 

How stories end 
in official annals 
editing out portions
of hard core reality. 

Forced round identical
sorts of ragged circles 
always forbidden 
entry into the midst. 

The swamp of emotions 
that pulls someone in 
to a moment of terror 
as to never out of it again. 

Belittled is the normative 
to be accepted and sought 
the way bargain items are
at the sale counters. 

A living tombstone 
grave marker highlights 
filling in of detailed 
joys and ambitions. 

There won't be enough 
what it all boils down to
to buy the antidote 
for that much frustration. 

Those cold hand holds 
along a twilight line  
where it all goes dark 
into a dizzy headless spin. 

Our jack-o-lantern faces 
gaze across wasteland
payroll days carved
routine expressions. 

Ghosts and ghouls 
comprised various bit 
parts of former selves 
ratchet strain of memories.

You can hear it snap
when something breaks 
at the conclusion of a rag
doll animation. 

We are the demonized 
proselytized and chained 
hunched bell ringers 
in toil's cathedrals. 

Scratching at revulsion 
to claw a way out 
from going under into 
the drowned out drift. 

Can't scratch a way out
from where they force you 
to continue to kill time
and pay for that privilege. 

------------------------------

011122A
------------  

Being just another bore 
you thought nothing of 
I put aside whatever it was 
that I once believed 
someone else would want. 

Maybe it was what I lost 
so carelessly along the way
or maybe it was what I have 
collected up to put aside 
while made and unmade. 

It feels like nothing now 
same as when I began 
at neither remembered 
nor anything to recognize
and only passing through.   

I do not know what it was 
but I know I do not have it 
having looked for it 
in secret and forgotten places
as if to really find something. 

They took away the spaces
that I used to like to fill 
and I no longer know 
where it is anymore 
that anyone can find anything. 

It isn't what you think 
and it isn't what you wanted 
but it felt like something
that really never was  
past hunted and haunted. 

Each of us a forever look 
for our special something 
never there for having  
until the end goes down 
to pull apart and away. 

Best to forget it all 
once seemed memorable
leads to nothing but away
it goes and knowing
all the wrong reasons. 

------------------------

011122B
----------- 

There was a world 
that I wanted to be in on 
but it is all gone now. 

I didn't catch it 
and it fell entirely apart
into a million pieces. 

Maybe we imagined  
then shared our stories 
trying to prove it real. 

It has been many years
since I have met anyone 
whom I believe was there. 

No one leaves a message 
in the old mailbox 
about how it used to be. 

The replicas come and go 
being vaguely familiar 
to what we thought we knew. 

There are fragments of film
that we are being told 
are the real documents. 

It is too unbelievable 
the world so cruel 
as to become that different. 

---------------------------------

011122C
----------- 

I woke up unexpectedly 
in the wrong dream 
wanting to find a way 
to get out of it again. 

I thought I had chosen 
a different scene 
where something happens 
the way I really wanted. 

It isn't really mine 
and I have no real idea 
as to who left it here 
for me to suffer. 

Tired of never knowing 
what to actually do next 
outside an always long list
of essential but futile acts.

I am still waiting   
for someone to find me 
whom I do not feel a need 
to keep hiding from. 

I can imagine in my mind 
what that feels like 
but I am no longer certain 
that it is actually possible. 

------------------------------- 

011122D
----------- 

I have no idea today 
about how it really is 
knowing nothing 
is as it seems. 

Turning off the news 
as its punishment 
for being misleading 
and the weather obscure. 

We have lost touch 
what seems eons ago 
in a primordial mash up
of distorted segments. 

It was a mosh pit 
crowded with random 
ideas and feelings 
all getting carried away. 

Nothing in common 
beyond an ingestion 
of common facts 
mixed with neutral filler. 

Something that passes 
for polite conversation 
in midst the receiverships
of social bankruptcies. 

There isn't any interest 
remains to be shared  
beyond poking at death
with sharpened sticks. 

Going it alone 
being far too expensive 
a fatal proposition 
but it is all we have got. 

I cannot stand you 
and you cannot stand me 
but we are no longer forced 
into a  9 to 5 get along.

I thought I could be freed 
to someone else differently 
but I am not there yet 
and my clock is running out. 

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011122E
----------- 

Sky blue and bright light 
means I could wander 
the far lengths and breadths 
of a same isolation. 

Pacing lengths and breadths 
of whatever defined space 
pushing up against its walls 
in any here and now. 

Following fence lines 
marked off  boundaries 
concerning what goes on 
over on some far side. 

Here that is nowhere 
other than familiar 
sheltering of arrangements 
turned into rejected invites. 

They never came through
so we shuttered it all 
realizing something cruel 
about all such boundaries. 

It does not really matter 
who invites or who responds 
in the finality of outcomes 
leading to abandonment. 

Some might put blame 
on some dereliction of duty 
and any other sorts of shame 
but it is never that simple. 

What is lost is forever 
and forever is a long time 
for something to be lost
that was forever wanted. 

We are born into it 
and we die from it 
in the beginning and the end
forever wanting something. 

Forget for sale or trade 
when it comes down to it 
but some seem to believe 
they can get some that way. 

They say it was 
where it surely wasn't 
and they say it wasn't 
where it might have been. 

The line is broken off 
and there is no one there 
to hold to a broken syllable 
amid a scramble of letters. 

An alphabet of needs 
that are never really met 
nor officially recognized 
in any hush of wishes. 

I thought there might be 
but they took that too 
leaving only walls and fences
dividing everything up. 

---------------------------- 

011122F
---------- 

You tend to recollect 
the ones who do not recall 
anything about you 
and the inconsequential 
concerning any meeting. 

It becomes everything 
you should have forgotten 
a very long time ago 
along with other futilities 
lodged as stale memories. 

You pull it out of yourself 
in the same way 
you would pull a rusty needle 
leaving a long ago trace 
on the edge of your timeline. 

Mortality is such a cruel thing
always wearing us down 
before it snuffs out completely 
in the middle of something 
or something else. 

We are largely comprised 
from “if it had been different” 
reiterated countless times 
until it floods out infinity 
with endless contrary points. 

Each point pokes another star
out from our night sky minds
indicating all the places
we can never get to know 
as part of being emptied out. 

Each newly burst balloon 
another cartoon comic blip 
inflated hot air rise 
proves so empty inside 
flying rubber band inventions. 

Should never have mattered
but sometimes it does 
for reasons we do not understand 
and regrets that come later 
to say “if it had been different”. 

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011122G
----------- 

Time runs away 
and work remains undone 
to nag as another diversion 
in a chorus of many same. 

Promising something 
that we will never really get 
coming at the end of what
is always unending. 

Additions to a long list 
of what we were tormented 
towards giving up 
whether we did or don't. 

The correct answer 
remaining eternally evasive 
same as a sharp object 
forever evades the cut. 

There are diagrams 
that reveal all of the parts 
giving the false impression 
anything can be put together. 

It becomes about the tools
and having the desire 
but it does not work that way
because it does not fit. 

Repeat the same process 
same result every time
wondering what you did 
made it go that way. 

Eventually you realize 
the manuals are obsolete 
and nothing is made that way
anywhere anymore. 

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