Poems: 120621 - June 12th, 2021

070621A
------------=20

The torture was boring
and so were the torturers
but it was just another way
to make a =E2=80=9Cliving=E2=80=9D.=20

I was out on that ledge=20
with no one to talk to=20
except for the jumpers
on their way down.=20

They were going down=20
settling in gracefully=20
so comfortably=20
I almost wanted to join them.=20

They had perfect wounds=20
and nothing to heal=20
admiring each other's=20
broken wings and situations.=20

They all found someone
with a wax heart to melt=20
and there was just enough heat
to do the melting.=20

I was cold to it all=20
always gone too far
held in disagreement=20
with the light and the heat.=20

There was little to say=20
and even less to do=20
forced to toe those lines
along the thin and narrow.=20

Some curtains were open
at peek through Windows
where romance is busied
with taking its clothes off.=20

We knew the beer guts=20
were carrying families
full term career path
their faces of afterbirth.=20

We don't do that here
tells you everything=20
you need to know=20
about the management.=20

We used to hide out=20
days off on fire escapes=20
where the smoke pretends
to touch Heaven.=20

There was no reply=20
and everyone holding=20
their particular chance=20
of a sinking species.=20

The high didn't last=20
and the low started Monday=20
if you followed anything
in the weather reports.

It was nothing more=20
than usual observations
made from lookout posts=20
behind camouflage nets. =20

Then they always say=20
it could have been different=20
but I don't know how=20
so I write these memoirs.=20

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

070621B
------------ =20

When the rain streams down
thick as honey=20
into the stations of mind=20
we watch it harden=20
into ancient amber=20
encasing little dreams=20
of yellowing precision=20
under the glass of eyes.

Bugs blood, bugs blood,=20
we used to say=20
not even knowing why
but it was more in wonder
than it was anything else=20
about how we learned=20
what a crush eventually feels =20
spurting its meanings.=20

Eventually we return=20
to wherever we came from=20
realizing there is no honour=20
in any play of words=20
displaying legs and wings=20
as iconic blotted lines
resembling being=20
a crawling creeping thing.=20

We once crawled=20
long before we walked=20
and then began to wonder=20
what became of our wings
feeling the growing pains
where we expected wings=20
sprouting from shoulders=20
readied for flight.=20

Various parts never did=20
really work right=20
and the whole thing=20
never really took off=20
having been put together
from left overs and bits=20
that no one really wanted=20
the way it all turned out.=20

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

080621C
------------

All the whisperers=20
of seductions=20
have long left=20
the ancient playing fields.

All that blood and vigour=20
breaking something=20
to get at what is inside=20
so as to take it out.

I know nothing=20
of where they have gone =20
and I never found a way
to follow them there.=20

Though I tried to remain=20
something small enough
to slide through=20
any possible openings.=20

I would have gone=20
if I had really known=20
more than a rumour=20
of what happened.=20

Knowing it is too late=20
for a following=20
along any startle leap=20
into any such ways.=20

Everything was contrived
so very differently=20
and approaching the end
knows no real release.=20

We gave up on that=20
a very long time ago
knowing only war horses
forming battle lines.=20

What happened then=20
to change the world=20
so absolutely=20
beyond all recognition.=20

No one that I meet
was anyone that I knew
but they all made claims
about being familiars.=20

Too much talk=20
concerning black cats=20
and broomsticks=20
after the threshold is swept.=20

We were swept away=20
in maelstroms of change=20
that came at a high cost
as to our obsolescence.=20

The past=20
is an impenetrable mass=20
of religious ceremonies
muttered by stale men.=20

Foetid mouth organs=20
determining the odds
as to the outcomes=20
that make up  everything.=20

An odds sort of world=20
where father failed
to teach what he knew
about the art of gambling.=20

He taught me the razor=20
but I was never quite sure=20
what I should cut with it
looking at throat and hands.=20

He taught me how=20
to piss standing up
and we argued for fun
about what didn't matter.=20

My ex wife loved it
that he was manly meat=20
shirtless at the table
and never anything girly.=20

It is all carefully noted=20
in the classified records=20
pertaining to my body=20
of failure and divorce.

