POEMS: 100623 - June 10th, 2023

240523A
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Only those who are wanting
can actually love anything 
and most often they lie
about what they really want. 

That is the way of things 
and honesty is the killer 
killing in cold blood
more often than not.

It is easier for some 
to passionately love 
what is dead 
as there are no challenges. 

The dead make no argument
and the dead only want 
exactly what you imagine 
that they are wanting for. 

You  can imagine anything 
no matter how untrue it is
about a  love object 
to intensify your mourning. 

A hair's breadth in between 
loving and mourning 
as the two flip sides 
to passion's tossed coin. 

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

260523A
----------- 

We all secretly want 
and want to be wanted 
even if it is only pity 
for being  a broken doll. 

The head lolling around 
some hidden pivot 
where it retains attachments 
to the chakras of agony.

A loosened pile up 
of displaced connections 
between sat on a flimsy base 
rammed up into the cranium. 

Feeling another crunch 
that keeps to wondering 
whether that is the last 
and final form of severance. 

The wheel turns around 
and you hear Catherine laughing
about the various loose bits
that eventually fall off and out. 

Out from such an unloved doll
that only wanted a gentle lover 
who would take it away 
to keeping it safe to herself. 

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260523B
----------- 

It gets to that point 
where you no longer want to
pull out any of the weeds 
because you feel too sorry.

Sorry to do it to them 
because people are doing it
to people all of the time 
and the screaming never stops. 

That screaming that goes on 
in the screaming streets 
piercing apartment windows 
overlooking the new Golgotha. 

Everything is all about being 
on the cutting edge of it all 
and you are simply tired 
of all the cutting up and down. 

Then there are those who persist
in trying to pull you out 
from any attempts at roots 
the way hairs are sometimes pulled.

You are not growing 
in the ways they want you to 
because you are not that type 
and you get the wrong chemistry. 

You get it wrong and wrong again
because that is what you get  
until you no longer know 
anything that feels right. 

The soil is the same everywhere 
but it is something in the feed 
that keeps poisoning everything 
you ever hoped for as to a situation. 

The desire to blossom even if 
it is only once in a lifetime 
but you are nipped in the bud
every time you stretch that far. 

These are the badlands 
and emotional weather is brutal 
among those who come
to do the yanking and pulling. 

No space anywhere 
for anything to find its place 
beyond the distant deep rooted 
considered to be good timber. 

That forest of carved faces 
where you find no appeal 
and are left to dangle 
same as a limp straggling vine. 

You want to strangle something
if you could reach that high
wrapping around a throat 
and tightening the grip.

Had hoped friends on the vine
but only found the jungle
and not even a pretty one 
to flower with. 

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

260523C
----------- 

Makes you really wonder
what you are protected from
so you write a long list 
including everything 
that you do not have any of
that might have been fun. 

You try to be inclusive 
and not leave anything out 
that you would have enjoyed 
knowing that it belongs there
on that long list of everything 
you are supposed to give up. 

Once upon a time you believed 
in working at it and for it 
but that never got you there 
so you stopped believing 
that you had any right ideas 
that could get you through. 

They took the fun out of it all
but they always rub it in 
by showing you the fun 
someone else is having 
getting to do something different 
that you do not get to do any of. 

That contributes something
to your perpetual condition 
of fiscal embarrassment 
where there are plenty of ends
and even more never meets
adding to the price of shame. 

There were always rumours 
concerning the other side 
and you thought you could 
break through to the other side
past that brick in the wall 
that has your name on it. 

A little repository of ashes 
containing every good idea 
that you ever actually had 
cremated from the start 
as to any actual net worth 
that might have come of it. 

Riding the down spiral 
after having fallen from grace
not having worked a way up
to where you could never go 
past all those closed doors 
and the portraits in the hallways. 

You begin to want a new name 
and a whole new identity 
so that someone might find you 
knowing your previous incarnation 
never really had any sort of chance
to actually know that much. 

The morgue has better bodies 
than the one you are riding in 
making you wish you could 
simply drop your body 
and pick up another choice
as to a  better fit, form and function. 

