The future
Once so bright I had to wear shades
Now I wear shades
Shades to protect my eyes
From the malevolent sun
Brightness no longer welcoming
Shades
Blocking
Obstructing
Interfering
Hampering
And a whole bunch of other words
All ending in ‘ing’
Constrained by pretense
Training
Listening
Cliches
Not caring if it’s spelled correctly
But apologizing nonetheless
There was a moment when stream of consciousness mirrored the sole or is that soul and ran on and on One thought without intervention without intention without music without purpose and that used to be called poetry by those who knew poetry as it was then as it is now without any hint of where the poem begins other than the beginning which is without ending except everything has to end
Eventually.
The universe is finite
Except that it’s infinite
Depends on the book
The Day
The Scholar
It is popular to right or is that write about the surface of life
Do words matter more than presentation
Effect
Affect
Impact
My fellow poets write about how they interact with their world
Offering glimpses of street scenes veiled as comments on humanity
“Reflecting” the world they see while claiming to interpret “it”
So important these reflections
So urgent
The style important
How it’s presented critical
Not staying to hear other styles
Showing up, saying their piece
Leaving to say it somewhere else
Leaving the audience slammed
But the poem, like the messenger
Meaningless
Images
Shallow
Hollow
The Ocean
A Pool
Dive in head first
Broken Neck
Years of rehabilitation
From one misguided leap…
Faith is for the young
I read the news
The news
A 45 Year old man breaks neck
Cliff-Diving
If you read that
Know
As his head slammed
Against the rock
As he felt his legs
For the last time
He lept (my spell-checker thinks leaped but I know better)
Anyway, he lept or leaped
Following his youth
Or more likely the 22 year old
He left his wife of 22 years
To escape to Hawaii
Wanting to recapture the future
A future crushed
Like his vertebra
Not by the rocks
Tags: Poem