Rough Riding

Don’t get restless on me

I’m here going for broke

there’s only so much time before the ride’s over

so many miles left to beat

so much fire left in us;

I can’t have you give up now.

 

You say, what’s up with me?

Isn’t it plain?

There’s this big ugly fate carved itself on my face

sending one way messages eating up my mind

I’ve got bombs in my eyes

that makes me cry why

why here, why me, why now?

 

That’s what’s got in me

and plenty more to drive anyone stir crazy!

So I’m spreading out to the west

hard charging like I’m on a steel colt

yelling to beat the storm inside me

 

Don’t doodle with me now

it’s not over – it’s never, ever over!

come on, hop on back, we’ll ride together

bare back into the Wind.

9/22 — 10/4/2014

Hostile Nights

hostile nights, daylight cracked
soldiers run to rivers and drown
terrified sightings of crazed frowns
wolf packs sniffing what we lack

who knows what weary faces greet us?
who hears the ghosts that rise against us?
who sees the golems who replace us?

there are no children anywhere
they all left on a dare
mothers moan, fathers groan, teachers drone, perverts atone,
the children alone stopped waiting for nothing
they know the end of everything
they know it is useless to whine or cry
or hope to die

life’s big grin is on us now
nature’s truth is exposed now
God’s plan is given us now

bending trees whisper to say
we don’t hear them anyway
rocks rush to block our way
we don’t flee them anyway
crows caw as if to play
we don’t mind them anyway

who knows what earth’s plan is for us?
who hears the sky’s warning to us?
who sees the ground falling from us?

poetry for the misbegotten lost
songs sprung from despair then tossed
to academic gnomes,
whose tongues are rusty razors cutting bone
screeching rusty razors cutting bone

there is no poetry here
there is no meaning here
less than no meaning here
not even
a whisper of the shadow of nothing trying to be
the slightest of whispers of the merest of shadows not even trying to be.

4/8/2011. updated 5/2/11, updated 7/7/2014, updated 5/23/2022

No Use Naming the Beast

Once again I am in a room

Filled with strangers anxious

For redemption through clarity

As if naming the beast

Would give power over it.

 

But the beast does not conform

To our desperate efforts

When we feel close

It simply takes a new form

Bearing down more ruthlessly than before.

 

The beast lies outside but lives within

Rising in rage to battle with itself

Leaving us the exploited and defeated.

 

February 23, 2014