New Year's Eve December 31, 2o15

I promised some Facebook friends and myself that I'd post one more poem for 2o15. Difficult to write when you know you must do it rather fast. So, this is the best I could do. Good-bye, 2o15.

New Year’s Eve

The world, the whole world

smiles at me this dying evening
although I know no reason why.
I still feel the bitter winds
upon my face, this aging face
which has no reason to grin
so why should I?

This year has drilled a hole

so deep inside my sleeping soul
that I can see my memories
staring back at me from some place
far and even farther yet away
than the day that I was born.

And yet, my “self,” my intangible self,

can’t help but see within its dreaming eye,
a hope (a very fragile hope, I don’t deny)
that this childlike year to come
will be the better times for you and me.

So, I’ll lift a glass (metaphorically),

I might even sing a song (quite loudly)
when the watchman shouts at midnight
and frightens off that bearded old guy who
must bear the grief that we have seen
in these unpleasant  times of 2o15.

And perhaps I’ll find the sand to smile again

as we usher in the year to come.  Welcome, 
and welcome you surely are, 2o16.
Woodie 12-31-15

Scream Gravity December 30, 2o15

You know, I looked at how many poems I had written or did major rewrites on this year and it came out to be 98 poems. So, I found one more from the past that I haven't yet posted on this blog, did a little rewriting and that means that I've got another day or two to write a NEW poem and that will give me a total of 100 for the year.

Scream Gravity

I'm falling . . .

                   down . . .

                                or is it up?

Direction matters little.

People . . .

                 things . . .

                                time . . .

                                            passing by . . .

a breathless pace.

I grab at shadows . . .

                                  they . . .

can’t slow me down.

Before me . . .

                      solid ground . . .

                                              will it bend me, break me

when I hit?

Tiny bits

             of flesh . . .

                                f blood . . .

                                                 cartilage . . .

scattered on the cold concrete below . . .

                                                                or is it up?

The past . . .

                   evaporates . . .

                                        replaced . . .

by a fine mist of sweat,

of  worry for the future of my skin

                                                    and bones . . .

                                                                          and yet . . .

I don’t regret a single moment of life.

I shouldn't think so hard (they say)
on what might be.
Instead, enjoy the breeze (they say)
climbing steadily up your legs.

My legs . . . my arms . . .

my whole body screams gravity.
Woodie 12-29-15

Winter Times December 28 2o15

Yes, I know, I'm a damn liar! I did say the last poem I posted would the final one for 2o15. But please, don't judge me too hard. This mini-poem just popped out of me (Like a "Pop" Tart out of a toaster) one late night and jumped onto the Facebook page. I liked it enough to work on it a bit, create a graphic and post it here for you, my dedicated reader. {smiles}

Winter Times

The cold has come.

Finally winter's here
spreading it's deadly breath
across a worrisome night.
Sparrows have gone to nest,
I'm guessing. The ghost cat
who usually dances silently
through the gray shadows
of the corner streetlight
has given up his art
if only for tonight.
My life . . . still goes on.
The stubborn heater
in my microscopic apartment
keeps the chill of winter
at a comfortable distance
so my fingers can stutter out
a few more meaningless words
onto the blank stare of Facebook
before they (and the rest of me)
seek the even toastier haven
of my bed/couch. Yes, winter
doesn't bother me as much
as dreaming often does.
Woodie 12-28-2o15

Dark Mood December 23, 2o15

I rush my work a bit when I'm actually writing and not rewriting an older piece. Not sure I should be doing that, rushing it. But I feel a need to post my poetry. Maybe I need to stop worrying about 'producing" fast and concentrate more writing in depth. Well, nice idea. But for tonight . . . I'll post this last one . . .

Dark Mood

I’m not sure who I am tonight.

Though my orange-red hair has
long ago buried itself in a fleshy grave
on top of my head, I still see him, feel him
in my heart (my actual heart) running, jumping,
kicking cans and the occasional stray cat
that trespassed across his tennis-shoed path.

I guess it’s just this particular midnight gloom

that for some ungodly reason wishes
to roam through the thick, murky depths
of yesterday. Sheets of memory
hanging from my mother’s clothesline
the summer wind beating them dry.
Of course, memories should be dried,
deep fat fried by the morning sun,
stored in a cold sub-consciousness
then pulled out and thawed out
for snacking . . . on nights like these.

I’m not afraid anymore, yet, shaky my fingers are.

But not from the boogiemen an idle mind dreams up,
or the elm tree shadow that shimmies on the wall.
No, they don’t scare me anymore.

No, no black crows cawing panic in my brain tonight.

