Monday, November 23, 2015

Rattle



Monday, November 23, 2015

The leaves rattle against the side of my car
As I sit here to wait out the first true chill of fall,
Each degree causing to shrink a little inside,
I want what I’ve always wanted, but can never have
On fair days with warm sun, I feel less its loss,
I am always losing something and finding something else
I’ve lost before when searching for what I’ve lost this time,
luck and ill luck tied together so I always get both,
I’m chained to the ground, a perpetual prisoner of my own life,
Condemned to the slow decay time brings, like an old leaf
Listening to the rattle of leaves already turned brown
Or lingering at the edges of limbs they are too weak to escape,
Moved, but unmoved by each gust of wind,
Lost when I finally break free to roll across leaf-strewn streets,
With no real purpose or direction, finding no company
In the piles of other leaves only indignity of rubbing shoulders
With strangers when all I ache for is to return to the tree

To turn green again, when all I can do is rattle.

Sunday, November 15, 2015

This side of the Hudson



Sunday, November 15, 2015

I walk near the water
Chill air bellowing around me
As a chill stirs up inside
This budding exhaustion
Making my step drag
Even in places like this,

I always ache for water
When I feel this way
When the world seems
Madder than the average hatter
And the only answer to anything
Is more hate
The distant shooting reverberates
All these miles away
Recalling the smoke that once
Hung over this place
And if I stare hard enough
I can still see the smoldering
Of towers that now live
Inside my head

I ought to be home in bed
Curled up under a blanket
Seeking refuge in dreams
Where such things do not
Occur unless I let them,
And a backfire is just a backfire
Not the end of the world.



Friday, November 6, 2015

This one’s for you



Friday, November 06, 2015

I live my life in myth
This sifting of sand
That blows through me
Like a sandstorm
I never have experienced
In real life,
Fogging up my eyes,
And clogging up
By lungs
So I can’t breathe,
Life is so complicated
I can’t describe it
Except in vague ways
As if each time I put
My pen to paper
The wind comes along
To blow the words away,
Making me think of that
Old song,
About dust or sand
Getting in your eyes,
But knowing that even
In the midst of all that,
Even when the wind blows hardest,
And the sand gets rough
This one is for you.



Thursday, November 5, 2015

A drift at sea





Thursday, November 05, 2015

The water rises and falls
In this place with the moods of the moon,
Slapping at the shore of stones
With each passing cargo ship
I am lost in the tides like a small boy
Who has been cast out into the wide sea
Desperate to feel a bottom I know
I can never reach except by drowning,
And I am already way over my head
Each breath filling me up until I can no longer
breathe, or think – floating in this place
as helpless as drift wood as I cast my gaze
around for one desperate glimpse of land
knowing that if I can put my feed down
on something firm

I can survive.