RE: Poems 271020 - October 27th, 2020

191020A
-----------=20

Running on empty=20
filling up=20
with social cliches
about left field catch
and gaping hole=20
stretched between=20
separate end zones
of the beef cake boys
and the girly girls.

Coming up midway
wild ride rumour=20
at the get give=20
nothing but a point=20
pierced ignore=20
gone clown face=20
into fail attraction=20
at any long gone
closed down shows.=20

Nothing happening=20
that is interesting=20
beyond plenty to do=20
that never gets done
to pad out a sense
of falsified growth
futility laced=20
with toxic shades
of twisted Capitalism.

Writhing tangled up
in endless contradiction
as to who it was
in any what and when=20
having answers=20
they never share=20
to questions=20
we are not to ask=20
of anyone. =20

Ghost stories filled
with unwanted spooks=20
leaving more nothings=20
as to left to say=20
past the shadow hangs
on every word=20
strip teased sounds
of concept slam down
to a bone rack.=20

Define reasonable=20
when you invoke=20
shades of freedom=20
as to being something=20
had among those
emptied slots=20
of push to select=20
where you pop in=20
your personal coins.=20

Slot machine living=20
a tenuous life=20
of the non gambler=20
in a high stakes culture=20
seeking for lost arts
in coffee spoon measures
delinquent time=20
amid rerun segments=20
of spent feelings.=20

Lying in a hot tub=20
trying to soak away
the dead shells=20
of thinking must be=20
and something left=20
alive down under=20
more layers of could
be found digging
away at decease.=20

Roll over=20
on anything=20
and playing dead=20
in the too late=20
of a mid afternoon=20
made no longer able=20
to keep on begging=20
for another bone=20
at the kick around.=20

The punishments=20
squeezed from tears
that trickle down in
to another vast =20
nothingness
blandly seasoned  =20
onto bits of brutality
all ending served=20
as empty plates.=20

Scrape at it=20
until it all goes raw=20
porcelain taste=20
with a gilt edge=20
of endless promise=20
leads a wild chase=20
of dead rainbows
scattering ashes=20
and skeletal remains.  =20

Everything squeezed
hard as a world=20
gone pressed grapes=20
spilling out splashes
of inevitability=20
as to future sins=20
into a collective ferment
jug splitting open=20
a red sea exodus.=20

It did not happen=20
due to any freak belief=20
in possibilities
knowing history
merely thoughtless=20
unguarded moments=20
clown acts
into tragic accidents
that fill volumes.=20

The cruelty of mime
pushing at the heavens=20
for answers=20
that never come=20
in what is carved=20
into the screaming faces
of rain drops=20
knowing the truth
better than anyone.=20

It is always too late=20
to wash it away
where it comes to stain
the tableau=20
of a whole universe=20
with those patterns=20
passing as living
in ways life happens
between trail markers.=20

---------------------------=20

211020A
-----------=20

Not having a word for it
I talk around it=20
until it becomes a fossil=20
of strange provenance
washed onto a shoreline.=20

The thing that I found=20
never really described=20
and your never knowing
what it really meant to me
or what I meant by it.=20

Language is cruel=20
in its refusals=20
where it is struck dumb
into unwilling to say
anything that matters. =20

All that guessing
based on false leads=20
never comes out right=20
in the long and short=20
of anything at all.=20

The endless asking=20
knows no answers=20
past dew of morning =20
misting the face=20
of a rising sun.=20

Clouded eyes=20
hoping for horizons=20
finding nothing=20
but heaped syllables=20
in a far distance.=20

The brokenness =20
of sight lines=20
drifting in memory =20
as anxious beginnings=20
and unexpected ends.=20

The words=20
always serving someone=20
but never our own=20
and the language=20
is something borrowed.=20

------------------------------=20

221020A
------------=20

There was that illusion=20
that came from a taste=20
of what freedom might be
teasing as it often does=20
with vain possibilities.=20

