Simply The Best

a snowflake on a salted road
a cherry blossom in icy March
a whisper beside a noisy street
a poem crumpled up

bleeding ink in the rain

Today,
he started the day
listing his lies and his truths...
 
Nothing complicated or intricate;
two columns.
One for lies, the other for truths...
 
Thought it better to start with the latter.
The obvious, the oft repeated,
the constants he could not deny,
like... Yes, like... Maybe, like...
 
Probing doubts crawled in...
Truths, or poses, pretensions, claims,  
automated responses, statements and spins?
Overburdened and overwhelmed
to the first column he returned...
 
Best to list them in historical order;
lies, from first to last...
Took a few minutes and scanned his life...
Stopped when he lost count...
 
Lies when he knew, lies when he didn't...
Lies to others and himself...
When pushed to a corner, or out in the open...
 
Today,
he calls in sick - truth, or lie -
cooks his favorite meal...

(THE TRAGEDY OF GOD-CROSSED LOVERS)
 
 
I spied Faith sitting upon a rail.
Fair hair in the wind,
Watching the ships set sail.
Whispers from her wonder if
She’ll ever see me again,
As I sail off into the rift.
 
Gone to fight in God’s own war
Clad in celestial armor,
I go to break the door.
Of things so vile and beneath
Us, the holy army.
We will crush them under our feet.
 
      In Heaven, God looked upon Faith.
      And saw that without me,
      She was but a wraith.
      And sadness filled His heart.
 
Between the battles, I dream of her.
Sitting there so lonely,
Drawing her picture in the dirt.
Falling leaves remind me of the time
Of splendors and apples.
Before sin was a crime.
 
        Here in His kingdom sat one so blind
      To the love that shone
      But then Faith was still mine.
      A forbidden affair in His home.
 
In the heat of Battle I threw down their King.
Their morale was broken
And enemy horde felt the sting.
I proclaimed my victory for God’s glory
And headed for home
To Heaven, to tell the story.
 
      Word spread to the Lord of my win
      But He was full of envy
      For in His house Faith and I sinned.
      In His eyes there were many.
 
Sat her down in comfort.
Then told her about my doom.
She wept upon the shoulder of the Lord.
But him it was just
Another player knocked off the board.
 
There she stood on top of the stairs
And the air was so thick with despair.
Her stricken heart set to un-tune her,
And grief poured forth to consume her.
With one last pull of the heart strings
She cast herself from the spire
And the cold night air was lit up with fire.
 
      God was then struck with a rage
      And barred me from the chamber floor.
      I was to be condemned in a cage
      And I looked into the face of mistrust
      Once filled with just, but nevermore.
 
“Cast me, Father, as you cast her out!
Throw me from your heart!”  
And thus, I lashed about.
“I have lost Faith to her doom!”
The, I, The Morningstar
Cursed God from Heaven to distant moons.
 
      And He said,
 
      “Her pride for you kept her so fair.
      Your death by my word led to despair.
      I cast you out, into the dark.
      Let the lash of her death leave a mark.”
 
And so I fell
Through fire and earth.
To rule beneath
A new rebirth.
And still I search
For where she burned.
I have looked afar,
From Hell to Earth.
I am still The Mourning Star.


(c) 2013 Frank Green

Are you OK?
Nobody knows
Too many feelings
I didn't want to show

You seem different
Than you were before
Like another person
Just walked through the door

Wide eyes
Wild stare
Looking far away
For something that's not there

Gotta make myself
Put on a show
Play that character
Everyone knows

Which is the real me
I wish I knew
I'm one whole person
Divided into

Am I OK?
I don't know
Two personalities battle
But which is the foe

Good but not good enough
Constantly writing in search of that perfect line
Constantly trying to write a piece better than my last
Everytime I can feel it rise in me
Every day I feel it burning in me
Begging me to write it out
No matter how much I try, its always never good enough
It's not about my lack of motivation
It's not about my lack of words nor creativity
It's the need to grow
The need to be better
It’s the fear of being absolute
It rises in every writer, every poet
It burns inside every singer, in every artist
Begging to be written out
Begging to be said aloud
Begging to be drawn,painted and to be sang out
What I've written today is not my best
What I'll write tomorrow is no my best
Even if it rises inside of me
Even it it burns inside of me
As long as I can hold a pen, a paint brush, a microphone
I still haven't done my best
My best, your best
It dies with me, it dies with you
I'm the best, you're the best

Always third
Never first
Rarely second
 
Never us
Always them
Then me
 
Afterthought
Oh, you forgot
Didn’t realize
 
I give up
We never were
Go to them

May we stand together in gentle harmony;
As members of the human race,
It’s time to abandon our mental armory,
Amidst this crisis that we face.

With 99.9% genetic similarity,
It’s absurd that we still ostracize;
With our pathetic insularity,
That we can’t seem to compromise.

We’re divided by ethnicity,
And ripped apart by races;
With no sign of our complicity,
But the color of our faces.

We’re divided in our politics,
Pitted as enemies against our brothers;
Instead of embracing similarities,
We see a disparity between each other.

We’re divided in our religion,
As we fight to find the righteous way;
We’re guided to a great division,
Instead of uniting together to pray.

We’re even divided within churches,
With 100 different denominations,
Only noticing their smirches,
To deny their congregation.

What if all the gods we worship
Were actually one in the same?
The same commander of each warship,
But called by a different name?

It’s a shame that we stay segregated,
Divided by perceptual differences;
Instead of becoming educated,
To make intellectual inferences.

If we decide to override our pride,
And stop relying on our prejudice,
We could begin to see the other side
To be a little less incredulous.

And if we decide to stand as one
Instead of separating in two...
The possibilities are infinite,
There's nothing we can't do!

 

Clasping Venus
Looking Glass, her iridescent seeds glitter,
 as they recede in soft silence, onto dregs below

Her slender stem
weakened, by the consistent pattern, of
the now cool breeze blowing, through grassy margin and narrow ledge.

Weeping,  babes breath
with her scent,  of spent blossoms,  rambles freely over footbridges
Buds, drying with a pale apologetic  tone,  their
art of  preservation, envied,  though likely shunned by Cedars  
lamentation and the
 liturgical dance of
 the Tamarisk

              
Skeleton resting            
against a boulder;            
another cowboy          
having lived and died            
             
Empty canteen            
slung across shoulder            
Rusted sixgun holstered          
at each side            
             
Somewhere on the blazing horizon            
galloping through a mean cactus maze            
the stallion he was content to ride            
melting into its haze . . .            
             
where legendary outlaws hide            
             
Alternating between            
moon and sun beams            
desire remains ever-present            
in hollow sockets of his skull            
full of cold silver prospects            
and fiery gold daydreams            
             
A cautionary tale to be told            
is spoken by the wisest of old souls            
dressed in traditional native attire            
sitting in a worn lawn chair            
left of this desert-ed corpse      
now propped up and adorned      
with dime store spectacles            
             
To the right:            
a dead scorpion            
impaled by a nail            
decorating a wooden            
sign staked in the dirt          
        
Scrawled across it,             
WISDOM FOR SALE      
ONE DOLLAR            
         
Waving an eagle feather            
the Indian says,            
             
For all the dollar signs in his eyes            
Gunslinger had not any sense---            
his vision of untold wealth            
left him too farsighted to grasp            
bugs crawling on mesa rocks            
resembling crawdads in creek            
were venomous like asp            
or any other snake            
rattling about the desert            
             
Producing a shoe box filled with            
cheap magnification glasses            
he adds,            
             
Five dollars each            
             
Retrieving six singles from my wallet    
---If there is a moral to this story            
fuck if I see it