Poem of the Month - November 2024

This life has had it's way
This place has had its way with me
This loss that burns so cold
Won't back down it will never go away

These dying breaths are fading now
Seems like breathing has lost its charm
That flame i once felt inside
Seems the glow finally died

The memories i had of you
And the place where we ran through
Streams and waterfalls
The memories are fading now
Just like the strength that carried us through
Dreams and waterfalls

Is this what it will come to?
A drowning pool of hopeless heartache
A pond where memories die
Slowly drained and washed away

If i had the strength i would lift us up
If i had some more undiscovered ways
But this time it is real
This time i will surely die

This is the last goodbye
The final words of regret
This is the last goodbye before i die

I thought nations might learn from their mistakes  
but now I know this to be far from true  
as malice aforethought will just renew  
like venom through the fangs of deadly snakes  
and thusly have my countrymen been bit  
by premeditations of pain and death  
forevermore heard in their shibboleth  
of famed cruelty and discarded wit  
that shows my country is now dead to me  
but for that slow expiration of heart  
beating before the carcass falls apart  
in the feeding frenzy of anarchy...
now comatose here and necrotic there  
on life support...and palliative care.

Always attached to her sadness
abandoned
loneliness was her best friend
forgotten by society
no one wanted to be her friend
abandoned in the corner of the silence
that is her life, every day
she hides her sorrow in a blade

In the silence of the darkness she wakes up alone again
a dream to never surrender,
a reality that has no end

Wanting hearts pulse at tepid pace in fingers that run across hastily inked planes, where listless, blind, complainers feign smart and hold the word creative, claimed  
 
By straining, linking unrelated trains of thought that carry waves of brains on wheels of rot to the place where myriads of bad ideas coughed up atop the page, splash and stray, crash and break  
 
As they relate like oil spills to floors of lakes and spades to rakes, as some dig deep through soul to vibrantly paint and others' teeth take bits washed ashore, long having sat to bake, to bind and sell and though, the grind is Hell, I'm dispelled as mixed emotions flake  
 
Moments of joy, clash, with points of ache Sadness, fast to poke in, deflates sorely staged, acts of plays that gain acclaim, as they employ, contain scenes, as alien to the others words and ways and meanings chopped up and spirit splayed as the soothing aid of rain to hydrophobic blades and wasted crop, dropped neath ceilings, beige or grey to fast be dragged beneath displays by rats, untamed where authors shop for turnips  
 
With their noses turned up to 12 o'clock and papers sticking out their pockets  
next to pens they use to jot to show their couth and class and let you know they have a name and stones to throw and words just strong enough to afford to hone brash homes from crumbs they stole out the mole hills they were made  
 
Cold and unconstrained in glass abodes, insanely lacking shade, when that's the rage, is where they stay, behind walls and stronghold gates that surely hold a dozen cats and back on to pastures grazed  
 
These posers often stroll our streets, holding leering gazes and quill-tips raised at coffee shops and inns they stay in, like hand position and dismal disposition could convey that their rhymes might drip from pen at any minute and set  
the largest flame, still more ablaze, of which we'd be amazed  
 
But most are are daft and dull and born to laze and twist the truth till it's consumed by either love or hate which shapes the views and guides the reigns of reader's fates, as those who butcher stolen quotes from film and stage fill their plates by judging others through some pseudonym or actors face  
 
Some should have left night's blanket, blank  
of their designs, their constellations staunch and rank, they cheapen skies  
Messing where perfection lies  
like if Vegas strip were flown and placed  
where Atlantis sank,  
it'd be less a prize  
but no surprise, as it attracted lavish snakes to throw confetti high past scaly mouths that gaped and up to caps of ocean waves to boast to oafish sailors in every color's, every shade of sunken castles, desecrated far below their empty boats and vacant lines and  
as they whined of fish and bait the rich would sigh, There's no debate in soulless eyes  
 
And so I know, until every mystery's exposed and excavated, sold, sapped, drained and had it's corpse revived, until they're all smacked with cash to be propped back up, over sounds of ancient cries Until every effort ever made to rise above matte, mundane, and easels dry is dusted into dust and crumbled grain, polished into pixels plain like crushed crust of apple pies, those who suck at veins will go on milking wonder's pain,  
I pray some wonders  
will  
forever hide  
 
In the world resides, much insane  
 
Voices, vapid,  
choices, vain like girls who dance and rave on aging tanks, once deployed on war torn banks where very few survived, yet on they climb to have their photos taken, draped in uniforms, with phony ranks, cut at sleeves, legs and tatted waists to show their booties bounce and stomachs shake  
 
Some inhumane, are lost inside  
 
A blatant shame, like plastic money filling banks and those not thankful for summer's rays wasting in basements on sunny days  
 
Some assess the human race with no thoughts of real stakes Basic, uncreative minds focused on their estates which leads those without the parts to make a sum or thumb to grow a garden home to compelling traits, to quickly trace, to cheat, compile waste and cheap thrills to later defecate onto sacred pages without a pound of prestige being chased  
 
Potential beauty strafed, in lieu are shadows laced with ghosts of poets, most irate that keep Shakespeare rolling in his grave from cooling ears to Atlas vertebrae and back he sways  
 
Lord forbid these abhorred horrors do more than hope to fornicate and get to pass the bucks and ink to buck or doe, misshapen  
by long, being inundated  
with lazy words  
and the haze of craze over deadline dates their parents were never late with  
Children, trying to fake it, to prove they were no mistake, overflowing with goals to pop the world with the point of dull, hand me down, rapier blades  
Kids trying to save  
every, man, woman, boy and girl from so called, pitiful lives, they rate lower then their own from isolate caves, glaring at diamond rings and bones of slaves laid out in silver spoon and ivory cages, they parade in  
 
Buffoons, letting thoughts unfurl from claw foot tubs where their rubber ducks are played with as they hum to tunes and bathe, shave and rinse in their very favorite, white decadence  
from some bovine's tit, we only need a few to help save all wit, to crash the ship of pompous twits and flakes who write of tundras from shores of barely frosted lakes they won't plunge in, yet on they skate on ice that's thin and as bound to break as the binding of books which are truly great or the genius is, with no peers to help displace the massive weight of being the one inmate who still sees straight down crooked halls  
 
It's on he, the burden falls to heed the call, to demonstrate how words have the power to draw every person, big or small, in one imperfect statement It's on she, who's talent's tall to madly quake, knowing there are books and scrawls we cannot erase  
then shift a gear and change the pace with words of fate and conclusions, clear as cubes of glacier, crushed by the strength of apes  
 
The only way we can topple shelves disgraced and clean the slate, is to rise as fog through sewer grates and knock the grubs from window panes of poets, late as we grow as grapes that will not wait, or be slow to show the way though this lonely maze  
 
We need not flop complacent, cells in stasis could  
still spawn as stars in space with heroic names that shine Hell through walls, opaque, into every demon's oasis  
We can plant seeds to overtake the disease of smut, dumb, stolen glee and fake hatred  
 
I hope the world embraces those who sprain wrists, wiping stains and waste from this overpopulated, depressing, degrading, fading, once sanctimonious place that soon won't exist  
 
We few, it's chosen saviors, savor finer things, make tea to sip, then sit and quip on days more patient  
 
But maybe I'm the stick in the mud, mad from chafing and it's not the way the wind's been facing but the past, this art form finds abrasive, maybe today's works, still fresh and new, are acquired tastes and I should trap my tongue in it's old and tired, flappy gum, rudimentary case, tap my foot to drum as words plummet from broken sponges into pools of decay, as I soak in the view and quietly say

"Pass me that fool's book,
who am I to judge?"