Maybe that would do it for you 
when nothing else ever did 
and you hear of people being paid
simply for having good looks
and having less to say than a corpse
reclining on a mortuary slab. 

You used to believe in getting out
but the wrong people talked to you 
so you had to give it up
knowing that it was a sign 
that you were not wanted there 
by anyone you could really want. 

What you really want does exist
on many different levels 
but it is the getting that is a problem
having worn yourself out 
on one or another stray giving 
that did not pan out to anything 

Wrong number in the lottery 
and the same when the phone rings
so you do not pick it up anymore 
leaving machines talking to machines
while you  remain with all the culture 
that no one you knew ever wanted. 

Someone in the background 
insists on your pitching it all in
and tells you to start over again
to find something different 
to do with your time 
that does not waste money. 

Your face having fallen 
out from the rogues gallery 
you are a displaced person again 
and less noteworthy than the spider
arrived on a banana boat 
along with a heap of yellow puds. 

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260523D
------------ 

Do not want to go there alone 
the way I used to go there 
simply to come away 
with the usual feeling 
as to having lost something. 

A sort of hollow emptiness 
that carves out the insides 
where you tried to find exit 
from inside a typical shell 
without creating a disturbance. 

Never create a disturbance 
and never disturb anyone 
in your diligence at evading  
being referred to as disturbed 
in the avoidance games. 

Do not want to upset anyone
and do not want to intrude 
particularly in private places 
where one is not wanted
and bad memories are kept. 

All those common places 
of usual discomforts
among unconvincing actors 
playing unconvincing parts 
in the melange of bad plots. 

Treading lightly as to subject
and keeping away from too near
to whatever might offend 
knowing no one is interested 
as you waste time and money. 

Only matters how you waste it
as to the who, when and where 
getting nowhere 
that makes any difference 
being the only place to go. 

It was a long way down 
but you were never really up
and no one that you knew then 
ever bothers to remember you 
in any meaningful way. 

That leaves buyers and sellers
but you do not have 
and do not want the goods 
so you do not know what to say
beyond a passing politeness. 

If there was a set up 
it was not anything at all 
that would be in your favour 
but sure to bring you trouble 
right down the entire line. 

You want to get away 
but it seems too much the same
no matter which way you go 
and you can never seem to find
that one real exception. 

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

260523E
----------- 

By the time you know 
they say it is too late 
to fix whatever is broken
in the course of deliberation
or in the flux of chance. 

The makings of disconcerted 
impossible desires 
for improbable loves
providing some illusions
makes for feeling more free. 

Freedom is only a feeling 
that you can try to cultivate 
until you get the knack 
as to how to fool yourself 
into feeling that free. 

If we went all the way back 
to doing the past again 
it would mostly be the same 
not really knowing yet 
how to change little nuances. 

It is the big things that matter
the way the deep end mattered 
from the shallow end 
and never making a splash 
from the high board. 

There is no real respect 
for that sort of thing 
and a nickel and dime life 
is more embarrassing 
than life long water wings. 

The same devil is always in 
all those little details 
as to where and who and when
without need for any 
more specific references. 

It is not what you ever say 
but who fails to speak for you 
that is always more decisive 
concerning the actual outcomes 
of necessarily trivial acts. 

We have not learned as much
as we like to think that we have
and there is no actual way 
to jump that same old groove 
from mine to yours. 

Only different collisions 
with the same general relativity 
that makes up the outcomes 
and one particle ends the same 
as various multitudes of others. 

How can that possibly be fated
unless we are actually in Hell 
and free will is merely a myth 
we were tricked into thinking 
could make anything possible. 

Bumping into different  people
to bounce off into void spaces
in the very same ways as before
because the universe is that cruel
and that desolate a sort of place. 

Space costs too much money
and it costs too much to fill it 
and soon they will bill you a fee
for the space between your ears
where you used to store dreams. 

Just a different crush 
happens to the same destination
with all those forever mistakes 
made in the same forever ways 
that it is all too human to make. 

