So-less September o8, 2o15

You ever have those nights when you are So tired, but for some odd reasoning your body just can't get comfortable enough to let you go to sleep. That's my problem tonight . . . or I should say this morning since it is 6:00am. I read an article some time ago that said if you are having a difficult time getting to sleep you should get up and do something until your body and mind decide it's time to cut some Zs. So, I found this poem from '13 that I wanted work on and repost and I hope it's enough to knock me out!

So-less  

 

My shoes have no soul this morning,
this shadow weary morning
this morning mourning grey.
This morning turning noon,

a dull, flat-black noon that soon
will advance to 1 pm, 2 pm, 3:45 pm . . .

 

forever climbing, straddling
the infinite ladder of success
the stress, the endless stress
the hopeless, hopelessness
only to fall backwards into midnight .
Starting over,
                   all over

                              again . . .

 

and once again  

                       endlessly . . .

 

waiting, waiting forever waiting

for that final moon to plop itself
down upon us, squish what’s left
of the rest of a restless,
meaningless night

 

But such is life for those without souls,
without hearts, without eyes enough to see—

no! Eyes, yes, yes, eyes they surely have
in abundance! Large, mouth shaped eyes.
Always surprised they seem to be
when the sun goes out and the stars rush in.
Never noticing the thick, white laces

binding them

                   foot,

                        to ankle,

                                    to all eternity.

Woodie 12-13-13(Rewrites o9-o7-15)

 

Almost Cut My Hair September o6, 2o15

I Know, I know a bit of time has gone by since a "new poem." And to be honest about it if Facebook hadn't ad done this "Facebook Memories" promotional I would never have found this poem I wrote back in 2o13. Hell, it was one of those "write quick and post" poems . . . I had forgotten it even existed. Although it need work, I decided it was worth the time. Not sure I'm all that finished with it.
But I think its now worth a read. 

Almost Cut My Hair

 

. . . my long hair bothers me . . .

a dirty red symbol of rebellion and—
dare I say it—youth.
Worn-out now, thinned to string now,
slowly evolving, dissolving into a winter,
a winter it will never recover from.
The spring no longer sings to me.

 

What’s left of it, my hair,

spends far too much time this morning
tickling my nose, and my ears and high diving
off the top of my head into my coffee cup . . .

 

I must be getting old, or older, or something.

Last thing to go?
The childish addiction for coolness.

 

These days I favor comfort over fashion,

sweat pants feel more at home
around my expanding waste than blue jeans.
Beards are out, too messy a thing,
a goatee remains but merely as a cover-up
for the saggy skin below my chin . . . chins.

 

No cause to march for anymore,

to fight and scream for . . . anymore.
Black Lives Matter! White Lives Matter!
It’s all just vacant noise to me ‘cause
matter just doesn’t matter anymore.

 

The news  . . .  weary, dreary tabloid vomit

mouthed by trained canaries,
melting one into another . . . short clips
of weeping widows and  angry fathers
and store bought politicians  
banging impotent fists against the podium . . .
for as long as the cameras continue to stare at them.

 

Everyone raging these days, everyone shouts

so loud that the world has gone deaf.
Fingers wagging in the stranger’s face
like a babysitter scolding an unruly dog,
“Bad, doggie! Don’t drag your ass           
across the carpet . . . Bad, BAD, doggie!”

 

Kent State

not even a bloody memory anymore.
The stains wiped clean . . . time . . .
such a diligent, thorough  housekeeper.

 

Where’s Janis, and Jimmy, and David C,

faint echoes now  whimpering
from  iPods and CDs
or whatever  the hell
they call those damn things.

 

My past . . . vague glimpses of acid trips

and drunkenness and cigarettes
and girls with flowers in their eyes . . .

Made it through another war

not much different than the other wars to come.

 

I’ll keep my hair long for as long

as it cares to stick around.
Maybe some years from now

 

I’ll notice it . . .

tickling my nose, my ears
and high diving off the top of my head
into my coffee cup . . .

 

And I’ll wonder why I never got it cut.

Woodie o9-o6-15




 

Heart August 3o, 2o15

Yes, a while it has been. I've missed you. I'm sure you missed me. Anyway, I am writing. Mostly it's on the personal blog . . . sometimes movie reviews . . . they seem to be hard to write . . . all most as hard as writing a poem.

Heart

 

I can't find my heart! I know I've got one somewhere.

I have at times loaned it out, here and there
to some girl or other but it’s always
found its way back home when it  grew tired
of playing with others, stomped  on by neglect  . . . 
used to prop open doors, forced to watch
as they moved everything they owned
out of the house . . . out of my life . . . forever.

 

I know, I know . . . what use is a heart anyway?

A very useless thing, but I've grown accustomed
to seeing it lying about, on the kitchen floor,
me searching for its beat
between the cushions of the couch.

 

Hard to give up on some things even when

you realize they're no longer relevant.

