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regret

Regret is a powerful force of emotion, but it is not easy to depict in poetry. I once left someone I loved to be with someone I was infatuated with. Who knows why we do such things. Years later I found myself looking back on that decision with savage, ravaging pangs of regret.

regret

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general. However, the above player can still be used to listen to it.

You may have noticed that the subject is not approached in the usual manner here. Throughout the years, I have been admonished over and over to “just say what I feel” when writing poetry, as if just saying that I have regrets, that it hurts, and talking about what happened to cause them is somehow poetry. It’s not. No matter how I chopped up the lines, this could never create a poem; it could only create prose that’s been chopped into short lines.

Poetry is in part the art of expressing such feelings using only depiction so that he who reads will be overcome by a sense of empathy and relation without ever being asked to empathize or relate. A poem on a subject such as this should manage to completely avoid ever saying anything along the lines of, “I feel regret,” or “I regret XYZ.” This is the job of prose. The poem, if successful, should awaken that regret within the reader as an emotion he can own for himself without ever being told to do so.

In the case of this poem, I use the title to create the expectation of a normal gush of chopped prose on the subject of regret only to seemingly evade the expectation entirely, leaving the last stanza to bring the title home in an entirely jarring and unexpected manner—like the thrust of a dagger.

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Little Bastards

As I walked with a friend through Low Gap Park yesterday, I felt a sudden, sharp pain on my left hand. And I looked down to note a yellow jacket biting and stinging all at once, just trying with all it’s infinitesimal might to take down the colossal human.

I snapped my wrist once, and it was still latched on tight. I felt the stinger pierce deeper. I snapped it a few frantic times in succession and managed to shake it loose, probably flinging it hard to the ground and knocking it woozy.

These little demons need no provocation. My hand still hurts. My whole left arm has been itching as if from poison oak, though that’s beginning to dissipate. What motivates these creatures???

Little Bastards

Black and yellow
  like hazard signs
    or street-side urgings
  they whiz past a
    compressed package of
      flying road rage

They masquerade as
  relatively gentle bees
    but instead of nectar
  they work at flesh
    armored scavengers
      of rotting meat

They fill their wings with
  wild sounds of wrath
    every sidewound motion
  a burst of vitriol
    twisted little words intent
      on intimidation

And when you fail to
  flail dance and run
    they find a quiet spot
  grip with six stout legs
    and send their hateful venom
      throughout your veins

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Grace

However you may idealize the human form, there is one reality that wins out in the end—It will moulder and rot and decay back to the dust. There is nothing we can hold onto. Everything must go, even our most cherished fancies.

Grace

take your long lithe figure
your bright ruby smile
and take your pliant stride
filled with suggestion

take your smooth soft skin
carved from lily petals
and your slender toned belly
set in round swaying hips

and take your gentle cheeks
your life-altering glance
fixed like glimmering jewels in
Athenian curves

take it all off
to the charnel grounds
and meditate awhile
amid the waste

fill your porcelain nostrils with
the stench of what’s to come
and fill your deep brown eyes with
the reality of your perfection

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unperched

Some people seem to think of relationships—intimate, platonic, or professional—simply as a means of subjugating others to their will through emotional and/or financial dependency. Such people will encourage you to become emotionally and/or financially dependent upon them so that they can then use this as as leverage.

If you start to act or think too independently of what they like then they’ll distance themselves from you or suddenly become stingy as punishment. And if you persist with such independent behavior, they will eventually sever all ties and bid adieu, convinced to the core that they have just destroyed your life in retribution for not subjugating yourself entirely to their will. But, the reality is that people are more complex than this and, generally, the will to survive and move on is very strong.

unperched

perhaps you forgot that
    birds have wings

perhaps you failed to realize
    clipped feathers regrow

the downy breast will fight
    the storm for freedom

clawed feet will grip a cold
    wet branch for shelter

the beak by night will fold
    in its own soft shield

and by day peck out
    its hard won forage

but never will it probe again
    the ruins of its nest

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Fuzzy Time

“Fuzzy time” is a term used where I work to describe the time between about 3:30 and 5:30 AM, when the ghosts seem pretty active, and the psyche more susceptible. Life takes on the surreal hues of dream during this time, sometimes making it a little unclear as to what is real and what is not.

          Fuzzy Time

               a little hand taps
          out circles of doubt
past slower moments
          until the glass cracks
     shattering time

               cold moments pulsate
          through radar temples
deep into memory
          where doorframes sentinel
     long dark halls

               beige walls with plastic
          wood veneer blur
into a long dirty strip
          of brown decay
     half vacuumed

               waking dreams irrupt
          on long still hours
like headlights from the void
          minutes whitewashed
     with faces half remembered

               syncopated snores
          crack the varied drones
of forced industrial air
          muffled boombox beats
     and mental monologues

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Reflexion

So far as the average partying bar-hopping American is concerned, I probably have no life. The bar-hopping flies and turds are of course welcome to this view. Now that my schedule has been changed so that I have Friday and Saturday nights off, I find myself sitting in Denny’s during the night with my laptop watching the bar-flood sog, slurk, slump, stumble, slurp, and slink into Denny’s as the bars close up around two in the morning. In some ways they’re interesting to me. These living ghosts represent a feeble attempt to make the harsh lonely realities of existence more bearable by using alcohol and probably drugs to alter their perspectives manually. And the shackles of healthy inhibition removed, these emotional deadweights swarm each other’s sexual urges like piranhas in a bloodbath.

I watch them fondle one another, compete for attention, get pitted against each other by attention-seeking females, rise up in dimwitted defiance, and fight. Sometimes the tables fly up to avoid the charging bulls, enraged by the double tragedy of their life’s inevitability and the loneliness they face in the cattle-chute.

