mental health

Poetry: A Place for Weeds

Jim was watering his experiment
for his ag doctorate, Grasses of the Brazos.
The good ol’ country boy let his smile show
when I observed and laughed at him
for making a big deal out of a bunch of weeds.
They were not flowers or cash crop plants.

Jim said, without looking at me,
“a weed is just a plant out of place.”

Over fifty years now. Where did they go?
I remember Jim
and his greenhouse full of weeds at A&M,
we’d go spray water on them weeds daily.
Later Jim would defend his dissertation about
Brazos Valley dirt and river bank weeds.
Doctor Jim was a dirt man, agronomist.
Just a plant out of place.

Jim got his Ph and D in dirt.
Then, he moved away to California;
who with his high-pitched, out yonder,
Texas drawl, old Jim
was decreed Doc Jim, the good-old-boy
from Meridian, Texas.
In his own way, he became
a plant out of place.

Many times, I have been a weed,
a person out of place,
or so I felt.
I needed to be in a different place,
to feel unweedly,
wanted by anyone,
or not. Was I where I belonged?
Or, was I just another plant
out of place?

Was I
in the place I was supposed to be?
Bloom where you’re planted,
that’s what they say.
Weeds need to grow everywhere,
but it is nice to find your space.

No longer, am I,
a plant out of place.

©Bill Reynolds, 5/23/2019

Look both ways crossing but look all around for misplaced plants and people.
Mind the gaps, weeds grow there.

Poetry: Prisonless Thoughts

Freedom is a place
for minds and bodies,
one where I don’t belong.
It’s not where I am. I’ve never been.
It’s just not me. Can’t be.
And you’re not me.

With me?
Is freedom
no masters—no gods?
Am I free when I owe nothing?
Or, perhaps it’s something more;

I’m a life-long indentured servant.
Tell me what is freedom—will you?
Irresponsible of me to ask—but,
if freedom isn’t free, how can it be,
Freedom? Can you see?

Are we ever free?
Completely free, like birds.
A tree is more free
than are you and me.

Is there such a thing as truly free?
Can a society of people be free?
Or can’t you see,
the reality
of being
truly, truly free?

Ya know, it don’t matter to me—
we alone know
what it means to be,
or not to be
free. It just don’t matter to me.

Is there happiness in freedom?
How the fuck should I,
or should you, know?
We are a lot of things.
Free is not one of them!

© Bill Reynolds, 5/20/2019

Look both ways and be not slave to follies and deceit.
Heed the gaps for they may be the crevasses of your mind.

Dark Poetry: Forever Nothing

Part of me does not care. About anything. It hurts and yet, it dulls the pain. It is like a graft of nihilism on a life that screams fuck this to me, fuck you to the world, to the random meaningless of the universe. We are insignificant dots of nothing lasting less than a blink in the time bank of eternity. Dust. Then dust again. Can I love nothingness? Does the insignificance of meaning bring the refreshing quaff of the quiet hum of true love’s peace? What does it mean to not care?

Is that it? Dare I stare?
Is it? Are they correct?
AM I?
In the true end, nothing matters.
Is it all just one wee blip
unnoticed by a chaotic universe of
apparent orchestrated randomness
neither sweet nor bitter?
Are left and right the same?
Are choices and decisions fruitless?

Come to me, hold me, love me,
here now, today; this second is all
we have – no more. When this is done
we are finished. The dust of Cosmic rays
and light passing through hollow lives.
Find a good end. There is none.
Most are miserable psychotic,
drugged (if we’re lucky) endings
to whatever sufferable step through
the veil into the nothingness of forever.

Look both ways but live now. It’s all there is.
Mind the gaps, but don’t let them slow you.

Poetry: To Relax

Sit, stand, or lie
it’s the letting go
for a short time,
the normal
pace and musts of life.
To relax,
to retreat,
down time,
that sweet restful quietude of
peaceful nothingness,
without guilt or thought
of undone projects or
of others and their needs
or of love. Just the calm,
doing only what sustains
life—
enough breaths
in and out to be
conscious and aware
of the peace,
the silence,
nothing but the
sounds of time
passing, well spent
recovering fully
from living.

© Bill Reynolds 5/7/2019

Chill for now, look later to see both ways.
While in relaxing rest, gaps are meaningless.