No echoing bark from the crazy Labrador next door
who fears the rain when it comes, the trains rushing by.

I never understood his mood . . . or mine.

We think even darker than the evening fog
that limps across the yellow lawn,
but stops just short of crossing
the asphalt brow of Trout St.
Woodie 12-22-15

Dreaming Day December 2o, 2o15

I wrote a lot of poems that I never posted. A lot of them deal with existence, reality, time . . . that sort of stuff. Found this one by accident while looking for another poem! Pretty sure I never posted it on this blog. So here it is for the first  . . . I think.

Dreaming Day

I think I've been dreaming again. Maybe too

much . . . maybe for far too long . . . and maybe
I’ve drifted so faraway from the reality of my
everyday that I only now realize my eyes are open.

Perhaps my consciousness has found

that hidden doorway, the one with
squeaky hinges, the one which usually
opens only wide enough for the fantasies
to squeeze through when I’m sleeping.

But there’s no substance to this daydream, just a

quiet sneeze of delusion from Queen Mab's nose.
Just enough pain to nudge me into a restless groan,
a desperate moan that only the waitress at my favorite
hamburger joint can hear... She smiles at me as she wipes
the counter top clean and absentmindedly checks for the tip
the trucker who flirted with her . . . didn’t leave. Her sadness
at being stiffed is just enough to remind me that once, some
clumsy time before, I could, like her, smile at my own
misfortune, and snicker at the great despair of those who
work for minimum  wage . . . I didn’t wonder or care to know
why the unfortunate never seem to notice me.
Woodie 11-15-12 (rewrites 12-2o-15)

The Nothingness December 19, 2o15

A thought some times gets stuck between the cracks, driving itself deeper into the mind creating a sort of rash that you scratch away at. it never helps. It's like trying to swat a mosquito in the dark. All you have to go on is a sound. BUT writing a poem getting at it that way tends to work like an intellectual salve. 

The Nothingness

Extraordinary to see yourself outside your . . . self,

looking back into those eyes that you've never
really seen before. Counting each wrinkle on that
alien face, each scar that you never were aware of.
You look and you stare and you analyze and criticize
every nook, every cranny every blemish that time created.
There's a warmth gathering around that hole inside you
where nothing lives, where nothing feels more like home,
like all that you are is that nothingness and that nothingness
is more real, more solid, much more than what they've told
you, all your life they told you, what reality is supposed to be.
Abare existence that glares at you through that self you've
never known. You have never known. It feels like butterflies
fluttering around the fire’s light, like the deepest end of the pool
where panicky legs keep searching for the bottom and find
nothing more than . . . than . . . and there's that word again . . .
nothingness. All there is, all there’ll ever be . . . nothingness.

Not even a splinter of a shadow left.

Woodie 12-19-15

Everlasting December 17, 2o15

Typed this little late night rambling out on Facebook. I planned to write more on it, but a few friends thought it didn't need anymore. Picture is of a local artist who's making it pretty big, Katie Williams.

Everlasting

Your eyes fade from my inner sight.

Ethereal fingers reach for you

Grasping nothing but straw-colored shadows

Vibrations, your words, echoing

My ears refuse to listen to the ghost.

Shut it out, all of it out

Watch the bloodless weeping

Their desert sand rivers running.

Stare at that which is there until

All becomes an everlasting darkness.

Woodie 12-17-15

Cats Dream Dog Reality December 17, 2o15

Here's the thing. I'm not a fan of the cat. But I do like writing about them. Dogs? Oh, hell I'm pretty much a dog man. I like their simplicity. Crows, on the other hand, are much like cats. I never know exactly where they're coming from. I do, however, feel sorry for crows. One day I watched three sparrows bit the crap out of a big ass crow, in flight! That's gotta be traumatic. Getting your ass kicked by a handful of sparrows? How would you feel about that? {smiles}

Cats Dream Dog Reality

I do not understand the early morning breeze

how it slips itself into the old elm trees,
disturbing the winter branches
with its cold hands and eyeless glances,
that makes the dog that lives next door
howl and howl until the cat (who sleeps beneath
the wooden ramp outside my door) jumps
and runs about the lawn
never knowing if she's in a kitty dream
or alive in this reality, this dog cruel reality
that makes all cats afraid of everything
including their own shadow.

But it could be worse, oh, my, much worse.

To have the feathered curse of crows
who never know what they’re lives are for?
They spend their nights and days
confused and wondering away

“Why are we so different from the sparrow?”

Woodie 12-17-15

The Dead December 16, 2o15

This is an old poem, a dusty poem that brushed up a bit but not much. I'm not sure I posted it here. I looked but could find no evidence that I had done so. Let me know what you think.

