#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
I’m that great friend who you always feel happy to see. That one you can always depend on to give you his last dollar. The one who listens to your story and helps you remember where you left off in case your mind goes off topic. I remember you and I can tell if you are sick or have something you’re wanting to hide but really need to talk about.
I sincerely care. Prefer giving a compassionate and manly hug. The kind that can be disarming but reassuring. The strength of which has soaked up more snot flowing tears throughout the years than Kleenex and Brawny combined.
I honestly love you for your own weakness and fears. I also am more proud than any parent when I see you conquer those unseen hurdles we all find in life.
You are beautiful. It is the greatest thing in my life to know you. You know I mean it.
I just have one thing that has bothered me. I know it’s bothering you as well because every time we make eye contact you have to guiltily glance away into some awkward place. I see the sides of your cheeks become pulled in as you grind the soft flesh between your teeth. I hear how your breathing pauses and then is released in a low nasal breath. It’s like the scent of the air about you suddenly stagnates.
I suppose it has.
Don’t invite me to a wedding. As much as I love them. I know there are two lists; One is your friends, the other is his or hers. Quite honestly I don’t ever make both. It’s great. I understand. I don’t justify the extra cost of setting a place at the reception. Just don’t lie to yourself and think I didn’t notice the lack of the formal invitation.
We both know when the service was. Get over it.
Just remember that because you didn’t stand up for what you wanted from the beginning chances are your marriage isn’t going to be all peaches and cream.
Your sacrifices are just beginning, and I get to hear all about them.
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.
I have been here always. Knelt before the same wooden altar. Bathed my mind beneath the ever shifting light of stained glass. I have read and pondered the stories that remain framed within those panels of glass.
They are glittering jewels that dazzle the eyes. Drawing the mind into the inner light that radiates out filling the void of the room beyond.
Marble floor with the patterned grain of darkened stone tracing out it’s ancient markings from time long lost beneath the sea.
Here in quiet remembrance the candles burn, and none but I know why.
The Watcher sat just beyond the doors of the great hall.
The large metal rings which had been fastened as the doorhandles and knocker lay flaccid against the ancient wood.
Their immense diameter and thickness making anyone’s hand look childishly small.
No one as far as the Watcher knew had ever tried the rings to gain entrance to the rooms beyond.
He had though witnessed the rare occasions when those within had swung open one of the doors to come out.
Usually they emerged suddenly and in silence. The great doors hinges effortlessly giving way, and then with little effort reversing back to the closed position. It was during those random moments the Watcher was able to see the doors construction. Thick as a man’s forearm, and framed with metal bracing within. Definitely stout enough to slow any intrusion of people or sound.
As for the room beyond it was shrouded in an eternal darkness, but at the distant end one could just make out a sparkling of jewels upon the floor and a dazzling wall of colored light.
The Watcher imagined that between the brilliant glitter of jewels and blinding light a dark figure knelt silently. Any certainty on exactly what lay at the far end was to never be known by the Watcher. Some places he knew well enough to stay clear of. It’s just the way it is.
My mind wanders back to the day I sat watching the slow drifting mirages dance across the hot valley floor. Almost as a dream a desert goat appears munching on dry twigs and leaves. I silently watch as she moves on. Just like the petroglyph that lies close beside me of a goat and the blazing sun. Time immortal, I understand what life is about.
Flowers in the window
Paint the light like stained glass
Their soft scented fragrance
Filling the room
Calming the mind
With the deepest of memories
That trail off into sleep
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…
To what value do I set the scale
With incremental movement a clock measures out moment by moment
But that has no existence
The vapor and steam of things unseen
Passively touch then dissolve
And yet you and I watch it’s coming pass us by
Left in the wake that follows
We reach out as if to hold invisible threads of thought
Something unattained in the passage of life
And burdened by our own purpose
Feel fulfilled or utterly emptied by the experience
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 