Poems: 030423 - April 3rd, 2023

270323A
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We are those deeper regrets
as to what could have been
that we could not change. 

Regretting all the bad luck 
that made our world contrary
to our own desires and efforts. 

Regretting those catastrophes
we could never anticipate 
that made it all turn out wrong. 

Regretting everything 
that chanced to stand in the way
of doing what we wanted. 

Sifting through the blame 
we divide it up into portions 
that are then distributed. 

None of it does any good 
but nowhere to store it 
and it all takes up space. 

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290323A
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We want it back 
the way it was before 

We are made so weary 
by the new ways. 

The same dulled footsteps 
on the same worn floors. 

The same jitters jump 
to the same sudden sounds.

We want to go back 
to looking forward. 

We want to go back 
to when it was possible.
We want to go back 
to when someone could. 

We want it back 
the way it was before. 

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290323B
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Drill a hole 
and pour something in
through a funnel. 

Any dunce cap 
might work that way 
when turned on its head. 

Fill up your mind 
with something concrete 
gives you a foundation. 

It has to be solid 
never seeming empty
and never feeling hollow. 

Be careful of any cracks 
formed along fault lines 
that things fall into. 

Guard and fill in 
any of those crevices 
against clutter and wild life. 

Know you will be unhappy
about what came out of it
and what was pushed in. 

Why you want it to be solid
rather than remaining soft
despite footprints and initials. 

They kept telling you 
you could build on that 
but it remained too vacant. 

No one responded to any
of those little notices 
about requests and offers. 

You were entirely misled 
by what they engraved 
into that pedestal. 

It was another signpost 
pointlessly pointing 
in all the wrong directions. 

Too late to turn around 
as you hit your blank concrete 
face into another wall. 

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300323A
----------- 

Only the successful know 
and those who failed 
know nothing at all
but most of them talk a lot.

Talking as if they know 
in pretensions about loyal 
belonging to the mass cover up 
confirming memberships. 

That is the way it works 
in the great dragging down 
to what some refer to as hell 
and others refer to as experienced. 

Whatever it might have been
is getting pulled down 
into all that is too common
among the varieties of ignorance. 

William James declared eternity
could actually be glimpsed 
in a whiff of ether or nitrous oxide
if you want to go that far. 

Make believe going that far 
might be going far enough 
as if it will take you somewhere 
that you really want to be. 

It is never what you can choose 
because there is nothing there 
to really choose from
in a pin ball machine ricochet. 

Your shiny shot ball drops away
having lost all its momentum 
somewhere along the rebound 
stretches of  disappointments. 

You are bounced off the edges
of various obstacles to scoring 
points in that big contest 
that no one ever really wins. 

Your ball eventually rolls down 
after a number of hard hits 
past the destiny flipper 
in a simulation old age gathering. 

All lined up for it again to bang
bumping up against one another
reliving the dread and anticipation
as to replays at destiny.

Whatever you learned
in that darkest academy 
will never really help you 
in any usual matters or ways.

The imagined affairs of life
that seem so strictly regulated 
and closed off to your kind 
along with make believe options. 

You are too given to imagining 
the impossible appeal that comes
with various ways of life 
that you then find inaccessible. 

You used to think you could
persist until you got lucky
only to end it all at finding 
it never really works that way. 

It would have been freedom 
but that too seems a fantasy 
about one or another game 
that you never got to play. 

Some people did get to play
but you only got to watch 
the way kids read comic books
and wear disposable costumes. 

You took the fool bait 
but then they told you 
you would not like it 
as the hook pierced the lip. 

So it all goes as it goes 
and most things becoming 
another bloody mess 
that someone else made. 

You scrape away 
at the pitiful surface 
but you can never get under  
in past the hall monitors. 

Their eyes pinned up 
in various corners 
where they stare at you 
as you lose your way. 

You only get arrangements
that you do not want 
and you have never won 
anything yet. 

You begin to really believe
that you never will 
and that everything is a racket
that the fixers fixed. 

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300323B
------------ 

Not bent enough 
for anything to be straight 
and not straight enough 
for anything bent. 

It simply does not fit 
and even the tailor said 
you have it all wrong 
as to the measurements. 

You have to be extreme 
in order to get in on anything 
otherwise it all slides through
and no one ever notices. 

Dropping out in between 
something normal 
and something abnormal 
into the unwanted zone. 

Cannot really make it 
as the one thing 
or as the other thing 
along the far stretch. 

Gooned from both ends 
of the same wicked equations
lacking acceptable solutions
for those common variables. 

When you get nothing else
common is supposed to appeal 
more than it could or used to
but it never really does. 

The squeeze becomes deprivation
and the increased challenge 
is supposed to increase the desire
for something too ordinary. 

A winner is born every day 
but you never won 
because you never could fit 
into any of those costumes. 

Someone else got to play t he part
and it never feels really fair 
that they could and you could not
as to that or any other stage. 

Wondering if they left you anything 
more than a few silly bit parts 
where you walk on, in, and off
stopped short of any passion. 

You feel as unlucky and faded 
as the relic of an unwilling saint
forgotten in some back room 
among a maze of other props. 

At least if it were a good time 
that would make it so much easier
to forget all those misfit moments
that added up to missing out on. 

You hear rumours it is different 
but no invites come in your mail 
and you know the real locations 
are never on your too public map. 

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300323C
----------- 

I used to care too much
about who was in my dreams 
but now I do not care at all
knowing that dreams 
are all about the same losses. 