Poetry: No Rest for the Wary (NaPoWriMo) Day Twenty-seven

Today I’m challenged to remix a Shakespearean sonnet. I was offered several methods and any form, but I decided to write a new poem that expresses the same (or similar) idea as Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXVII, click here to read it (it is the 27th day, I like that number, and the Bard’s poem). I did 14 lines of about ten syllables (semi-sonnet?) with little attempt at iambic pentameter. While the rhyme scheme is imperfect, it worked for me.

Oh, I feel so tired and I’m so sore,
my poor old body can’t take it no more.
For this poor soul, it’s early to bed;
then begins, those voices in my head,
the muses of my mind. My body is done.
Listen to us–speaks my imagination,
I need to rise-up, and write all this down,
the body says no, but the mind says go.
I’m so torn between both sleep and to act,
no matter the loss, either way I loose;
for my body to relax, and my eyes to close;
hello, hello, we have words for you too—

damn it to hell, will this day ever end?
Will I rest my soul? And love you my friend!

Look both ways, for rest and for work.
Mind and write down the gaps, lest our muses desert us.

Poetry: Colorado Sky in Texas (NaPoWriMo) Day Twenty-six

Today, my poem uses repetition. As prompted, I may repeat words or a phrase.

It is a place and people live there.
But I can’t tell you why.
The interstate curves or jogs
as the Colorado River passes,
going somewhere,
But I can’t tell you where.
It’s hot in Colorado City
and it’s dry,
But I can’t tell you why.
In that small west Texas
town lives some of my love
But I can’t say much.
The water is bad, yet some things
grow, but I can’t tell you
how. Not much grows,
but they try—I can’t tell you why.

Confinement and warehousing
of living human flesh is done,
down yonder, in some
depressing hole, but I can’t
tell you much. Jobs, I guess.
The big white metallic groaning
wind monsters are there to send
volts and amps and megawatts
to somewhere, but I can’t tell
you where. Colorado City in Texas
has a past, tough people
in a rough place. It has a
future (maybe) but
I can’t tell you what.
They have a liquor store,
I think I know why.

Look both ways and don’t blink or you’ll miss why, or how, or where, maybe what.
Mind the gap near the dip, misery sleeps there.

Poetry: The Autumnist (NaPoWriMo) Day Twenty-five

Taking a cue from the John Keats poem, To Autumn, I must write a poem that is specific to a season, uses imagery related to five senses (I used more than five), and includes a rhetorical question, such as where are the songs of spring from the Keats poem.

Wasted days and wasted nights
for the sheer pleasure of guiltless
unproductive quietude of awareness,
as days are for summer, so are
nights fit for winter.
Loving both, I favor the transitions
of dusk and dawn, different but equal.

Each year, I am not the same person
I was. Nor am I the same each season.
I am at least four, maybe more
as I sense the changes each year
with each season, each day
brings new perceptions.

I belong within reality and metaphorically,
spiritually, and practically
somewhere within a transition
from summer to winter. An
autumnist is what I am,
but different of type with the
arrival of my knowing about cold
temperatures before I walk
and see changing leaves, I miss the
now gone migrating birds.
I do not hear them now.

Gradually, it seems, everyone thinks pumpkin
is my choice of taste, and the
traditional spice. Smell that
pumpkin pie or is that your latte?

The brisk autumn air is more
noticeable than in spring. It feels
different, more promising.

Pain seems less in Fall than
in Summer. I dance more at
Octoberfest, my balance is stable
and my sense of thirst has proven
stronger. I know my place
during those months with Halloween
and Thanksgiving.

Even my sense of passing time,
it’s more acute when the dog days
have come and gone. It is Spring
now—who will I be this year?
And next? What then? And
what about you?

© Bill Reynolds, 4/25/2019

Look both ways for seasons gone and those in years yet to come.
Mind the gaps when days visit from other times.

Poetry: Unintelligent Design (NaPoWriMo) Day Twenty-three

Today I was prompted to write a poem about an animal.

Note: Prometheus (forethought) and Epimetheus (afterthought) were spared imprisonment in Tatarus. Zeus gave them the task of creating man. Prometheus shaped man out of mud, and Athena breathed life into his clay figure.

