Sometimes a Poem is No More

than the Diary of a Beautiful Idiot

Left Open on the Lawn

“Our times are still not safe and sane enough

for faces to show ordinary sorrow.”

                               ~Wistawa Szymborska

My dreams tell me I’ve been hiding

my outlandishness just to get along.

If anything, psyches favor travesty.

See how a broken heart goes on 

banging its drum

beneath a camouflage of cloth

like some beautiful idiot 

meant for sacrifice.

I have to remind myself

that what I’m writing is 

not a flagrant diary

filled with dichotomies

too unwieldy for memory to hold,

each line easily devolving

into a way to see

where the next line will take me.

For instance:

Last night I shat myself

on my way to visit my mother.

I could tell she could smell me.

Wrapping myself in a peacoat

like a fetid blue cocoon,

I woke convinced 

I could not be loved.

So I keep trying to be ordinary.

Not realizing what makes me different

is what could make me great.

Still, I embrace my vulnerabilities,

my wounded intelligence,

my historical youth

crowned in mid-age by

a heart full of stents;

 a tarot card

wounding me

for the better

with it’s swords.

6/2921

 

So Much World All at Once

So much world all at once,

it barely requires a self

to be a part of it.

Granted we’re slow 

to comprehend,

so slow that many

are the caterpillars

who’ve out-crawled us

only to find 

no finish line. 

That said,

there’s no leaving

anything behind, 

only a chronic begetting.

No need to crave adventure

as small experiences

and less of them 

are what the world is

really made of.

We can’t stop ourselves

from happening 

even if we leapt

into the void

we’d not impede the flow

between A and B;

un-dissolvable stones 

licked smooth

by misplaced hunger.

Our memories can’t recede,

not really,

instead they’re kept 

safe and sound

in the custody of a 

covetous giant God

who’s one disability

lies in refusing 

to consider

anyone of us 

as clutter.

6/27/21

 

Photo by Ellen Martin

Word to the Whys

At night they set sail

in bodies

made of salt,

in a sea

where nothing

can be understood

but surrender.

They dare not

look back 

at the fool lying

full of questions,

confusing as they do

the forests

for the trees,

these slumbering 

lumbermen

so ill at ease.

If someone

were to ask them

 what it all means

(and they will),

they never tell

as they’re

literally discontented

not being

under a spell.

Though they build 

their integrity

during the day

only to be fortified

in their malaise,

they can never

give up the ship

nor stop

needing answers,

never realising

poetry

a remedy

for paralysis. 

Some things

take shape

only in silence

like a soul.

For instance,

would you take

the weather

personally if you'd

no propensity 

for control? 

Only then

can a storm

be a thing of 

terrible beauty,

like some angel

sans its wings

or one memory

for eternity.

For those who

always ask why, 

consider this

prayer for

assuaging the sting:

“With all I’ve seen

and all I’ve done,

please grant me

the hope

of the

unexpected

thing.”

6/25/21

 

The Loss 

that Makes Us

Whole Again

Wholeness has a hole in it from the start.

The day we lose something, its absence 

draws in new air like an iron lung

filling us up again with restorative silence. 

Ill prepared for the privilege of living,

there’s nothing more debauched than thinking,

but a loss can make us whole again;

the unforeseen realization that the negative

is merely the diary of our own shadow.

6/12/21

 

Advice from 

the Down Hearted

"Love has brought us to this silence

where the only obligation is to walk

slowly through a meadow and look."

~Rumi

There’s no understanding one another,

so don’t kid yourself.

When leaving the house entails a safari,

summon a smile.

The sidewalks meet your shoes 

as a stranger,

the clouds couldn’t care less

who they float over.

Even the birds will shit

on genius, but

stay vulnerable.

How far can you go on alone?

The price of understanding is:

no one wants to be understood.

Trust me, who would?

When we’re so willing

to file each other away in a drawer.

One wrong move and

you could lose everything.

From here on out

best to live without

needing to know more.

How accurate it is

to be alive and in charge

of nothing but oneself.

How simple.

Make your work

your innocence.

Pray to deserve 

what comes.

Even if it’s not happiness,

your life will make sense.

Rise quietly in the morning.

Dress yourself and go to work.

When you want to walk, walk.

When you want to sit, sit.

Hanker after nothing

and be free.

6/5/21