It would never be any different
if it were done again 
even if it were someone else 
because what is broken 
can never really be fixed. 

And if we tried a thousand ways
it would still be broken 
and it would still end up the same
despite all the details 
being entirely rearranged. 

And how do you make a deal 
with the right sort of devil 
before you run out of time 
and run out of deals to make 
so you can pretend at being free. 

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260523F
---------- 

You might have guessed 
that I really want for something
in a different obscure part 
of this god awful matrix 
that we are so fly trapped into. 

That feeling of utterly stuck 
in our patterns of movements 
to the sticky surface of it all 
and I cannot get off 
not in that way at all. 

There is no getting off 
in that way at all 
kept to merely passing time 
rearranging miscellanies of desires 
into their broken sequences. 

Seems there is nothing here 
in any way that I know 
and anywhere I know of 
to hope for within the realm 
of what is actually possible. 

The grim truth of it all 
but I keep scraping up traces 
that there used to be 
something I could want 
to simply disappear into. 

That is lost to me now 
but then again it always was 
a reaching for something more
that could never be grasped 
within the sum totals. 

Something to eat me up 
as love might once have done
before it revealed its illusions 
and in ways surpassing the means
that comes of routine toil. 

The here and now has lost 
any vestiges of similar appeal
the way a stale garbage can 
spoils whatever falls into it 
leaving only more longings. 

Clearly it was all that time 
spent with the wrong crowd 
that left its bad feelings 
imprinted onto everything 
that resembles or suggests. 

As if I never knew anyone 
and missed that only cliched train 
at that forsaken lonely station
that takes one high and out 
to something real again. 

All that endless looking at 
wears one's eyes out 
into seeing what is not there 
in all that heap of make do 
broken wings and pretty things. 

Nothing that I know of 
is anything near to enough 
and stuck at where I am 
only whets the many appetites 
that thrash about at everything. 

It becomes an animal caged
but to no truly good purpose 
doing the same old tricks 
for the same old audience 
becoming absolutely boring. 

I have become a monster 
held down in the pit of it all
neither wanting the truth
nor finding enough beauty 

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

270523A
----------- 

Waking up tired of it 
to hear the Sun laugh at you 
right out of the blue 
at your absurd predicament. 

You are not getting to play 
any of the roles
as any of those characters 
that you really wanted to play. 

It is only another stage 
and you are being kept back 
somewhere behind the curtains 
not really given any real part. 

You can imagine at least
a thousand different ways 
that you would have preferred
to have ended up instead. 

Though here you actually are
comforted by nothing much 
other than you did not choose it
to be anything the way it is. 

You log on to online 
where it feeds your imagination
with desirable options 
that disappear as you scroll. 

Going down the page 
you keep looking 
for that final bottom line 
as to how to get out of it. 

Nothing comes up 
as to a link or instructions
to actually follow 
so you surf your boredom. 

You cannot seem to buy in 
and cannot seem to buy out 
from where you are pinned
in between and out of touch. 

Your fingertips always touching
the numbed borders of nothing 
character emblazoned keys 
that clatter the perpetual push. 

There is none of it anywhere
where you chance to reside
knowing the only local source 
has discontinued publication. 

It is that kind of place now 
and the tabloid is so bland 
it is a watered down version
of a Tupperware social. 

Maybe everything is plastic 
and there only for display 
but do not handle the packages
unless you can pay the price. 

The voices in the street 
are talking nothing 
simply passing the time 
at mostly nothing. 

It makes all that new talk
about trends in clean living
seem far too difficult 
to even begin to entertain. 

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

300523A
----------- 

You begin to think you know
at least what it feels like 
to be a loaf of white dough 
baking in a hot oven 
as the Sun does its freak thing 
pummelling the hard pan earth. 

Anything green is screaming 
those wilted screams for water 
wondering if the cruel sky 
has forsaken every resurrection 
struggled up from the dead land
comprised of  countless ancestors. 

A slightly delirious mind strays 
into wild imaginings 
as to an endless number 
of new uses for the various 
types of frozen liquids 
in rainbow colours and flavours. 

