#passion #poetry #art #my words #soapbox
That guy holding the gun
That guy isn’t me
That guy sitting alone
Slouching over in the back corner booth
No that guy isn’t me
Licking his lips
Remember the taste
Blackpowder and gun oil
Life going around
Tracing circles at the end of the trap line
Start to finish
Pat’s hand began to tremble and as if on que the familiar shaking of the rest of the body followed. Small seizures spread rapidly throughout his muscles taking with them the last bit of control.
The ground rushed up to stop his fall. There would be only a few cuts and bruises.
Into a dark and empty void his mind fell. Soundlessly…
It is here, during these dark hours that my mind seeps out. Finding escape through the dark portals of the ears, eyes, nose, and mouth. Blown upon invisible traces it is drawn into the voids and recesses of the world.
I hear all. I see all. I taste all. I smell all. Yet I do not touch and so do not feel. Without knowledge of hot or cold, pleasure and pain, I do not know all.
I am just another lost spirit without understanding. Corrupt incorporeal. What is this thing that has value without meaning? Desire without purpose? In the darkness it loses all boundaries. Yet in its dimensions curls in upon itself.
Then in fear that which I would be returns back to what I am. Binding back to the flesh that we so often wish to flee.
I’ve been here before. I’ve sat half reclined, half slouching, vainly attempting to find some form of relaxation in this mildew eaten chair. I never find it.
Dust and cobwebs drift down from the dark shadows of an imagined ceiling. Imagined because in all these years not once have I taken the broom and searched out it’s existence. No, I will never attempted to discover it’s ghost like presence. It shall remain forever lost above the mass of entwined strands.
Life is easier if you sometimes ignore the less desirable aspects about ones person.
Here I shrug.
Somewhere a voice reads out the R value of a thick matting of cobweb and it’s insulation value; elsewhere a fire-marshal demonstrates the science of combustibility.
Outside, time moves on.
Random sound flickers past unseen doorways. Abstract chittering between salesman and stooge, crooning dove, obsessed parent, a life of lost hopes and dreams filtering in. The vibrations of sound disturbing the thick muffled air of the room.
More dust and cobwebs float down.
I do not care. I’ve been here before. I will be again.
Words float about filling space in the soft white. Pages press together from single lines. Slowly at first. Unable to gain foothold upon vacant.ground. Eventually enough sticks. Eventually enough binds together to form what can best be described as…
Dust bunnies blow about. Stirred up by the faster currents of air along the floor boards.
Warped wooden boards mismatched in grain bend. Between tongue and groove the air swirls around new tracks. Trails of rolling tumble weed bound. Piling into bands beneath stool and table they build layer upon layer. In some perfect reflection of the ceiling above this miniature world will conceal what lies below. Perhaps I too will then disappear. Never again seen or ever searched for. Lost beyond the reach of the mind.
Early morning light trickles in. It’s magic how the rays of light bend around the heavy curtains. They press their way in between hard plaster wall and the softer weave of cloth.
I watch the silence. Slow lines form into faded shapes. I wait. Eventually from the broken gray and dappled shades the day outside will find your picture set upon the shelf. Then your voice will call to me.
Past and future find me here. Lost alone with you, my love. A ghost upon the shelf.
War wounds open up again. Flag draped coffins carried out as gently as a baker’s dozen for display.
Strong shoulders bend beneath the reality of their death.
Impudent, impotent old crow in a hurry to pick clean the bones of other kills ruffles his feathers and stares at the sun checking the time.
I would hurl a stone at his head in the hope to do harm but the gore crow smells a meal and wouldn’t let go no matter.
People seem to take pride of their choice. They praise the theft of life as the murder flocks to the feast.
I say string each croaking feather from tall white pillars and let wind and gravity bear witness to the crime.
Just a few more days. If I can hold out for just a few more days then the minutes carrying me up to that moment will be forgotten.
I keep telling myself that. I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it.
I’ve been here before, sat in this very same chair. I’ve watched and witnessed an eternity of failed attempt’s pass by.
Nothing ever changes. Not even the name.
