Sitting outside the hardware store
with a couple friends
like countless other days before
as autumn and the mid day ends.

Look there goes old Mr. Siegle
in his beat up Chevy truck
I see he's got his gun and beagle
I wonder if he had some luck.

And here comes Kenneth pulling in
a set of antlers showing in the bed
he's got his yearly buck again
(Wish I'd gotten mine instead)

I have survived the wolves
Of my mind
That pretend to be kind
But surround and attack
With alternate facts

The world is already bewildering enough
The way night falls
Like a pall
The way summer leads
To a deadly fall

Oh the voices sound
Like sirens
A beauty as horrible
As men or monsters
Can be incorrigible

I will face another day
Swat at its lies
Like mosquitoes
Weep blood
Like squashed tomatoes

Though fruit in the sun
As quickly as it ripens
Goes bad

For years and years
the reaper stayed far from me
I'd clear forgotten his sharp scythe
and the pain its sharp edge left behind
but then....

Three short years
six visitations
all loved ones held dear
harvested by death
making up lost time.

Numbness
I was cursed
dangerous to be around
dangerous to love
dangerous to be loved by
self imposed pariah
numb to pain and love

palace of lights caved
blooms through the body
like reality pitted against a comic book
not knowing where life came from
not knowing how it will end
with food tubes or road kill

is creation substance-less?
24 carat nonsense,
or pure wisdom?

perhaps bad therapy
for lab animals
voodoo dummies

monkeys shudder at needles
unless candied with a heroin syringe
chemistry a science of belligerence and euphoria
pleasure before despair
and than a sea of pain

and a fuck;

Pain is a hungry wolf,
Howling in loneliness.

Its moan takes root in every cell,
From the smallest splinter
To the shock of a bullet.

It also strikes the deep gut
With news of loss or finality,
That no one can console.

What demon god invented it?
What creature thrives by screams
In the emergency rooms of broken bodies,
And broken dreams?

The will to live will not withdraw.
We do not die from pain
We go on howling till it’s gone
And the memory is numb.

Resilience -
a long stretched out, shabby, painful & shame laden journey
through small & large challenges, loss, grief -
to finally look back & know I have that wonderful tool
to soothe the biting, aching, haranguing slaps & devastation -

Stone Cold Warriors…..

I’m falling over shaped white stone,
warring men have placed in a yard.
Never have I felt so alone,
can’t honour war dead, I find it hard.

Wasted lives, even more so in war,
carving a niche along with a name.
Can’t make a profit, what’s life for,
cold stone masons they’re to blame.

The sheer depravity of titled men,
free spending with poor people’s lives.
Willing to let soldiers die again,
scratch the names in their archives.

( Brazened truth is like
awakening of Lord Buddha
when enlightenment came his way
tonight it came to me
awareness comes from within)

Brazened Truth
dream not of me
in the twilight of darkness
as I step into the forest
of unknown long shadows

as I step inside
don't follow me
ere the shadows envelop
the followers like you be

and as in the stars
a moonlit night
the shadows lengthen
let darkness see its final end

@21 on FEB 14
COMPOSE A POEM ON
VALENTINE

I am now late in my shell being
shall define my long time
VALENTINE

Now only Love
is mine

It looks to them that nothing is wrong
That’s what they say to me, each day long
Do I hate them for their lack of feeling?
Or shall I limp away to stop the tingling.

I know why I sit very still in my chair
It looks to them, that nothing is wrong
It stops the pain if I just rest, and do not move
What do they know when I sleep and snore.

Sleep is a blessing it stops things, nothing more.
Even dreams of being young don’t even the score
It looks to them that nothing is wrong.
The reaper beckons he knows I am sore.