Pain poems

Perhaps, like Plath
               and Sexton, along with
nameless Others,
Ars Moriendi,
the shared obsession
               was rebellion
               (against the self)

We do this our own way

Alone, like childhood
                and candied P's & Q's
they all thought they were
getting and making a way
                 from direction(s).

All I know
                 is that life-
the stuff that makes us up
(in the middle)
                 guts, chakra, vim, what not,
is not the same stuff
                 we put out, project,
hold title(s) to,
but the real stuff must be
                  Here somewhere...

When the pain ultimately wins,
perhaps the prize is popularity
                   in passing
as if believing in the benefits
of retirement (afterlife),
such as a tomb and sarcophagus
                    with a cat and some gold
we would reap the forever fields
                     we would have our Faith
and it would be good
enough
or worth more than Now.

Well, my well must be empty.
I hear echoes in chambers,
growls in caves,
screams behind closet doors,
and pitch so thick all is
                     hollow, except these
twisted guts, gnawing and gnashing
kicking and screaming
frozen and struck dumb-

and still
I breathe
through it.

And even when it becomes difficult-
if not
                     Impossible to stand up-
right-w/ spine straight
and those familiar serrated red daggers
twist while
blue dots with white halos pulsate
                      behind closed i-lids-
(shhh...)

I know
All will pass.




Painting by Gabriël Metsu [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Confessions of Stories Never Told (mainly by Rip G. Larsen)

Sealed and steeled and
in tact, in fact, all there-disheveled

in-side the unripe, oxidized lock box, ideas

tamped down in ply, peeling brittle-edged leaves

papers, actually, assorted, fragmentary thoughts-

in-spiration in scraps, morsels and ort,
accumulatively intended

to become something someday a story,
or Open Works-en-Titled:

Idea, Plot, Wet/ Dry, Action Scenes Black forlorn (negro),

Husband and wife, Idea and Story?

Suede pages soft as tanned hides, see the sunlight and crackle

after fifty long dark years crisping in the metal closet,

delicately, I have shuffled through these-

dead mans buried confessions, yarns my grandfather never spun out,

of ideas kept shuffled up, out of mind -out of mindsight 

only to be come, unfortunately,

resurrected by me,
I see a story to be told,

another resurrection fable-
(when they were true and alive)

His lines cast Here:

***************

Go to ‘Blake’ island for mercy killing,

Witnessing of murder changes husbands mind

Convicts solve his personal problem

By killing his wife-

(he lives)

Write one about a revengeful husband who kills his wife’s murderer,

after he is sentenced to life imprisonment.

Taking down of memorial in wintry square.

Idea-Symbols that always work of superstitions that always work-have some from…(illegible)

Idea-In a human vein, tell the story of a very adroit sponge (use G.L.as example)Have this trait finally come to a climax with a human ending

Idea-Write one about rodeo philosophers who have life figured out.-Get one of these guys in trouble philosophizing about (illegible) Show his Reaction.

Idea-Two people in some environment struggling for the same thing-person detests the other for the very same faults that he has. One commits a sin and boldly accuses the other of its execution.

Idea How about using a guy who sees too much significance in each little event that occurs. Have him re-act a humorous chime to his disadvantage.

Idea    Sargasso Sea   to ships as  (illegible)  on Howard St. ---One young face in a sea of living corpses

Husband// Very devoted, sensible, Impetuous, Loves wife deeply, Patient, Noble, Drinks to relieve tension, sentimental, sensitive, sense of humor (over)

Wife// Irrational, Intelligent, Sharp-witted, has softening of the brain

Open scene with her in some unintelligible but significant conversation and action and end play with husband in some way-

Beautiful, superstitious, fearful

Vivid Night Dream                         12^th Night

Wet                                                    Dry

3”                                                        6”

Much ado about Nothing

Action Scenes

Battle with weather by man

Battle of man with man

Battle of man with animals

Battle of man with unknown

Battle of man with = -woman?  (grandmothers handwriting)

Black forlorn (negro)-His eyes and coat were wrinkled from the evening's sleep

Story?

Dumb:____

I know you are well educated but do you have any money?
****************

The wife would be killed repeatedly and in theory,
this philosophy should disturb me, but it goes

unexecuted,
the crazy wife would die following him, naturally.

The gold lock on the green box was put on by Goldy-locks,
Blondie never laughed at these names that nicked at her nerves-

nor at all his taunting confessions
she noted, (red), too late

of murders he could never commit, accepting his miserable
blue collar fate
he quit

killing his darlings,

and turning attention to himself
went blue in the face
from this treading along of
American live-ly-hood-

Well-by now
we have seen, culture kills all kings,
by this time
unable to slay
all (his)storied thoughts, he locks them up for life,
to for get it out and to be handed down
the line.



   

Back-up luck

Writers are superstitious-so are baseball players and tight rope walkers-
I'm not sure about astronauts or politicians...
Dreams are more important to writers than waiters-who are waiting to live their dream.
In reality most dreams are forgotten upon waking.
In the wake of a bad dream, I had a premonition all my poems
were gone, like eggs-hatchlings left in one coop
and really-this has happened to me twice before yet this dream disturbed me more.
I said something about it aloud-if you are superstitious you know this is not allowed.
Forced to act, I reacted in duplicate, making copies, I saved, re-visited and barely recognized
them as all mine.
When I had the thousand stacked up by grandiose
subject and sorted by type-
humanity looms tall over the rest,
space, time, love, humor, in proper tributary, in reaction and reflection-
the poets of yesteryears would have stacked up much differently.
Most poets, historically consumed by cult are exhumed for love and above all
to reclimb the Fall over towering babble
and the wild will of the west, toppled progress and drowning in duties.
This humanity trods heavily, the paper rises, trees topple
and as if in a dream the poems scream of dying desire,
the death of discovery, the final resource, of course a corpse of work, ashes to dust, toil and rubble without troubling to wake for the passing of people that speak in poetry, or the writers that were right all along these same lines.




Image By Henning Söderhjelm [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Photograph of the Finnish writer Lenning Söderhjelm (1888–1967).