Passing pleasantries
Ignored like roadkill
A plant in a pothole
Drowning in the smallest rainstorm
Living for every bit of sun I can catch
On whatever leaves I have left
Before
A deer eats my head
A car strikes it dead
Crashes into a tree
It collapses onto the street
Where she was about to cross
She now passes
If only she hadn’t ignored
A pleasantry
Tag: art
Poem: Ash of the Past
Lay me in the dust of death
A vague disconnect
From the blood on my hands
In the drowning discotheque
Music pounding in my head
To the beat of how things used to be
With our drunken songs
On dimly lit city streets
The sheets on my bed
Still carry your ash
Where I sleep
And have my fitful dreams
From which I keep waking
With tremors in my hands
And an unsteady breath
That escapes my lungs
And leaves me here
Laying myself down in the dust of death
Resolve
What a day it was
A killing breeze reigned
Across frozen waters and lakes
A high moon in a cancer ridden sky
The sun hid in dark alcoves
Caves and the wanderers of the wastelands
Covered in coveted lies
Truths and unknown impossibilities
The septum of irreverence
The eye in the midst of it all
An omnipotent god of nothing
An impotent snail in a water trough
Climbing up the sides
A trail of desolation
Smoke in the hives and honey
Stolen by kings and queens
Sweet ignorance where art thou
Awareness kills the element of surprise
Joy escapes the violence
A butterfly in a wartorn hellscape
The end of it all
As sleep succumbs to existence
A Tension
She loves the attention –
The tension with my heart.
She shares it with everyone,
Till it tears me apart.
She loves the attention,
The way she plays with my mind,
Till all the pretend confessions
Have played their essential part,
And I respond in kind.
She loves the attention –
An insult to myself,
And I won’t even mention
How the clock has struck twelve.
She loves the attention,
And why do I care?
She’s the most beautiful thing,
For all the world to share.
Terminal Gate
The benches, the seats –
The sense of despair,
Evokes the terminal
Waiting at the final gate.
Surrounded by hosts, hostesses,
Gods and goddesses, and covered
In sin, bandages and every other thing they have gathered –
The memories of the places they have been.
They wait on wooden benches,
Unsure of their departing time.
They may only hope for a delay
In their fatal flight, but the ghosts working the air traffic control
Already have them in their hold –
Unwilling, to let go.
Painful Peace
I wonder if you’ll listen
When I rip out my hair.
Or if I jump off a chair
In a peculiar fit of despair –
Or a fit of frustration
(A most horrible sensation),
That would normally be repressed,
And left unsaid in the depths
Of the River Lethe,
Where no one could see me
Drowning in the misery.
Should I then keep it a mystery?
Or should I break our reality
Into pieces, so that we’ll find ourselves
In the painful peace of the present.
But, oh, it’s been my role for an eternity:
The “keeper of peace” –
Why should it be me?
Why should I not feel angry?
Should I not learn from my history?
Even if I can’t see what is ahead of me?
I never asked for my past.
But if I do not learn from my history,
This life will be the death of me.
JD Poetry 