The Dead

Dead. We are the dead,

tiny shadows lingering between
the narrow slit of eyelids closed.
Our words mumbling mournful things,
prayers, a whispered whimpering
so lonely darkness weeps for us.

We are the dead, vacant minds

burnt as a crispy sacrifice
crumbling toward the open grave,

sores bloom in yellow plumes,

a raving lunatic knocking at the door,
neatly tied up bound in every lie,
in every promise made and broken.

We are surely dead.

Apostles to the bone, the breath
adrift on streams of unconsciousness;
we drown in chaotic harmony
with all those other souls grasping
at malignant straws . . . they do not float.

We are the dead . . . breathing in

a world that spewed us out
upon the dank Persian carpet
where mother lies bleeding,
receding from her life
in short agonizing gasps.

Dead, we are truly dead

from the moment we are born.
Woodie 1o-3o-14 (rewrites 12-16-15)

Davy Crockett December 13, 2o15

A Facebook friend posted a story about his mother dying. He had to go to her house and clean up and basically get her belongings ready for storage. He came across this big box stuffed in her hall closet. He opened it up and found this old Davy Crockett lunch box that his mom had gotten him when he was a kid (he's in his sixties now). That she had kept this one thing all these years made him a little teary-eyed. I may have felt a few drops of eyeball rain gathering in my baby blues. I also got a great idea for this poem.

Davy Crockett

I never was a keeper of things.

That Davy Crockett raccoon cap
I begged my mother for? Wore it
a few times before I shoveled it
into the closet never to be seen again.

And Superman flying through the metallic air

on a genuine Aladdin Industries lunch box.
The thermos shattered after three days,
my boloney sandwich covered in milky blood.
The Caped Crusader tossed into the trash.

Some grunts gave me a lighter the day I left Nam.

“From the Boys in the Nasty” engraved on
its stainless steel body. I lost it between Okinawa
and the airport in Guam as I hustled my way
back to the world, to the good ol’ U.S. of A.

And love? A dozen girls tossed aside

sometimes broken by my carelessness,
sometimes they broke me, tossed me out
or like that furry Davy Crockett hat, left me
in the darkest corner of a cluttered closet

But a ratty pair of pea green Chucks

I bought back in two thousand six
stayed with me until they fell apart.
They now hang like a trophy
on a doorknob in my apartment.

why’d I keep a pair of worn-out tennies

and not the Crockett hat, or the lunch box
(even though the thermos was busted to shit)
or that one girlfriend who never hurt me?
I never worried about losing that lighter.

Maybe it’s just that when you’re young

losing things don’t bother you so much.
Maybe age tends to make you wanna
hang on to things , anything for as long
as you can even when you don’t want to

Woodie 12-13-15

Politics December o9, 2o15

Our politicians. Great men. Shallow minds. Content to see the world go blind.

POLITICS
The morning crows are speaking tongues
devour common sense and sensibility
while sparrows gather on the lawn
and beat to death their prodigy
a bloodless moon so fair
she doesn’t care if stars
are whom they say they are
she’s far too busy splitting hairs.
But I could never be a crow
or dance like sparrows
in the fading light of day
I’d never act that way
like cats and dogs  that fight
to save themselves for spite
for nothing more than vanity
I trust no one no one but me
can understand insanity
Woodie 12-o9-15

For a Change December o1, 2o15

Hey! First poem of December! Short but hopefully complete.

For a Change

 

My head is full of you tonight,

the smell of your hair after it rains,
your white skin, sandy white
but softer than the surprised smile
you flashed whenever I did something
"right for a change." You're not a ghost,
not a spirit, not Marely home from the grave
to shout to the universe my many, many faults.
No, you're no Thing From Another World.
You are nothing more but memory
which can often be more frightening
than any mythical monster or living ghoul
or insane politician could ever be.
Woodie 12-o1-15

Citron November 30, 2o15

Another "flash" poem from around 2o13. Did a bit of rewriting on it. Well, quite a bit of rewriting on this "romantic" poem, or maybe it's a "memory poem . . . who knows for sure. I don't remember writing it. So, not remembering what it's about isn't that far fetched. {smile} Picture is from an ex-student. Don't remember why she sent it to me through the e-mail. Not a blond. Brunette. I had to Photoshop her hair color to match the poem. Thought you'd like to know that. Why? Hell, I don't know that either!

