The young, attractive, angry suicide survivor glanced at her phone before reciting
an angry poem in contralto voice which obscured nervousness,
each sibilant rapidly voiced in pitiful pain.
As you look into their eyes, look both ways when they tell their story.
Mind the gaps for hidden meanings in of the human condition.
Patience Grasshopper
I don’t give a damn what
you think about what
I think I thought
that am entitled to,
or what is my business.
Motive matters. How are ya
means I fucking care
about you and your problems,
no matter how ya got ‘em.
When you shut me out,
when you will not talk,
when anyone close
informs me just
exactly what the fuck
is and is not my business,
Blood boils, tongues twist,
ears backen, and eyes redden.
Sir, the witness has rights!
Code fucking red. RED!
Read it right. No matter
WHAT! I’m on your side.
Hell, high water, thunder,
fucking flashes of lightning
or the end of my damn sidewalk.
Look both ways and see it as you must,
but I’ve been minding the gaps in this wall for more than 50 years.
I suppose it depends upon what it is applied to and how.
Hopeless is bad enough,
often said with sarcastic humor.
But helpless is feeling
a deeper truth.
We believe we can,
and maybe
for a time,
we can, and
we do. But we are
being watched.
An inevitable
universal reality
brings truth to
the rarity of existence.
Entropic inevitability,
be it a mayfly, a giant star;
you, or me, degradation
into disorganized chaos
and randomness rules.
As everything changes,
nothing ever changes.
Look both ways into the abyss of eternity.
It is the way, the only way.
Mind the gaps and appreciate the flashes of life.
Neverending
It’s how I remember the year that she died.
I watched for weeks while she suffered, and I cried.
It made a big impression on me although I was still a young man.
Her life was over—suffering ended. I still do the best I can.
Look both ways year after year.
Mind the gaps as we try to remember, and we try to forget.
My inspiration:
Bukowski had six cats,
a horrific history,
(eventually) a (2nd) wife, a daughter,
and hated his father,
maybe mother too.
he smoked cigarettes
and drank wine
while writing poems
until the wee hours
while
listening
to classical music.
He drove an old VW bug
and was attractively
unattractive.
Playing the horses
was more than
a gambling vice,
it was an avocation.
You say so what?
I say, you don’t know?
Look both ways when you need a poem to post on a Monday.
Mind the gaps cuz yer on yer own dude.
Time would stop,
no mellowness
or ripening dead,
no ageing,
green callowness everywhere
on everyone;
sameness would be
one forever season
as it was for me
to never return home again.
Look both ways but remember that life is lived in the eternal present,
planned forward, understood backward,
and we each have a story.
Mind the gaps, and keep a nickel for the exit fee, or you may never return.
***
Sammi’s weekender (as I call it) is a word use and number/count challenge. But I am often called to music and songs by prompts, as in this case. The chorus from the song M.T.A. (or Charlie on the MTA) written in 1949, and recorded and made famous by The Kingston Trio in 1959, (one of my favorites) while unrelated to my poem, is still fun for me. If you buy a ticket today for the (now MTBA) Boston subway (if you go, ride it), it is called a CharlieCard because of this song.
“But did he ever return?
No he never returned
And his fate is still unlearned (poor old Charlie)
He may ride forever
‘Neath the streets of Boston
He’s the man, who never returned”
(33 words, but not my entry)
On This July Day
Born a year after
the last big war,
for decades,
I said the pledge
with hand over heart and sang
patriotic songs.
I took cover under my desk,
was a Boy Scout of America
who could properly fold the flag
and post the colors at twelve.
I prayed every day. I trusted God.
I played at war and we
always won. We were
always right, better,
and stronger. Powerful,
but merciful.
I enlisted before
graduating from high school,
I saluted. I knew, followed,
and respected flag etiquette —
still do. I swore
to protect our Constitution.
I spent two careers in the service of
(willing to, but not wanting to,
die for) my country—my people.
I thought I taught my children well.
Now,
examining my conscience
I find I am a man of a different mind,
No longer as certain of our goodness,
of our unitedness, of our honest
democracy. I feel fooled and
deceived. I feel hated by my own.
It’s not the date, it is the old spirit
where I question my allegiance,
to what or whom?
It is still in me. I still care.
But nothing is the same.
Confidence is dead. For our
freedoms, I worry with dread.
I feel conflicted. Lost.
Our enemies are close.
How patriotic am I?
I should be. I want to be.
In truth, I feel this way
not because I no longer love
my country,
but because I still do.
Happy 4th, anyway.
Be careful out there.
Look both way as we try to understand.
But deeply mind the gaps.
Even the Nazis thought they were right.
According to THIS Gallup poll, it’s a thing.
Was it something I said?
Many things I’ve done and not done
which brought me much self-inflicted grief;
like transfers or removals from jobs,
I’ve sat smiling at wrong times,
adulted too young, or the drink I tasted
when I got more than a little bit wasted,
‘twas most often my spectacular speech
that others appreciated the least.
I’m gifted this flippantly waggish tongue
emitting my intently presented voice
speaking a cutting language, exposing
my cantankerously lighthearted snarkastic choice.
Look both ways when words fly like the breath of buzzards.
Mind the gaps and if your gunna do it, go all the way.
There’s tragedy in America
and over the world today.
One that has always been there
brewing trouble bubbling,
either hidden or ignored.
Without love, honor, and respect
inside and out,
sans pity and pride, compassion, and sacrifice,
we are doomed
to be less than
the best of humanity’s history.
Let nature and nurture battle on,
let knowledge
and wisdom wrestle
with feeling and emotion.
Nature’s questions asked without fear,
safe for all, with courage
to face battles between
sweet dreams of hope
and nightmares of reality.
Ally with truth, with
compassion, without weakness or fear,
with hope to continue
standing with universal rightness.
Look both ways and try, try, try to understand, it’s not magic, man.
Mind the gaps in the human condition as you embrace its diversity.
Note: I will be reading this poem (and others) at the Lark & Owl Booksellers in Georgetown, TX, 30 June 2022 @ 7:30 PM.
Damn Reality
Here I go again reading
Bukowski’s clear vision voice
poems lacking picturesque pastoral principles,
with plainly different aesthetic dispositions
of attitude nobody loves.
We know that deep inside,
his way is part of us;
part of him, hides in us.
How many ways
can we paint the same picture,
or tell the same story.
Look both ways reading anyone’s poems.
Mind the gaps hiding deep within when writing your own.
Our Literary Journey 