Thoughts of running parched 
tongue along ice chilled skin 
dripping an exotic flavour 
along the edge of a molten flow 
that is gradual liquefaction 
as if we are melting in the heat.

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

020623A
------------ 

Spending time with normal people
who treat you as if you are a suspect
that does not have a normal sort of life. 

You do not have a normal family plot
and do not have any normal children 
who were supported by a normal job. 

There is nothing normal about you 
because you do not know the gossip 
and you drive a strange looking car. 

You do not do any normal things 
proving a normal lack of ambition
and worse yet you still have goals. 

Horror of horrors they think 
if you chance to achieve anything 
that makes you even less like them. 

You might be something dangerous 
and somehow you seem different
and maybe it is the way you speak. 

You are careful with words 
indicating there is something to hide
and you do not drink a popular brand. 

They do not want your food 
and they try to avoid your story 
in a vague fear of contamination. 

Must be something wrong with you 
that you are trying to conceal 
under a friendly disposition. 

You might be a terrible monster 
that the news warned them about 
lurking within a human skin. 

You did not live the way they lived
and do not do what they always do 
to pass their boringly normal time. 

You simply are not normal 
and you definitely do not fit in 
with a crowd of normal prisoners. 

You get an uncomfortable feeling 
that they are holding back the truth
about what they are really like and do. 

The many dirty little secrets 
that school kids will not tell you 
in the belief you snitch to the Principal. 

They feel uptight for no definite reason 
when you come around to the game
those being normal will not let you play. 

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020623B
----------- 

We are most often teased 
with the possibility 
of the impossible 
to the improbable extent 
of whatever it might be 
that might not be disappointing. 

We are steadfastly diminished 
in the diminishing of chance 
and getting increasingly worn out
in the pursuits of nothing special
that proves less than it seemed 
in every rare instance of caught. 

We nibble at the disappointments 
making pretense at satisfaction
while secretly harbouring desires
and covering over the envy 
about others who have the dibs 
on whatever we really want. 

We often secretly await a call 
that never actually comes 
and wander among other people
seeking that special moment 
until the others prove themselves
too annoying to tolerate. 

We wash away in that deluge 
of what proves endlessly contrary 
to any actual sorts of contentment 
in one or another instance 
of more convenient rearrangements 
as concerns this or that hunger. 

We know confusion is the normative 
confabulation of a typical mind 
meant to become lost 
in the ever worsening mind maze
consumes each little portion 
of what passes as an ordinary life. 

We never liked ordinary life 
and found normal to be irritating 
in the arts as in everyday passing  
reflected as nothing more 
than a deepening sense of lack 
populated by robots spewing cliches. 

We never wanted ordinary anything
in religiously concealed cravings 
for what is variously exceptional
and it is only the rare thing 
that truly captivates us 
with its offers of enchantment. 

Everything that we wish 
is always what we could not have 
and so we maintain personal museums
made up of various hopes and fears 
intent on the potential amusement 
of one or another posterity.

Secretly craving a type of escape 
that finally satisfies at least some 
of those pent up secret longings 
for something entirely different 
than an avalanche of ordinary 
that pins down and crushes. 

Better yet and far less likely 
being something different 
that would actually be lasting 
rather than a passing glimpse 
that defies all manner of realization
within any more personal sphere. 

We make do with whatever it is
that is entirely insipid 
as to it being tasteless and bland 
enough to be somewhat popular 
telling people it is wonderful
so we can feed on their reactions. 

Our carefully practised approval 
brings their approval in return 
so we can bathe and wallow 
in what spews from their fountains
feeding our pretense at having found
real meaning and approval. 

That type of vampirism is common 
being both anticipated and expected 
almost causing amnesiac forgetting 
as concerns the other varying types 
of ending at defining so many others 
in terms of their give and take more. 

We are overly tolerant of it all
due to having been rendered unable 
to keep on caring about any of it
being the habitual goings on 
that satisfy nothing and are offerings
even the gods would laugh at. 

