broken
dirty
people who want to feel better
puzzles and problems
edit to make it better
fix by ignoring edits
aligning painting adjusting
solving brightening or darkening
and resolving
healing and being healed
fixed or broken
repeat
© Bill Reynolds 5/30/2019
Look both ways and mind the gaps.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it unless it’s poetry.
Always fix a poem.
********
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.
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.
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.
Universal Death patiently awaits
each, forever it’s permanently there
welcoming every kind of life over eons
it’s always been the same, birth before Death,
if birthed at all, and some sort of demise
for both the stupid and the wise.
The universe knows each speck of dust,
each one of us for thousands of years
and will do the same for thousands hence.
We may count the minutes, hours, and days,
but in the end Death only counts the ways.
© Bill Reynolds, 5/6/2019
Look both ways in life, but we’ll not see beyond the veil.
Mind the gaps, in the end is the last gap.
Poetry month is finished and we’re into May. Since I posted each NaPoWriMo poem, I’ll not recap, other than to say it was a great experience. Per the challenge, I was prompted to try a few new things with form and content. My congratulations to all participants. This was my third season with the 30 poems in 30 days challenge.
I plan to continue writing a poem each day during May as I have been doing each day of 2019, but I will need to work up my own prompts. I think May could be a good limerick month. Not sure how (or if) I will do that. I do not post every poem I write, but I may put up some Limericks I find written by others (with cred, if I can determine origins). And I do need to write some of my own.
Over on the Dispassionate Doubt page (my other blog), I have no ideas or plans. Something for sure, but not every day as was the case with the A to Z Challenge and my version of a skeptic’s dictionary.
Look both ways, back to March and April, and on to May and June.
Mind the gaps and cracks in everything, that’s how the light gets in.
Today I was to write a minimalist poem. Such is not in my creativity wheel house and my first impulse was to blow it off and write my kind of poem, but I connected it to something I saw hanging on a wall with other art in my daughter’s house. In trying to be true to the minimum challenge, I wrote the poem on a 2×3 notebook that is always in my right front pants pocket.
Look both ways, back at April and on to May.
Mind the gaps, wear sunscreen and shades.
Today I am writing to you from the boonies of Colorado City, Texas. My Monday morning challenge was to produce a meditative poem from a position of tranquility (it is like that here this morning, but I’m snickering), on an emotion I have felt powerfully. I’m not sure what I did, but I felt that.
Salty is a state of mind
on the inside;
on the outside,
Salty is all personality
one must acquire
a taste for the attitude,
with peppery retorts,
for a bit of salt
poured
on the wound,
for the taste of a tear
on my lips,
off your cheek,
on the rim of my Margarita,
or on my hands
with lime juice
for shots of tequila.
Today
my state of mind
is Salty.
© Bill Reynolds, 4/29/2019
Look both ways, attitude follows attitude. Mind the gap in meditative morality.
Today’s prompt was to write a poem about a poem, called a metapoem. I have written such before, but I did not realize there was a name. My poem is about poetry and me.
Like an invisible friend or part
of me, you were always there,
growing and forming, but
unseen by me—unloved
until now—so near
the end of my journey: my life.
My denial of self-darkened
truth, blinded me,
fed my pitiful rejection,
my failure to see you
always there, always with me.
Always you, but part me too.
Is it sad I never had
such; due to my own blindness?
Or do I celebrate the late love,
discovery of passion and purpose?
I must live today playfully
swimming in the purpose of verse.
Now enter my mind, my body,
and open this man’s soul to
the poetry—a part of me, I
didn’t even know I had.
Look both ways to find part of you, that you may be all of you. Mind the gaps but see them, touch them, feel them, look within for the parts that will complete you.
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.
Our Literary Journey 