The OutPatient

I’ve seen you here before
My love, my dear.
Hands and arms pierced
For the salvation of none.

Little drops of honey water
Drip down plastic tubing
While your eyes carelessly
Study the haunted pastel wallpaper.

Skin becomes gray, lifeless
When bathed in fluorescent
Beams from over head.

The room at times is abuzz
With obviously mismatched
Smocks – some with Teddy bears,
Poorly equipped to offer you
Any comfort. The others, paisley
Mazes and dull browns.

You return, skin stained by
Iodine and talcum powder.
Rubber gloves overflow the
Nearest trash can. While meat

On their table breathed through
Gaunt open mouth, chest rising
Mechanically.

You will be mine again soon.
Eyes droopy, lips chapped.

You always cry when you
Wake up from being under.

I shudder to think of what you
See down there.

My love. I’ll stroke the hairs
From your forehead until the
Chills subside.

Remove the visitor sticker
From my chest, and
Quietly take you
Home.

A Storm To Saddle

Like chicken’s feet hung
on rusty barbed wire,
this weather gets to us.

It gets to me.

Crawls up under my skin
and sits and waits.
Waits for me to drop my guard.

Drop it for one second and it’s in.

Churning and billowing.
Cloud soaked skies.
Like cancers. Morphing growing.

Merging then splitting.
Skies boiling like stew.
Large gaseous bubbles pushed

up into the space within me.
Heat rising, it’s there. In me.
All the weather without is drawn in.

Storms pulse. And it gets to you.
I see this. I see the lightning letters
in the words your eyes speak to me.

I see those electric flashes.
I see the watering edges of
your eyelids. It’s in you now.

A storm.

Shackled by fleshly chains.
While I turn in turmoil,
buffeted by rolling waves,

you rise somehow,
heels dug deep into the
spine of the tempest and

with streaks of jagged lightening
fastened into reigns,
you ride your storm,

like a champion,
right out of town.
Bluer skies in your eyes.

My rains at your back.

Vitamin See

you colored the apple red
and created sex. not soon
after, we were all hiding out

behind bushes and in the shadows.
you removed our rags of leaves
and replaced them with robes of

flesh. skin then blood then skin
and blood again. now for eons
we’ve lurked in shadows and behind

bushes. one day, i just may decide
to rip this bloody thew and believe
that orange is the new red.

One a year haiku?

Little sunshine beams
Awaken my groggy soul
With kisses of light

(Yes I hate haiku and it doesn’t make sense to use it on this blog, but, what the hell – it’s spring.)

love parade

i rode shotgun in your
quaint little love parade,

past the jugglers and buglers
and men riding around in

tiny cars wearing funny hats.
i rode shotgun with the windows

down and my bare feet catching
snippets of sunlight in between

the dancing leaves overhead.
we were far behind the Grand Marshall

who led us through the maze of the
city. many times i thought the route

to be bizarre. when i’d have taken us
left, down Broad st., he took us right,

down Skid Row. when i wanted to
avoid the hills on the outskirts of town,

he drove us right up the face of them. still,
he is there, leading this parade, and i am

here, riding shotgun with you; my bare feet
catching all the contours of the wind.

when our path seems wrong, i hear the
band behind us and know that we are okay -

you and i and our little love parade.

like smoke, risen

one day
the whole world will burn.

every baby and bum, each
will flutter away in great
clouds of ash and soot.
this was promised, hidden between
the rainbow’s lines. fine print
easily missed – the vow to burn.
trees light the skies, standing
as their own pyres. waters
licked from beneath the rocks
with fiery tongues and
haughty laughter hidden
in droplets of wind
will fan the flames
of his great wrath.

none shall be saved from
an all consuming
fire. us them me and we
alike will bask in the
blaze, rid of this
bag of bones.

like smoke, risen.

sun’s prey

Heaven’s first blush sun broke
loose early this morning
and cast his empyrean

gossamer strands across
the humdrum sky. his mighty
web spun brilliantly against

the resplendent horizon,
with my weary heart
his only prey.

Habit

they tell me that I
am powerless over this
brute in me.

i scoured the pages of my
history, where mantras scrawled
hastily in my own hand

confirmed that which
i had feared most. there i’d
written, “the fact that

i would fall if left on my
my own is the single
greatest certainty in

my life.” my words
in roguish honesty sent
me reeling as if

transplanted to then – when
i could read my very
own epitaph.

the words read true as
thousands before me
have confessed – powerless.

yet here in the dusk
of my thirties resounds
a different theme.

i, a poet, can
conquer anything.
if this pen were

hewn into a blade, would
twelve steps of truth be
all to stand in the

way of my cutting myself
free of this wretched
estate? should one,

endowed with great power over
language feel belittled,
impoverished, helpless against

the words of so many others?
surely there lies in me
a boon quite holy,

granting me the authority
to flip and stretch and cut along
the seams of words and

their ability to change
what they say simply
by snipping away at the

maxims they portend. so, i
will not be defined by
the truth of other men.

honest as they may be
their lovely words write me
powerless, when all the while

i am powerful.

This Is Not A Political Poem, It’s Entirely Personal

There’s no sense in
Squabbling over a
Bunch of dead Japs.

Not when you’ve got
Your March Madness
Brackets to fill.

Reckon you figure
That they’ve faced
Floods and Fallout before.

Fuck you, Mr. Obama.

Black Muddy Waters

black muddy waters
came rolling by
they’ve swept my love
in their raging tides

Earth, to my wife
had sworn to be,
a home of peace
to her and me

but waters rose
from angry seas
and covered Earth
and lands and we

and in the swift
blink of an eye,
my love was sailed
to the Other Side.