Life was a horse=20
I really did not know=20
how to bet upon=20
before it threw me.=20

It was all about=20
getting up=20
and trying it again=20
until you can't anymore.=20

Always a wrong horse
in the wrong race=20
and I was faltering=20
at the starting gate.=20

Trying to please them
without realizing=20
it was about the purse
comes to the finishers.=20

I could never finish=20
in any place=20
and ended up blamed=20
for being interrupted.=20

I had begun to believe
you die after school
in hopes of resurrection
at early retirement.=20

That too was a myth
passed on as oral tradition
from the war generation
knowing different monsters.=20

I had tried very hard=20
to make a name=20
at something ordinary=20
and never knowing what.=20

I was never any good=20
at anything ordinary=20
the way my father was=20
but I tried very hard.=20

I was always taught=20
it was very important=20
to be ordinary=20
making ordinary friends.=20

It seemed surreal=20
playing board games
on family holidays=20
Careers, Life, Monopoly. =20

It created expectations=20
when you played that way
bringing you closer
to families on television.=20

Secretly a stranger=20
in a strange land
land of plenty=20
land of milk and honey.=20

 I had no idea=20
I had gotten lost=20
in my father's footsteps
on the way to a factory.=20

Failing to be a little man=20
and losing the struggle=20
to keep the creation down
as though it was vomit.=20

I was no hero=20
the way my father was=20
and eventually I doubted
being any sort of man.=20

After I realized that
everyone I ever met
wanted the same hero=20
that I could never be.=20

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

080621D
------------=20

Clamped in the jaws
of our dream matrix=20
all the pieces=20
that can be held=20
come together.=20

The messy process
that glues us=20
to whom we are=20
according to someone=20
whom we never met.=20

The wire splices=20
that make up our minds
into twisted connections
radiating from servers
that define our networking.

You eventually learn=20
your networking is limited
to where you have access
and access is controlled=20
by someone else.=20

You learn it
when you get invited=20
\to the meeting=20
to find out=20
who talks to you.=20

A mistake=20
the dullest keep repeating
in a vain belief
in freedom of association=20
combined with entry skills.=20

It is a very small world
and it gets smaller=20
along the event horizon
screaming its finality=20
as to another erasure.=20

A game of leap frog=20
past associations=20
where playing checkers=20
with random yesterdays
costs tomorrows. =20

Playing pieces=20
quickly taken off=20
from momentary placements
among up tight squares
on another's playing board.=20

A high price to pay=20
but it was more expensive
to look for something else
appearing on a short list
of pleasant contrivances.=20

You want to succeed=20
at finding a diversion=20
that some others have found
but makes you victim=20
of the one armed bandit.=20

Wasted so much time=20
trying to be free
in one way or the other
until it seems a motion=20
that was always overturned.=20

We live in constant disbelief=20
about rumours that arise
concerning Judgment Day=20
being a committee=20
comprised of our contraries.=20

I don't know where=20
it says it in any rule book
and I don't have a copy
having only seen a portion
of the key word index.=20

I look things up=20
to give a semblance of truth=20
to the various justifications
for strings of bad luck=20
and mounting losses.=20

Abandoned as the wreck
in someone else's accident
long having given up
so many sorts of waiting
out from underneath.=20

It is never=20
what we look for=20
that finds us=20
at the worst of all=20
possible moments.=20

Then again it is true=20
it is all about someone else
and never about anyone=20
that we thought it was=20
past a change of costumes.=20

Acceptance is another=20
that has been commodified=20
and most give up=20
sinking into isolated=20
no way to hope to afford.=20

What proves too difficult=20
comes extremely easily=20
to the simple minded=20
and some of them laugh=20
at all of your efforts.=20

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

There comes a point in life when you no longer feel that you are in perpetu=
al, immediate, danger of losing what you do not actually have any of. At th=
at moment you are no longer hopeful of the success that you once believed t=
hat you must, necessarily, keep on seeking, but never really had. That jour=
ney being over, you begin to be able to actually write about it as poetry, =
because it has become a part of the truth. It no longer seems to be the dan=
gerous secret that it once seemed to be. Dangerous because your competition=
 would always aim there, if they chanced to know, as if it was in fact an o=
pen, and clearly discernible "bullseye" target for them to sink all of thei=
r points into.=20