Once in awhile one of the cows—even pretty ones—looks over and notices me with my books, and smiles suggestively. I smile back, courteous, and quickly avert my gaze before one of the drunken bulls notices, and return to my own process, satisfied completely by my own path—a far cry from the cattle-chutes. In my peripheral vision I’ll sometimes see one of the cows staring at me as I type, read, or think. And I think of that last long look at the pastures as a bull or cow begins to find itself corralled into the slaughterhouse pens, and driven through the chutes toward the mill.

Theirs is not my world. And so this poem manifested as I listened to the gaze of one of them; one who has yet to hit bottom.

Reflexion

yes…
      i am far beyond your reach
     we merely share stale air
    drowned in broken hormones
   slurred jests and wild urges
  surged through pickled brains

    i will stumble only
      from exhaustion fueled by work
        a natural need for rest

your eyes…
      track me to my corner
     then turn with sad forlorn
    to tease a drooping cock
   with spittled absinthe lips
  home to soiled sheets

    my lips are only flecked
      by sober songs flung
        with passion to the stars

tonight…
      your bed will creak with pain
     a quiet hopeless rage
    stilled only for a moment
   in the half lit aftermath
  of sullied expectation

    my sheets will cover only
      stillness found within
        a coffer filled with peace

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Alone

Tonight I came across a poem blogged by a woman who feels alone and lost, and the poem was basically asking ten ways to none who’s going to save her from feeling so alone. To me it seems bizarre that a pretty lady would have such thoughts, since it’s really easy for women to get male attention. It’s generally a good deal harder for men. However, I found myself sympathizing and commented with an earlier variation of the following.

Alone

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

Well, not complete sympathy, considering she’ll be able to land pretty much the man of her choice once she figures out how the whole male-female human interrelations thing works. At least for short durations (most men seem to be unreliable as loyal long-term partners). But, in the deserts of loneliness, it is we who must save ourselves, scraping our way across the barren steppes toward the ever elusive springs of inner peace. I don’t see how another can really save us individually from our own loneliness.

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Eye Fatigue

I have spent the first five or so weeks where I work sitting at a desk throughout the night in a dark group home unit. The only real light is a two foot long florescent bulb, fixed to the wall about two feet above the desk. So, just above eye level. Directly under the light is a fish tank with six gold fish swimming about, occasionally splashing a few drops out onto my laptop.

If you’ve ever seen a fish tank in a dark room with one strong light situated directly over it, then you might have an idea what of what it’s like to sit at this desk, hour after hour, with this fish tank wrinkling surreal light into your face while the full effect of the florescent bulb slowly but surely sucks the moisture from your eyes and brains.

Of course with the psychic imprints from children past and present—ghosts—walking the hall, peeking from rooms, and brushing the psyche, it can get a little heavy on the mind in other ways, too. This sort of thing can only lead to a postmodern bit of poetry.

Eye Fatigue

Objects seem at rest
    like tide pools
  rippling in the sun’s hard light
      thoughts drip restless ease

Lull back heavy lids
    to waking dreams
  feel the touch of ghosts and
      shadow conversation

Bright light darkens
    blurring mental eyes
  blind mind draws
      long cloudy veils

A familiar name
    catches in the ear
  twitch slide cross jerk
      white flash sudden cold

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Acceleration

I recently stumbled across Newton’s Law of Acceleration in my readings. It was explained such that I was able to grasp and appreciate the concept. Then I thought of how bound we must feel as a people who have come to more or less understand such things. Here we sit on a speck of dust flung out near the rim of a predator galaxy. There’s a lot going on out there, and all we can do is watch through telescopes the faded light cast from events beyond history.

Acceleration

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.
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Hard Fact

I like to hang out in Denny’s on my nights off. It’s one of two places in town that’s open all night, so if I’m not going to just sit in my tiny cottage and rot, it’s a place to go. When the bars close around 2am, the drunken masses crash the gates and burst in like a flood. They bring with them many antics and loud conversations.

One such conversation occurred right near me recently, and got me to thinking. Two middle aged women were going on about all sorts of things, including ex and current boyfriends, child support from ex husbands, and you name it. I quote the segment that got me going for this write in the poem.

Hard Fact

“How was it last night?”
“It was great. I felt things I never felt before.”

How many times have I heard this
    said this

It should have dawned on me then that
    yes of course
        each experience is different
            each partner a new adventure.

Yet it’s nothing new
    this new thing never felt before.

It’s been felt over and over
    since the dawn of man
        since infant hands first reached
            for mother’s receding breast

This is hardwired
    the new thing never felt before

Coded into every membrane
    twin twined strands whose chief
        design is to drive the wet
            machine to reproduce

Consciousness manifests a complex
    ghost in the chassis

It has never been felt before
    so it must be real
        sincere and meant to be
            the path to joy everlasting

But it decays and the hardware presses on
    relentless for the next new thing

The cell wins over rationale
    till no excuse can justify
        the barren need which strives to burst
            forth well placed seed

Yes, we are but hapless victims of our biology, and periodically we even think we’re having a great time. But really we’re just being taken for a ride, dragged through rocky, sulfurous mud by the wild horses of brutal instinct.

So, there’s some Buddhism for you.

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Origami

Recently, as I reflected on how I seem to resist the best efforts of people to change me in this way or that, I found myself writing this.

Origami

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general. However, the above player can still be used to listen to it.

Indeed I have always resisted obvious attempts to change my nature, especially when the person making the attempt seemed to have something to gain from it. Those who have had the greatest impact in my life are people who just offered ideas, letting me take or leave them as I wished. I think such people felt no desire to gain anything by changing me, and were therefore compassionately offering a piece of information and/or perspective along the way.

Publication History:

Clamor — Fall 2009