My only discovery=20
is that I cannot know you=20
and you cannot know me=20
in any real way=20
we might both enjoy.=20

They make me=20
into the usual nothing=20
to your everything=20
pimping you=20
to crowds of admirers.=20

We can dream=20
but it ends there=20
in absurd scenes=20
that we cannot afford=20
to realize onto film.=20

Telling you the stories
would mean nothing=20
when we walk away
into the same scenarios
that we came from.=20

We are born into that=20
forever of struggling=20
against what it means=20
as to trying to escape=20
that type of solitude.=20

Those tedious places
that no one wants=20
to actually live in
but feels obligated=20
to talk nicely about.=20

Nothing to know=20
after the unboxing=20
beyond the discard
of so much packaging=20
being most of any offer.=20

It is not what we wanted
but it is what we got=20
in exchange for advertising=20
what we never have=20
as to what anyone wanted.=20

Everything unwraps=20
into the self same=20
conditional boredom
of routine world play=20
set to martial music.=20

Couldn't we for once
actually meet up
to doing it differently=20
becomes a usual answer=20
of carefully ignored.

Would have made dinner
but the rumour was spread
that they all do it=20
much better than I do
and with eyes closed.=20

Factories of the same=20
keep pounding out=20
endless versions=20
of self same copies
as the originals.=20

Romance is something=20
ticket holders can get=20
by going to a theatre
as long as they don't=20
try to bring any home.=20

I tried to listen=20
but I don't anymore=20
having learned=20
it makes no difference=20
as to what one follows.=20

Ring around the rosy,=20
and we all fall down=20
one way or another=20
hoping to find it=20
before the song's end.=20

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

271020A
------------=20

The only differences=20
between the broken=20
and the whole=20
are the differences=20
that each asks for.=20

What is always worse
is being partly that=20
and partly made up=20
from the found bits=20
of different puzzles.=20

They cut us all apart=20
into misfit pieces=20
that never seem to fit
as anything that is
still in the picture.=20

Unwelcome changes=20
erode the obvious=20
to unrecognizable=20
and no real reach=20
grasp, or hold.=20
=20
We scatter=20
across asphalt fields
a leaf scatter=20
of whispers pleading=20
to a deaf wind.=20

No way to recover=20
time or chance=20
across hard infinities=20
of pitched weeping=20
into starless nights.=20

Not knowing why=20
deep longings arise=20
to coalesce=20
into unexpected=20
irrational desires.=20

I should never ever=20
think of wanting you=20
but then I want you=20
so very much=20
I forsake our truth.=20

I imagine a treaty=20
bringing peace=20
to our two factions=20
but negotiations fail=20
to bring us together.=20

We become no more
than our battle injuries=20
sustained in wars=20
that some call =E2=80=9Clove=E2=80=9D
and others only =E2=80=9Cduties=E2=80=9D.=20

We stand somewhere=20
on the other side=20
where none of us knows=20
what it came from=20
or where it goes.=20

If only we were those
among the lucky=20
who get to touch=20
in ways that can forget=20
almost everything else.=20

At least for a while=20
past scrawled margins=20
of anyone's stories=20
where there is no one=20
who can find us.=20

Maybe in that place=20
of your warmth=20
and comfort=20
I could stop wanting=20
what I cannot have.=20

------------------------      =20

Love poems, as they are sometimes referred to, of a sort. Though really abo=
ut someone I do not know, might never know, and must say I have never known=
.  I try to be compliant as to the required and necessary disclaimers that =
divide all instances of claimed fictions from what are loosely termed as be=
ing our realities. Not that I really believe in that, anymore, all that muc=
h, but it is what we are routinely required to do. Particularly if one is w=
alking a tightrope across a virtual abyss, seeing nothingness all around. T=
hen in particular one must be somewhat precise.  If only it had been, were,=
 or could be entirely different. I would rewrite the entire script in an in=
stant, and we could remake the entire scene to a very different ending.