Poetry

On the beauty of a girl

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Some angels never fly

even with the most

beautiful

and glorious of wings.

 

Something anchors them to the

boring and pedestrian ground

and usually they are attached to the undeserving.

 

Maybe she is afraid to fly,

afraid to spread her wings and be

vulnerable

or to be loved as she deserves to be.

 

There are cracks in the happy of your life

and I watched them between perfect smiles

as something in me was falling

deep into the well of experience.

 

Sadness splashed up as acid to lick

my always-healing heart and

I know I am not the lucky one

or the one at all

and neither are you

with those chains wrapped around your neck

in this big tragedy of loving and living.

 

Don’t close your heart for him,

don’t give your heart away for

half a heart,

half a brain;

half a man.

 

I ache to watch you fly

and be as only you could be,

but maybe the tired irony of life

will come along and make

a tragedy out of beauty and brilliance

as it is known to do.

History for sale

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History is a difficult reality,

because it existed and is remembered in

simple fragments and usually

out of sync.

 

We write it down,

we debate about it

and we pretend to understand it.

 

In reality,

we are making up fictions

that loosely fit the facts,

but rarely even do that.

 

I can tell you what I walked in on

or whose heart I broke

and how bad of a man I was

but I can never show it to you.

 

I can also never show you the tender things

and how good I was to lay besides

and the way I hung on every word,

cared about even the smallest details.

 

History is always lost

whether it’s kept orally or written

and we pretend differently to employ scholars

but we are all rasping at straws and ghosts

even in the best of times.

The everybody

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One poem and then silence.

 

Is this how Hemingway felt near the end?

 

The words all ran away and he was left

lonely

impotent,

finally defeated.

 

What is a writer who can not write?

Nobody.

 

The words have a way of hiding when you need them,

and only coming around when the sun is up,

or maybe life works differently and

the words only leave when you’re finished

and ready to end it all.

 

A writer is nothing special,

like a doctor, a lawyer,

a singer,

an actress,

everybody is a nobody and we inflate them

to somebody they could never live up to.

 

The wordsmith breathes a final breath

just as the welder or mechanic does.

Never coming home again

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Everyone dreams of something,

or someone to come home to

that means anything at all

in this plastic and material life.

 

We fall apart

a shaving of dignity at a time

and we become so thin and barren

that only another so broken could love us.

 

Our best friends are the worst critics

knowing that we are capable of more,

fists red from punching snowbanks on

hour-long walks home through the St. John’s

streets that are empty and decrepit.

 

They demand what we could never give,

or can only show in glimpses,

potential is a tricky game and it drowns more than it saves.

 

I opened the door and wished you would

walk out of the old room

sleepy-eyed and confused

and I could tell you that it was okay

and I was home,

but I would never be home again.

 

Tyranny of humanity

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It is not religion that stabs the knife

or science that slams down the bombs,

It is people,

Regular ordinary People.

People bend objects from their neutrality

Towards evil or good

And most often Evil.

The child tears the wings off of flies

as the priest or coach abuses young ones

And the serial killer or general

Slaughters many.

It is not the instrument that is evil

It is the people.

A fire started somewhere

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It’s the little smiles that feel best,
Exchanged between strangers,
That remind me that I meant something once
And someone wants me to mean something again.

I’m not ready to mean something,
The big nobody,
Nothing,
But my heart is warming up.

Everything else follows the heart for me,
And the little smiles from beautiful people
And touches from lovely women
Whether its the hugs of friends,
The kisses of something more
Or just the presence of others,
It all means something good
And real.

Do you remember me on my game,
The almost-smug grin that plays at the corners of my lips?
you will.

The idiots who talk

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I died in my dream a few nights ago,
Was resurrected without purpose
Just like the first time through this ride.

They say you never die in dreams,
but that’s a lie and everyone knows it
And its said drams only last fifteen seconds
But I woke up with a headache from crying
And having to tell my dream mother how I had died
Inside of my dreams while I cried so long
In real life
That I woke up with a headache,
So I that’s false to.

Maybe they don’t know much of anything
About dreams
Or loss
Or misery
And all the DSM’s in the world
And every little comment is just guess work,
Nominalist guesswork at best,
And they can’t tell you a fucking thing about
Your heart
Your mind
Or love.

The wind

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The wind pushes around the patio chairs
Rocking and shaking them
And relentlessly howls against the windows
and through the cavernous hallways.

The sound pervades the emptiness
Making a mockery of my peace of mind
And reminding me of the one thing this
Apartment
Misses.

Fear and dreaming

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Life had a way of making the completely mundane
A big deal.

The pits of depression,
Like the drags of boredom,
were common and impotent after a time.

It came to be that only the truly dark
And morbid,
Would leave any impression at all.

I’d like to think I grew stronger than my depression
Or that boredom was now positive reinforcement
But I knew never to count personal demons out
Lest you wake up in hell.

I lived without fear of what they could do to me
Now
as I found myself unconcerned,
Budden said the thing about depression
Is that you can’t do worse than what
We had already thought about doing
To ourselves,
And he was right.

The fear left me years ago,
and had only popped up in glimpses
Almost as if it was a bad dream,
And fear is a bad dream,
The worst nightmare,
Because it can choke your heart and end you fast.