The Traveller sat dumbfounded. How was it he had managed to become lost in such a familiar world. The directions and landmarks had been worn like an old cow trail into his brain. Yet for some reason he had managed to make a misstep. The Traveller had become lost.
Standing in one place and waiting for a rescue was not an option. Panic wasn’t an option either but it was going to be.
“What the fuck…”
Pat sat disinterested in the menu before him. The choices were many but the flavors they offered bland. The same old thing with the the same old spices.
Pat was sick of the choices. Pat was ready to go somewhere new even if new was some greasy meal wagon in the slum side of town.
“Change would be worth a case of the shit’s’.
The Sage sat tensely in his seat. His body rigid, head bowed, forehead covered in sweat. On occasion the old scholar would let out a low groan, then catching himself making the noise, he would shift uneasily in his seat and clench his hands in pain.
Before him sat a book opened to a grotesque drawing of the large intestine. A bookmark dutifully protecting his place.
From one of the dark and disembodied corners of the room a familiar voice was muttering.
“You get what you pay for. Change sucks dick.”
The soft muzzled cough brought Alice back from being lost in her usual daydreams.
It had been months since she had walked freely about the streets. Even longer since the blind run through the dark forests of another world.
If this insane self-imposed quarantine had to continue for very much longer, Alice was going to leap back through into the brightly lit hall beyond. Once there she was more than willing to try her luck at some other random doorway.
“What then?” muttered the low voice of the sage.
Alice could tell he was talking more to himself than to her.
Alice replied anyway, “Anywhere but here.”
The look of the old mages floor length beard partially muzzled by a soft swath of mask looked ridiculous. The rope ties for the ears could not reach so Alice had helped him braid the ends into the facial hair just beneath the cheeks.
The effect gave the ancient librarian a hipster grunge look.
The ink stained hands of the sage had been hard at work rubbing his face again. Either an allergy from the ink that now tinted his nose or from the dreaded Covid virus had been making the elderly gentleman wheeze and cough. He had coughed enough times that Alice had demanded the face covering.
The sage grumpily complied just to silence her complaining.
The whole request struck him funny since it came from a woman wearing no clothes at all…
The doorman had been busy hanging invisible signs about the hall. Each had been hung so that an individual entering could see them with little effort. He was certain when the complaint department was called he would be found blameless in the spread of such ignorance. Each entry had been clearly marked with a request for a mandatory fourteen day quarantine, and each infectious destination properly marked.
The Gatekeeper had even replaced his usual Welcome mat with one that read, “Masks Required”.
“Yes”, he thought, “in a reality of inexistence the flattened curve wasn’t going to catch him in another surge, hoax or not.”
Pat sat watching the falling leaves. The peace autumn brought was a welcome change from the dry hot days of summer. Still the thought to lay naked in those golden rays made his pulse quicken with youthful memories.
“The seasons change with the turn of a word,” he whispered to the quiet room. Though there was a large crowd, no one heard him.
Pat was aware that the sentence could be thought of as political, as well as environmental.
Opinions were changing. Impatient populations desperate for a miracle.
Come November another four years of greatness would be chosen. Hopefully one that meant the destruction of a party founded in racism. If not then things weren’t going to look too good for the home front.
It had been bad enough that this man-made virus was unleashed by corrupt policies of the criminal elite in the attempt of a one-world-order coup.
To have to suffer under the heavy-handed tactics of the cosmopolitan could lead to an actual armageddon between good and evil…
Pat watched the falling leaves. The beauty was not wasted on him. The mix of yellows and reds drifting down. Sometimes in soft spirals, sometimes in a direct glide. Individual leaves and groups all randomly blowing about with a kaleidoscope of color.
None of the meaning was missed.
Everything had a purpose;
Pat just had his own preference in how things should end.
All this change from the green leaves of one tree. Nothing was ever missed…
In the shadows lay a daemon
Lurking quiet beneath the trees
Stalking silent amongst the leaves
Until opportunity came to be
Then the devil stole from me
Stole in a whisper a love so dear
Left of her no trace to see
None would ever hold again
The soft shape and elegant line
Of her beauty so devine
Lost to the living
For all time
Except in memory
Shared in rhyme
False Promises Nouveau 