Citron

 

I miss the taste of you on my lips

right after you smoked a cigarette.
Or at eight a.m. when you'd roll over,
smile and lick the side of my face.
My fingers too miss playing in your hair,
they loved to twirl themselves around
those thick strands of pure blond.
My sense of smell forever losing itself
in that thick scent of lemon shampoo
you always used. I never understood
your attachment to lemon shampoo—
as great a mystery to me as your fondness
for making love . . . in the morning . . . before
I even had a chance to open my eyes.
Woodie 11-3o-15

Common Knowledge November 29, 2o15

I don't  know my poetry anymore. I don't know if any of it is well written enough for people other than myself to understand it, identify with it, find something new to consider. Self doubt. Am I being too literary, too little, too cliché? I guess it doesn't matter that much. What does matter is . . . do I get it? Honestly I don't know. But here's another one. Hope there's something here to "get."

Common Knowledge

 

I could tell you about darkness,

how it blocks out the entire world
with just a blink of its enormous eye.

 

I could tell you about— but you already know, right?

You understand the empty, the void, you hear
the shadows rubbing up against each other,
against the walls of the small, uncomfortable  
apartment you pretend to live within.

 

You’ve listened, and more than just one night ,

you’ve listened to the whispers murmured
by the neighbor’s rat hunting  cat,
between the minutes, the hours,
the blistered bang of midnight.

 

Drunken frat boys lurking behind

the Campus Corner Market, urinating on
the parking lot fence, singing songs
they never quite know the lyrics to.
Howling songs heads leaning back,
eyes rolled upwards focused on a black sky,
a dead sky that could care less one way or other
who lives or dies on this little piece of dried-up sand.

 

I could tell you all about the darkness

the many headed creatures living there—
but you already know, don’t you?
Woodie 11-29-15

 

Alien Backpackers November 22, 2o15

Another "poem from the past" that I found and really can't believe I wrote it. I don't remember writing it, but I never would print someone else's poem on my Facebook without giving them full credit, so I must have written it. Another shorty but sweetie!

Alien Backpackers

 

Friends come and go and come and go

and dreams do too but they don't slam doors
and yell and scream and shout about
"How unfair you are, you fuckin’ bastard!"
I sleep well, though, when I sleep.
The sleep of a dead man who hung himself
out to dry during the winter months
and didn’t allow anything, anyone
to get in the way of his self-employed misery.
By degree we all must suffer the dead things
that live inside our tiny but quite tidy heads
and won't allow us (who sport a conscience)
one moment, one single dull moment of peace.
But I'm afraid I've lost the choo-choo of thought
I started this poem off with. But does it matter
if words mean nothing, describe nothing,
amount to nothing more than an aging hope
that someday alien backpackers will stop by
and read this poem and say, "Damn,
now that guy, he could write!"
Woodie 11-21-13 (rewrites 11-21-15)



 

Old Things November 19, 2o15

Sometimes a poem idea comes to me when I'm working on my daily blog. Yes, The Daily {W}Rite is suppose to be written in prose, but once in a while my poetic mode jumps in and . . . well, something like this pops onto the page:

Old Things

 

I'm sorting through the closet drawers

gathering up the holy socks and underwear,
both have lost their shape, their practical functionality.
Even this old cap, my red and black Spider-Man hat
needs to be bagged and tagged and thrown in the dumpster.
Maybe some homeless guy will find it. Its frayed bill,
the faded Spider-Man face on the front panel,
the yellow stains that through the years have multiplied
on the elastic sweat band. And the squatchee
on the cap’s top has worn-out its cloth covering;
all that remains is a gray metal button rusted and  bent.
Maybe all those things that I no longer find appealing,
that homeless guy’ll love. People who having nothing
often find pleasures in the things we throw away.
Woodie 11-19-15

Sandal Myth November 17, 2o15

Starting around 2o11, I wrote these little off the cuff poems to post on Facebook. I think I wrote them just to keep improving my writing skills. I didn't save them, or do any rewriting, I just posted them. Anyway, this year Facebook created this "Facebook Memories" thingy. They would repost posts you made in the past from the time you signed up for Facebook. So, I rediscovered these poems that I don't even remember writing! Some of them were pretty good. I saved them and did a bit of rearranging of the furniture (so to speak), and am posting them (one at a time) on my poetry blog. Hey! Here's one now!

Sandal Myth

 

Very sneaky snakes

disguising themselves,
this time, as shoelaces.

 

Clever indeed, however,

my tennis shoes were
not deceived and refused
to lace themselves up.

 

My toes and socks

were equally shocked!
Such deceptive behavior!
And my always dependable insteps
retreated to the safety of sandals.

 

Velcro straps make my arches relapse

 into a dark, sockless mood.
They refuse to trust anything
that doesn’t cover them properly.
Woodie 11-17-15