I used to care too much 
about who the tears were for 
but now I do not care at all 
knowing the tears 
are for those I will never know. 

I used to care too much 
about what tomorrow brings 
but now I do not care at all 
knowing tomorrow 
is a day that never comes. 

I used to care too much 
about what would come of it all
but now I do not care at all 
knowing nothing ever does
really come of it at all.  

I used to care too much 
about you and about me 
but now I do not care at all 
knowing there is no one 
that comes that near. 

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310323A
----------- 

I never measured any of it
the way you measured it 
so it was never really as good
for me as it was for you
as to any of those measures. 

I wanted so much more than you
but I thought we could share it
and that too was my mistake 
about the limits of what is true 
and how severe the world is. 

So I lost what I really wanted 
and it is not what I can replace 
where no one ever shares  
as they seal each others' fates 
to what is then lost and too late. 

They told me it was about love
but that too is another fiction 
and though love is nice to have 
it was not what I really wanted 
to be left to trying to measure up. 

It was so much more than that 
but I cannot find my way back 
from all those ridiculous places 
that you used to send me to 
to look for what was never there. 

You could give me all that love 
and it would never really satisfy 
as to my hunger and my wanting 
for all that I have lost 
as to what I really wanted. 

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310323B
----------- 

The night winds are cruel 
where they deliver their mischief 
and where they leave their marks
as less than pleasant reminders. 

There were things to do 
amounting to nothing much 
but nothing of that was anything 
of any dream to live in. 

It all seems far too severe 
compared to anything severe 
that could have pleased me 
in any smaller or larger ways. 

Wondering what I could have done
to free myself from all of that 
but there is nothing in the wind 
that would or could ever tell me. 

I am still the same prisoner 
headed down the same old roads 
to the same old places 
I never want or wanted to go. 

There is no reprieve at the place 
where I am kept hanging on
at the frayed end of a sputter 
of anything I knew to be better. 

Better for you is never anything
that might be better for me 
and it all seems too broken off 
from anything really satisfying. 

I will never get there I guess 
because the wind slammed the door
and I do not know how to open it 
from the way it has closed. 

I am not really getting through it
and everything else has gone 
the way everything else goes under 
where I stopped digging long ago. 

It is piled in the far corner 
defining another heap of problems 
that could never find solutions
so the wind can laugh at that. 

I tried at for myself 
and I tried at with others 
but it all ends up the same 
at the bitter end of anything. 

Still the same cruel winds 
in these same cruel times 
blowing around suggestions
that mean the same nothing.  

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310323C
----------- 

Imagination is the beast 
that keeps howling at the moon
left to its starving for anything 
that it ever comes up with. 

If only I could turn it off 
the way one turns off a television 
terminating the program 
that failed to satisfy my cravings. 

Always the wrong channel 
tuned in on that broken dial 
and the wrong program comes on 
exactly at the wrong time. 

There is nothing to invent 
that would serve as an invitation 
having tried that before 
and each effort a similar failure. 

There is no one that I know of 
would really make any difference 
to a waiting game that waits 
for whatever it is kept waiting for. 

We fill up the time in between 
in various unsatisfying ways 
and there are always some lies 
to tell to make anyone else happier. 

The problem being in the knowing 
of which there is precious little 
in places of wandering forever 
among those contrary intentions.  

Looking into broken mirrors 
that display the passing of time 
and knowing everything wanted
has turned to imagination. 

There is talk of a cancelled meeting
and talk of a chance was lost 
but you do not know what that is
and likely did not want it anyway. 

It all seems to melt away 
the way a New Year's candle melts 
away as games of prophecy tried
to anticipate materialization. 

Imagining there could be something 
comes from a puddle of wax 
and reading between the lines 
of so many types of prohibition. 

Maybe the spirits will speak 
where everyone else was silenced 
and any objections over ruled
by one or another toy monkey. 

There being nothing really solid 
about any of it anymore 
and perhaps never really was 
a slightest chance of that. 

We can blame it on imagination 
as to someone, something, 
being somewhere as someone 
but nothing ever comes of that. 

I never knew I was only howling 
at that same laughing moon
trying to make a connection 
to imagination's ends. 

In the end I imagined that too 
and there is nothing for a beast  
other than devouring itself 
while the moon still howls. 

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030423A
----------- 

The many awful places 
that one falls out with 
and falls out of
where there are only men
and prostitutes 
all wanting the same thing
for their different reasons. 

You did not go there 
searching for men
and you did not go there 
to consort with prostitutes
but that is where you failed 
to understand the realities
of who does what with whom.

Knowing it is nothing 
that you really wanted 
and at least not in that way 
that they want it
you try to write your own
very personal version
of a book of the dead. 

You suspect you are dead 
and it is only a question 
as to the time and place 
where you chanced to die 
to expecting anything 
that might ever pass 
as some sort of satisfaction.

You try to illustrate  
what it might have felt like
if anything had been real 
beyond the self flagellation 
and any sort of sainthood 
that you never wanted 
and that you never tried to earn. 

There is that deep resentment 
as to how they told you 
that you could have some 
then laughed at your searching 
for what you could never find 
within those tight bounds 
of a stiffed and straitjacketed time. 

You were not for the men 
and you were not for the whores
who were always waiting 
as if they were waiting for you 
so you passed through 
the way the dead pass through
as the dead walking. 

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