Tipping point (from Bear mountain mountain)Mountain poems) Oct. 17, 2024

 

I know the leaves have

Already changed

Where she resides,

The tipping point of

When gold and red turn brown

And yet as I drive north

On a road that hugs a river

I cling to their aspect of beauty,

Taking in the painted tips

Remembering the tender lips,

the tree crowns

bulging out, making me ache

to touch, as I cling

to memory as these remaining

leaves cling,

the colors seeping into me

along with the growing chill

as the world changes

and I know I will have to

live with the barren world

when they are gone,

until spring brings green again,

yet it is not the same,

this image of leaves,

the color of the sky

the darkness in her eyes,

the setting sun peeking

perpetually through,

always drawing me back

always making me

think far too much

about what I miss,

when I miss her

most

 

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Poetry Journal May 2012

I don’t understand!

I don’t understand!

I DON’T UNDERSTAND!

This intensity of pain, nails scraped across the chalk board of her soul, a sound once inside my head, I can’t get out, a buzz saw ripping at my brain.

What did I do to inspire such pain.

I am not that important to her and yet I get this roar of it in my head, a screech so utterly raw my nerves ache just remembering it.

I don’t understand!

Did I rip off the scab of some old wound or have I created a new wound in her, that voice in my ears, as I staggered up that hill.

I don’t understand!

I don’t understand!

Maybe I never will.

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On the street where she lives

 August 25th 2014 

I hear by one time best friend's voice singing as I drive up the street where she lives,

His favorite song which has since become mine like a Broadway recital in words I get to play the role of the man wearing the gray top hat too scared to stop even for a stoplight since this is not a street I meant to drive on cast here by chance Force to Bear witness the water tower shopping center before passing the church and then her home,

On my way to a place where she is not terrified I might see her first bird like in a window high up smoke billowing from her lips as if she was a dragon my friend's voice growing louder in my head about the street where she lives because I cannot drive faster I must adore it bumper to bumper traffic light after traffic light until inching forward I have gone past and resisted even the remote temptation to stop or stand there looking up to be there on the street where she lives draw there by faith or accident just as I was with all things started me still on the street where she lives

rust. aug 3, 2024

  

it is not dust

we must mistrust

but rust

the slow painful decay of years

Shakespeare complained that

 virtue retained will someday b

e the purview of worms

and yet we dare not abandon ourselves

 and our wonton desires

that we let fall to rust

when we must trust what is in us

 this need to feed

this polish of meddle we get

from the rub of heavenly bodies

the sweat of it keeping us trim

 it is not dust I mistrust

but the rust of ill use

the need to press on

 in, out, and beyond

 to keep intact that piece

we need most in our lives

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Brave New world

January 13th 2026 

2 weeks into the brand new year and I still reside in the old one and maybe the many years prior to it, when I could still look ahead, while these days I mostly look behind, all a matter of dealing with each day as it comes, counting them off the way an inmate does, I am in no hurry to get over with, 2/3 of my life still residing in a century that has passed, while around me, spring chickens rise, having no recollection of any other century except for the one we're in, they can still look ahead with confidence that life has hope for something better than they have it now, a brave New world I will never experience

climbing rungs to nowhere May 27, 2012

 

May 27, 2012

 I did not come here

 to look for clues 

as to what happened

 back home, 

though as I stride 

through the street of a town 

that gave the name to a generation,

 I feel the vibe, 

the sense that 

while it did not start here,

 it grew here, 

as if this place 

full of aging hippies, 

Tibetan monks, 

and the relics of a time long gone,

 she incubated here,

 a wounded bird 

with an amazing voice 

who ached for something 

more than she was able to get

 using her talents to climb 

the rungs of a ladder

 to which there is no top,

 just rung after pointless rung,

 she clinging to each 

until she can reach the next, 

she assuming there might be 

a place all this leads to,

 a platform somewhere ahead

 in the clouds

 where she can finally stand

 and celebrate achievement, 

yet has not gotten there yet,

 her palms blistering

 from the continued climb 

as if to nowhere.

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i know nothing july 2012

 

he thinks I know

 what I only suspect

perhaps is terrified

 I might expose them

when that's the last thing

 I want to do

 he and she holding

my life hostage

when they think I hold theirs

 yet I am consumed

with the green-eyed monster

and feel the sting when

 I think of them together

my brain manufacturing

wild orgies and exotic trips

they engage in when

that rational part

 the big brain versus

 the small brain

tells me none of that is true

perhaps projecting

the image of their debauchery

 because I ache to do it too

 he thinks I know

when I know nothing

though I catch his glances

 and feel the fear

he is exudes

the what ifs

the dangers I pose

the knowledge he thinks

 I possess

but I don't

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