—Woodie o8-16-12

Pastel and Present July 31, 2o15

Yes, dear neglected reader . . . more poetry! Sorry. It has been a long while, but my poetry is back. Hopefully, it'll be back forever . . . or close to that. Anyway, working on some new stuff . . . here's a taste:

pastel and present

 

think I'll fall to sleep now

encase myself in a warm thought
one with just enough firmness
to keep my back from aching
when I finally decide
I've slept enough for one night

 

I won't dream . . . or if I do

I won't remember that I did so

 

A dream is far too fragile

a thing to wrap my sleepy self-up in
it breaks apart like window glass
when I wish too hard for it to live

 

The moving guys who reside inside

the subconscious working world
are a clumsy lot they'll drop
a well-oiled fantasy in the parking lot
and watch it melt into darkness
and swear to your unconscious being
that you are mistaken you had no dreams
you had no dreams no dreams at all
nothing but this potted plant
a couch a few chairs and a tiny  
dining table with a broken leg

 

that’s my life my life

a trail of broken things
Woodie July 31-2o15

 

67 Angels 3/4 Time, May 23, 2o15

Well, I 've been unproductive all through May. Very little writing going on, no blog, a few movie reviews and very little poetry. I don't understand why I have all of a sudden lost my desire, my need and my ability to write, to create art. I've always thought that creativity would be with me, a part of me for as long as I breathed, but lately? Not so much. Anyway, it's my birthday and as a part of my personal celebration I have written a "birthday" poem for this {snicker} special date. I think the first BP I wrote was when I turned 54. That means with this poem that I post right now it will be 13 years of sitting down and writing something about where I am in this life, how I'm feeling about . . . it. Well, it was a struggle to come up with something, but I did it. And here it is . . . Happy B-day, Woodie!

67 Angels 3/4 Time

 

This is the sound of aging gracefully,

an unpleasant little ditty dropped in 3/4 time.
Can you feel it slowly, slowly winding down?

 

and ONE two three,

ONE . . two . . three,
ONE . . . two . . . thr—

 

My perpetual orbit disintegrates

at a disturbing rate these days.
Shattered, splintering,
burning myself out
at such a sluggish  pace.
I plunge head-on down, down,
forever down into the thick abyss,
into the greasy mass of it.

 

and ONE two three,

ONE . . two . . three

 

An internal warming of my organs,

an uncomfortable itch. The Polar Regions
compel my quixotic self, sends it rummaging
through closets, picture books and cabinet drawers
wherever a stray memory might be stored.
Just the gentler ones: youthful runs across an open field,
ballgames and horror movies when the folks were out.
And as a young adult: chugging beers and chasing girls,
motorcycles and cigarettes, Vietnam and ACID trips.
Not much more to it than that, not much more at all.

 

. . . The duller years,

thirty malingering to forty . . .

 

And then my fifties?

The world felt safer then, kinder then,
smaller than old man sitting on a cold park bench
near the septic shores of’a dying Duck Pond.
The geese still swam along the muddy banks,
back then, even though the water levels were so low
they could’ve  walked about  in it
if they bore the presence of mind to do so.

 

and ONE two three . . .

 

Sixties?

I miss my dearest friend.
I miss his sturdy, tires, his dirty sprockets,
his WD-40 musk stinking up  the morning sky.

 

From the moment when the sun would wake
we’d ride and ride and ride . . .

jumping the curbs that pepper Boyd St.,
swerving playfully around pot holes,
the tree branches that fell to the ground like
wounded soldiers during the last storm
that butchered Norman Town.

 

and ONE . . .

 

I’ve been told

that there are angels in the elms. Yes,
Sixty-seven angels lurking in the trees
along Trout Avenue.

 

I’ve never seen one, of course,

but they do exist.

 

For I have heard them dancing

through the winter years on days so cold
a thought would freeze.
Sometimes, I feel them
skulking about inside my head,
snickering from behind bright white wings,
giggling, I suppose,
at all the silly things I’m dreaming.

 

Sixty-seven angels I’m told,

one for every year old.

 

For Woodie on his 67^th birthday

 

The Consequence of Art, May o9, 2o15

Last year, a movie titled American Sniper was released and created a lot of controversy. Audiences were pretty much divided on whether it was uber patriotic or uber insensitive. If your politics were Conservative, you would think that this story about an American sniper in Iraq was definitely pro-American. However, if you were Liberal, you more than likely thought it was highly racist and anti-human beings. This poem was inspired by that controversy.

The Consequence of Art

 

American Sniper is a movie.

It’s not reality. You can't condemn it,
you can’t  praise it just because it denies
or supports your political point of view.

 

What “reality” are you talking about?

You boo this film, condemn it
because it's not the way you wish
your reality to be, it’s not the way
you want the world to turn?

 

Do you look at Picasso’s Girl with Mandolin

And go, "That painting’s a fake, a lie! No woman
born of Earth could look like that!"
Of course she couldn’t. Her reality pours out
onto the canvas through the truth of art . . .
which in itself is a lie . . .  a dream . . . a fragile hope
that this existence offers more
than just the constant beating of the clock,
the steady, dreary crawl toward the ever dark.
Woodie o5-o9-15

The painting is by Pablo Picasso

Gravitational Pull, May o7, 2o15

Been a bit of a while since I've even written a piece of poetry. Short and sweet.

Gravitational Pull

 

There are softer things to remember,

kinder places I could  go, warmer weather.
Friendly, but unknown faces stare at me
beneath stocking caps, over the top of coffee cups,
through thick blankets of cigarette smoke
that linger ‘round their stranger heads like ghosts .
But I’ve got my own memory to worry about;
orbiting around me like yesterday’s news
a carbon copy  of an overly abundant face.
I can’t pull away from its gravity.
Its greater mass keeps my thoughts imprisoned,
confined inside that smile you always smiled
when we made more than love.
Woodie o5-o7-15