They used to accept nearly anything 
that anyone chanced to throw at them 
but they are beyond any pleasing now
having developed refined tastes 
and having become very selective 
as to the detailed ingredient lists. 

We secretly wanted to get a little 
before we are done away and gone
but the odds do not look good 
based on the burden of experience 
and the way people always shun 
the mere mention of possibilities. 

They are so extremely afraid 
when it comes to anything that is odd
and does not fit in with their  views
as to the steady streams of advertising 
that keep  challenging them 
about how to avoid being noticed. 

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090623A
----------- 

Boil all those great ideas down 
to the shame of being as poor 
as what is burnt to the pan.

And not one idea worth anything
more than a plug nickel is worth
without the money backing it. 

The what you do not have sort
of  being sorted right out 
the way fists sort things out. 

That part of you so bruised up 
until no one recognizes you 
as more than an unfortunate spill.

The sort of shame that comes 
at having lost too many fights 
where everyone loves a winner. 

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

090623B
----------- 

All you are is the mess 
comes from what you did not make
and you did not make much 
in the real and final reckoning 
where they tally it all up 
as to where they would stick you 
entirely out of sight and mind. 

You have lost your balance 
and you have no actual footing 
having slipped on the slippery clay 
that you were made from 
planting a face into the mud 
similar to footprints of stars 
made in concrete. 

Different walks of life 
and only know street scenes
creating cold alien feelings 
along cutting edges of rifts 
between everything wished
and everything that actually is 
playing with the senses. 

It is always the not having 
that has decided it all 
even when tricked to believe
in the having something 
leaves nothing but a memory book
compilation of tragedies 
where something was broken off. 

You are not as you once were 
but you are not anything you wanted
while in between seems wasted 
in the cannot go back 
and cannot ever get forward 
to any sort of comfortable place 
within the bounds of any settlement. 

Nothing will ever feel settled 
the way the wind stirs it up 
only to run everything aground 
with the keel ripped out 
every tack being a wrong tack
on that ever changing map 
where there are no destinations. 

The wasteland feared most 
stretches as far and as wide 
as everything that is out of reach 
used to make you feel too generous 
as to ugly and squalid offerings
rejected by the fringe dwellers 
who believed that was not enough. 

It was all really only a turning about 
who would actually show up 
and who would always stay away 
from where any stand is made
between heathens and savages 
examination of  socially embodied 
variants of a martyr complexes. 

Even they always wanted more 
than only a reason given 
to come to despise the host 
in terms of whatever they thought 
were their better options 
leaving nothing more 
than a trickle of messy laughter. 

Too late to make any of it up 
as you can well imagine always is
but any lord knows you tried  
and that is not the half of it 
since what was found to lose 
is how the furnace is stoked 
that smelts discontent to its purity. 

Could have been happy once 
but they took all that away 
to where there is no getting back 
and no more satisfaction 
in replays of long dead games 
knowing how it all turned out 
when the crowd broke and scattered. 

All that is really known from that 
is how to burn fiercer 
in harsh terms of restless ambitions 
consuming most everything   
in that whirlwind of flames 
conceals the unbridled passions 
and without directions' reigns. 

A personal apocalypse 
end times confrontation 
never knows the hour 
past dreams turned dark 
as to what could not be saved 
from reaper and threshing floor 
for any peace or place. 

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

090623C
------------ 

It is not anything much 
and one does not want to die 
to absolutely everything 
that never really satisfies. 

A sort of hanging there 
in that inverted condition 
an upturned signpost 
that has become a warning. 

A warning to anyone 
to stand well away 
from dangerous discontent 
that might contaminate. 

The infection might spread 
becoming a dark gangrene 
that leads to amputation 
of the mind. 

Monitors are sounding 
monotonous alarms 
about critical conditions
that will evacuate the room. 

No one is considered safe 
and the subjects of the alerts 
no longer to be trusted 
with the safety of anyone. 

Followed by a test 
of the early warning system 
full of childhood memories
telling you what went wrong. 

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