Thus Zeus,
before humans roamed Earth,
set Forethought and Afterthought
to task. Animals lived and roamed
without reincarnation or karma
fish swam, birds flew, and each
creature of day or night,
did the natural things, no karma required.

Dinosaurs upset a jealous god—gone!
With Athena, Prometheus made man.
But then monkeys mated with people
and Afterthought declared, “now
we need second chances”—
reincarnation, and karma came to be.

Humans did not know
what they were nor what to do.
so they caused trouble for goddess Gaia,
fought, became reincarnated afterthoughts
in lower and lower life forms to learn,
but each time, the lower form of
human was worse than the last.

Afterthought said to Forethought,
“look now, lower forms we need
for karma, these are slow learners.”
They created Lumbricus terrestris.
Earthworms that eat dirt and crawl
into the ground and are slimy and ugly
and are both male and female,
thus confused and lost bird food.
But to no avail as human nature
continued to confuse the gods.

Nirvana was vast and empty
when Afterthought reminded
Forethought, “Have you noticed,
we create humans, they fuck with monkeys,
die into lower karma never moving up,
and Zeus is pleased, laughing at us?”

Forethought said, “Indeed. We need a cover story.
I have one about a talking snake, two naked
humans too dumb to know it, some other god,
a garden, a tree, and an apple or some variety of fruit.”
Afterthought said,
“Without reincarnation and karma, no one
will ever believe that story. You need
worms, snakes are too hissy.”

Look both ways in forethought and afterthought but live in this now.
Mind the gaps and respect the worms,
you too have a next life and karma keeps adding up.

Poetry: Mr. Bill’s Dream Logic (NaPoWriMo) Day Twenty-one

My poem challenge today was to write a poem that incorporates wild, surreal images. I was to use writing that doesn’t make formal sense, but engages all the senses and involves dream logic.

Well-known strangers speak
without talking, to us much younger
than before when it was me,
but not I; colors of unseen
monochrome images of unlimited
limitations. Chases by odorless fears
of panic unharmed—yelling out into
this empty reality of unfolding challenges
without beginnings or ways to an end.
Movement without effort, watching
as space and time pass unchallenged
by a pointlessness of futile efforts.
Yell out! Why? The dogs.

A colorless kaleidoscope of
meaningful meaningless images,
sounds unheard, spoken with
windless breaths. Fear seeing
through closed eyes, hearing with
deaf ears, brown hair on bald men,
run, kick, yell, stop, breathing.
Fight back!
Awaken,
let go. Rewind. Dream On!
Dream real.

© Bill Reynolds 4/21/2019

Is this a dream within a dream?
Look both ways for unseen meaningless threats, gapless gorges, and mindful mindlessness.

 

Poetry: Our Place in Line (NaPoWriMo) Day Eighteen

Today, the NaPo lady challenged me to write an elegy of my own. One in which the abstraction of sadness is communicated not through abstract words, but physical detail.

As far back into childhood I recall,
they say my day, my time, will come.
One day, perhaps quietly
or in some fitful mental agony
it will be my time to die.
But the bell has not
yet tolled for me—
soon enough—
it will.

Every pet, dog or cat,
lightning bug in a jar, turtle
or Easter chick; every snake, worm, or
ant; butterfly or bird, fish
or tarantula , things that flew,
crawled, walked or ran,
or just a sighting in the wild—
they’re all dead now—
I don’t know
what that is—
but they’re gone.

Every childhood friend is dead,
my mother died long after dad,
sisters both gone,
(estranged brother
I don’t know about,
he may outlive me,
if so, let it be).
I won’t know.

Uncles and aunts, one cousin (sort of) all
gone and others I don’t know about,
but they (ones I knew) are dead.
There may be some still doing,
but people of my memories
are past life. And this,
my friend,
is normal.

Some things don’t die, all people do.
Poets die (some never replaced)
but poems don’t.
The two most important
breaths we take,
the first and the last—
all the others
we call living.
That’s life,
Frank.

My sister would telephone,
“Billy” she’d say, “guess who died?”
she said, and then
she’d tell me.

When everyone and everything
I know of has died,
how do I know
who is next in line?
Is it I?
Or is it you?
Not if,
but when!

© Bill Reynolds, 2/18/2019

Know why you look both ways, otherwise, it is simply a meaningless turn of the head.
There will always be gaps but mind them anyway.