* My good friend Heather has started a series of poem submissions about the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan. This is my submission.
Here is her site – http://hgstewart.wordpress.com/

When Shadows Show

in those first early black
moments of Night, the shadows,
in chorus wise and true, sing

“all but one, all but one,
we’ll steal them in the midnight.
Stolen, all but one.”

my grace departs before they
alight on slumped shoulders and
bruised brow under starless skies.

“I never meant you any harm
in all i did, and all i did not.”
i whispered to empty wraith ears.

forgathered under leafless oaks
shadows studied my puny estate,
wanting on their scales, all

the best of me they stole. all the
good, they robbed. the spirits inside
forsaken. Forsaken, all but one.

The Life Of A Picnic Table

some might say we are
wasting time, reclined
atop the weathered picnic
table that your father
built for us in our fifth
year of marriage.

the water-sealed wood has
long since etiolated by
a decade of sunlight and
chili dogs and late night
romps with beer and smoke
and kisses stolen ‘neath the shade.

the legs are steady and
mud stained, with tumors
of red clay markings surging
up as if from the ground,
rooting dirt wood to Earth,
nourishing nothing.

and the grass underneath,
always two shades darker
and two inches taller than
the rest of the yard, relishes
its insulated sanctuary below
the sun beaten boards.

another few years and perhaps
i will re-coat the old wood with
a few strokes of fresh sealant
and replenish its youthful timber
fashion of years gone by for
all the years to come

or perhaps, i will watch as
Dixie’s rot sets in, finally,
and hope that these tired
planks will grow old
and senile as gracefully
as you and i.

the sermon (or lack thereof)

we are all gathered here
to muse on the Word
and hominal interpretations

that Other Men have
altruistically mustered up just
in time for mid-month payroll.

in grandiose style the perfect
significance is given to each
divinely capitalized H or T or G.

my lips are parched after
toiling pell-mell through life’s
assorted deserts for six days.

and with a mouth full of sand,
all you seem capable of offering
me is an empty glass.

what Living Waters could you
possibly draw from His Well
when your pail is so picayune?

Fuck this, I’ll find my own Water -
while your tongue-tied harangues
suffocate my fellow drinkers.

Au revoir, good sir. And cheers.

dusk delineate

we are caught up, fair child,
in the murderous beauty
of dusk. no languid stars

pollute this softly diffusing
day with shimmering
droplets of ancient light.

rather, the stitches of noon
pull apart at the seams and split
the blue with pink blades of

evening flesh. bruised by
clouds, the lucent arcs Ra sent
home only seven short minutes

ago, are dispelled and bandied
about in chaotic oranges and
greens and limpid surges of

red. a canvas, stolen second
hand, and dropped into the arms
of angry Artists – all jealously

clamoring for the right place
to press scintillating brush and
delineate Night’s first star.

Ah, Venus, lovely Trickster.

weary words, dreary skies

the bulky clouds swish whitewash
across the embers of my eyes.
Earth and sky and horizon melt

like gruesome wax faces left drying
too close to the artisan’s flames.
his hands, tired and cracked

shave and chip shards and bits
of dust from the cold facade
perusing the countenance buried

deep within every living stone.
you roughcast my heart in haste
with your weary words and dreary

skies. you incise, in gory detail, the
exquisite nature of my reticent soul
and set the pieces in saturated white light,

for all the world to see.

Sonnet #13

In the waning gray spectacle of dusk
Yellow breasted finches struggle in our
Spring’s sprinted return. He breathes brawny musk
On the spritely flesh of her back for hours.
They peck and gather in sweet maiden haste
Absconding all vows with Winter’s harsh trials.
And tears they had shed; all joy but a waste
Each droplet felled and saved in sacred vials.
Their nests caught bare and scattered by foul winds
Twigs of new budded branch inspire again!

300th Post

so many words
and so little
actually
said.

********************
So I just wanted to thank all of my readers, both intentional and accidental. It’s great to be able to write and express what we feel with no regard to reputation, opinion, or offensiveness. It’s even better to find out that people actually want to read what you wrote. So, thank you. Hopefully, somewhere in the next 300 posts, I’ll find that right and perfect combination of words.

M

Sonnet #12

My love for you is a candy-striped nurse
Left long apart to her own devices.
My heart makes its songs in a Midnight verse
When just listening alone suffices.
We gathered that Spring in a field most fair
Azaleas and Snapdragons full with blooms.
Mesmerized as soft scents bounced through the air
Infusing our souls with furtive perfumes.
Spring was meandering through your soft eyes
Clandestinely gathering seeds to sow.
Our bodies were tangled in grass grown high
Mouths made wet as avid appetites grow.
…..I lay with you in that meadow quite green
…..Looting beauty with none to intervene.

***
I have never really been a fan of form poetry. Haiku, Iambic whosy whatsy, cinquain, etc, etc, etc. However, sonnets have always captivated me. Of course I spend alot of time in my Oxford Book of English Verse reading old Shakespearean and Italian sonnets. Tennyson, Wordsworth and even more modern e. e. cummings, all wrote fascinating sonnets. I have written several sonnets and have decided to delve into that form again. Sometimes, as a free verse poet, form and rules and whatnot can be good exercise. Here is my latest. Unfortunately, this WordPress theme will not recognize tabs or empty spaces so I had to use the periods on the last two lines to indicate the spacing of a normal, 5-space indent.

Tranquility Seeps

In the evening time, when
Earth’s good green has expanded
This dismal view, I feel the
Wail of the Night. Groping her
Undersides. Emboldened by
Eerie tales told by those
Whose wicks we’ve trimmed. They
Are remembered only in the beds
Of our youth or in the rattles of
A last night upon God’s great Sphere.

I ponder this wretched state.
And tranquility seeps like a balm.