Human Condition

Poetry: Work through it

Work through it, he said,
more pain is good gain.
Can you go farther?
(implying the pain
I should endure)
To do more?
Through it, he said. I asked.

“I understand, Doc,
but do you?” Push
through — more pain—
limping, then numbness
and excruciating
pain, then physical collapse.
The pain.

Then I sense some gain.
Then more. Must I now confess
at the end of the battle?
Doc, you were right.
Muscles are tight
and sore as hell,
with pain and cramps,
but improvement costs,
some weight’s been tossed.

Should I go on, and on?

Pain goes both ways, some is beneficial, some is a warning to stop.
I Listen to, and learn, my body. I mind the gaps to learn the differences.

Poetry: Share the Morn

Share the Morn

It’s early
but not dark
and it’s raining,
none too gently

clouds shed rain drops
and hide the sun
for a while. Hear –
feel – smell – taste,

and see the rain
on a mild morning,
to walk and get wet
feels good to be

alive, wishing you
here by me with rain
to share
what is so good.
I guess, in a way
you are here.

Look both ways, morning, noon, and night.
Mind the gaps, puddles, and slippery when wets.

Poetry: The Extinction of Humanity

I feel helpless and hopeless
watching a world full of people
essentially committing suicide.

To say it’s a crazy world is not good enough.
Nature will in some way survive,
planet Earth will go on without us.

We have most of the wisdom and insight
to tweak life and existence from Her,
but we will not, and I can’t fix it.

Self-annihilation through denial,
ironically seeking a better life
believing what is bad is in fact good.

Deceptions. Mortality sings only a dirge,
cries of lament over what might have been.
Humanity: another great failed experiment.

Consider all options and look both ways.
Find and mind the gaps for the science of truth.

Sammi’s Weekender #142: Looking-glass

i know. you know this privilege
denied many, this gift of age,
being long of life. pleasures
charging dues paid
with guilt, pain, and sorrow.

now i see that it’s
no longer me; old bones
with thin skin,
lost hair
or worthless white wisps.

does this looking-glass lie?
let me be what i was—

young. look, old man. look at me.
i’m your truth.

See truth and reality in the looking glass. Mind the gaps and ignore the bald spots.

 

Sammi’s Weekender #141: Imperious

The vertical pronoun was your god,
the long corncob pipe,
a crutch as you’d exude imperious
confidence of irresponsible
narcissistic self-assured vanity.

Brilliance without wisdom never
questions self or knows dark
duality like Hastie Lanyon’s soul.
Your crime, a distant impassioned
supercilious and cavalier concern
for the misery your pomposity
beset upon your courtiers, devout
mindless adventured foolish demons,

lost souls who rose to the peek
of principled Peters with blindfolded
ignorance of history in the future,
now a legacy of incompetence
foddered with pride. With hubris
envied by Xerxes, you forced
your own shameful dismissed
demise.

The wisdom of a fading old soldier
heroically without end is clouded
by the dark shadow of your way,
the way, and the way of stars.

Legacy looks both ways, but history finds truth in justice.
Mind the gaps of human success for the failure of the soul.

Poetry: Cowtown Sacramento

Checked in on a Saturday afternoon
to a cheap downtown Sacramento motel.
Got a room away from the others,
but the place was deserted at three.

Cowtown Marathon showtime
was at six in the morning. I had to be
up and dressed, ready to drive
with all my stuff to the meetup place
for coffee, food, and start line directions.

At two in the morning I learned why
the motel was empty and the desk clerk
was already apologizing when
the party moved in, filled every room,
with loud voices, the distinct click clack
of hard, high stiletto heels and reveling

drunks having a wild noisy time.
Up and out at four AM, everyone was
gone when I returned at noon. None too happy
with my neighbors of the night, another
greater challenge run finished alive,
but tired and sore with a medal in my hand.

Look both ways and remember the idiom
about sleeping with dogs in cheap downtown motels.
Mind the gaps and the ladies in stilettos, tap-tap-tap.

Prose Poem: Sammi’s Weekender – Devour

Need of Greed

This economy lies with deceptive pleasure – destruction, pending one hell of a bill to pay. We suck and devour the heritage of descendant’s gifts, their demise through our greed. When the well runs dry, the piper calls for payment, recovery of burnt offerings to self without gods who care for a prayer. Easy plunder blinds our need for air, water, food, and fire. Misery awaits death and disaster, sending ignored warnings past personal pleasure.

It’s not yet too late to reverse unwanted ends with the wisdom of science, we can turn the page. What higher cause to save humanity, perhaps the planet, our tiny corner of the universe?

Look both ways to past mistakes, future consequences,
bookends for today’s wisdom.
Mind the gaps in human psyche for sources of timely recovery.

Poetry: Risk & Danger = Life

The mature doctor who would begin residency
for Psychiatry in the morning
after 25 years as a surgeon,
a guy I liked but only saw
one time, turned to look at me
as he was walking out the door,
after I told him about me owning
a motorcycle and he said,
“Well, don’t ride it.”

Too dangerous? This,
after we had discussed
my heart disease with six stents,
and a severely wonky-donkey
heart valve, my high-grade,
lingering dangerous
sarcoma cancer, and my head
to toe clogged arteries holding
three more stents—strokesville?

oh,
and my good old age,
bad high blood pressure,
and the pending possibility of
dangerous surgery and
risky hospital stay.

Risk and danger have been
my companions
since childhood (we have
an understanding). A
motorcycle accident might kill me
faster than a mistake
by a doctor—a surgeon,
maybe.

He was giving up surgery
to be a shrink, so he “could
help people.”

Kind a makes ya wonder,
don’t it?

Look at risk and danger both ways,
but gamble not with the welfare of others.
How well we walk through the fire depends on the width of the gaps.

“Too often the people complain that they have done nothing with their lives and then they wait for somebody to tell them that this isn’t so.” ― Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

Poetry: Up Your Rolex

You know who you are,
driving fast and weaving past
in your European model automobile
costing four to ten times
the worth of my car. I am so
sorry to have used your
private interstate highway

And set my cruise control
a mere smidgen over
the legal speed limit of eighty
fucking statute miles an hour.

I was foolish indeed,
to humbly assume such speed
would suffice to get you
to your Sunday morning
emergency appointment.

Trucks once had their speed limits
for safety. But, no longer. Perhaps
you can have limits removed
for drivers of a Beamer, Audi,
Benz, or a Lex.

Maybe even
your own lane forbidden
to the minions who believe
their thirty-dollar Timex
is as good with time
as your uptown Rolex.

My foolish economy has jaded
my vision since I struggled
to see life your way.

And finally, begging your pardon
one last time.
Fuck you, asshole.

 

***

Look both ways, these wankers pass on both sides.
Mind the gaps, they’re filled by saps.