Inktober 30 and 31 - A brief speed round of Poetry

#30 - Catch

isn't that what they say when you meet the love of your life,
oh he's a catch, oh she's a catch, oh they're a catch,
is that what they say, that you caught them, snagged them?

that is the implication, that somehow beyond all possible struggle
you're lure and hook got so they were perfect for capturing
the fish, i mean the guy, i mean the girl, i mean them, you got
your hooks in.

isn't that a little too violent, isn't that a little to morbid,
isn't that a little too strong.

i prefer to think we were bird watching birds, and we had calculated
beyond reasonable doubts that this new species we spied over yonder
in distant nest was the one we were keen to see. so we fluttered
as birds do, and we glided as birds do, not knowing that we were
each of us seeking out the other, and then we perched our selves on the same branch,
and we saw that our colors matched, and that our temperaments
were comparable, then decided we didn't need to go and seek out
the perfect bird over the way,

that is more the catch i want to have,
when the way over there one, was the one
right in front of me one, and vice,
and versa.

#31 - Ripe
that's what this fruit is,
is, is,
ripe, the fruit is that what it is
and that is ripe fruit is what it is.

suspect, simplistic, sordid,
sarcastic, scholastic,
bombastic, bombarded,
combatant,

that's what it wasn't, the fruit, isn't
ripe, it isn't is ripe, but it is is not
ripe, and then

historiography, masculinity,
toxic, tragic, childish,
games with little fingers,
that can't please anyone

that's not what im saying, but what im saying is
ripe isn't the word but it is what this was but is not
is what it isn't or will be,

memoirs and autobiographies
essay outlines, and pissing down
pants legs, drudge up scenarios,
shoot the shit,
that's what it is

ripe.

InkTober 2019 19 - 29 (Another Speed Round of Poetry)

19. SLING

are we talking about the kind,

are we talking about the type,

the ones used for injuries

the ones used for injuring

the ones that might fell giants

or the ones that might mend bones

there's a laundry list of things

that do much harm and much good.

20. TREAD

tires move over roads with the aid of grips

on the outsides of bodies, that latch

onto roads, with aid of motors, and gadgets,

gears, and engines,

combustion and exhaust.

we move forward with aid of feet,

muscles and tendons, and all that animation

gear, that helps us move a step

at a time, and lets us watch, a step

at a time, and our destination,

it maybe be far, and our destination,

it may be near, but our tread is wearing down.

we need to rejuvenate,

reboot sometimes, need to find a moment

of rest, and reprise the trek when we can,

we need to revitalize our worn

wheels, need to rotate our tires,

need to commandeer our steering wheels.

21.  TREASURE

If I had to place a word on it I wouldn't call it treasure,

its not something I plundered from the bottom of the ocean

deep. If I had to place a word on it, I wouldn't place it on

it at all. The words would surround it, and their baselines

would follow all around its edges, it'd permeate through it

not damaging, but like osmosis, symbiotically. If I had to put

a word on it, it wouldn't be called treasure, you are not a treasure,

this love is not a treasure, it is a gift given by you.

22.  GHOST

yeah I have my demons,

they exist in that closet over there by my skeletons

once in awhile I peak in on them

other times they let me know they are still there.

yeah I have my ghosts,

that haunt me from daybreak to sundown, and wish

me ill health. I don't try to focus to much on them,

because they knew me as I was then,

as I was when: heartbreak, jealousy, depression, prevailed.

yeah, they are there.

yeah I have that room,

that hole in my pocket, that when hand is reached inside

seems to fall down forever, but I also

have a large sunrise illuminating my world, my outsides,

and I have no room to linger there,

I'll heed the warning, and caution signs

of transgressions, because we all transgress,

yeah we all transgress,

it matters more that you're willing to see you have,

that your willing to learn a little something

from those you hurt and who hurt you,

and see if you can narrate your own story.

yeah,

I got those,

but im so much more than my

ghosts.

23. ANCIENT

America isn't,

old enough to drink,

isn't old enough to drive,

isn't old enough to smoke,

isn't old enough to purchase lottery ticket,

isn't old enough to travel alone,

is old enough to know better

is old enough to learn

is old enough to mentor

is old enough to grow

but doesn't.

24. DIZZY

Ever play that game?

Place your forehead on the bat,

keep the bat vertical in the dirt

and spin around a bunch,

running around in a little circle

and run off into weeds,

stumbling as you try to dart

across lawn,

and tripping over yourself.

I wonder if that's what he does

in oval office,

in office chair, and then makes

a call to Ukraine, China,

wonder if he's dizzy,

and stumbling through

makes sense. 

Works for children,

not for presidents.

25. TASTY

Some flavors have no name,

they exist in a blank place

we can describe them some ways,

but we know they are inaccurate,

and sometimes they don't have a flavor

which is why they have no name,

but we know they taste good

and we know we want more of them

and we know because we've had our fill

and those flavors never fill us up.

26. DARK

It's what happens when the lights go out

in the middle of the night

and when no one is there to hold you.

27. COAT

I want to wear your love over me like a coat of armor,

I want to march into battle with essays, and video projects

and tire issues, and I want to know that you'll protect me.

I want to wear your love like a lab coat,

something that'll keep all the poisonous thoughts off of my self,

and will build my confidence in my position.

I want to wear your love like a winter coat,

like a thick and warm parka, that insulates me against the bitter stings

of distance, and makes jealousy obsolete,

I want to wear your love like a coat,

maybe a light jacket, that softly touches my neck,

and kisses, "I adore you."

28. RIDE

i think i'll fondly be able to recall our first weeks together,

or months, because it involved so many rides,

it involved plane rides, and car rides, and train rides, 

and bus rides. I think I'll fondly remember

counting down minutes as GPS mumbles out in computer voices

in a quarter mile, in half a mile, in sixty-seven miles,

turn right, turn left, merge right, merge left, slight right,

and slightly onward it directed me. I think i'll fondly be able to see

in vivid details the sight of you meeting me,

at airport terminal, or bus terminal, or at your front door,

or in a meeting room. I will remember you rode shotgun back,

passenger seat, head on my shoulder, fingers atop mine, and singing

songs from DISNEY shows, and wondering,

how beautiful it is that you want me to ride

in airplanes with you.

29. INJURED

ambulances cost a lot of money they say,

so better for you to bleed out than pay to be saved,

ambulances cost a lot of money,

that's just a fact, hang up the phone,

use your thoughts and prayers,

and don't change a thing.

INKtober 2019: 11 - 18 (Speed Round of Poetry)

11: SNOW
Did you ever think to wonder what it might be like to torch the local ice cream store,
how you'd make sure no one was occupying it, and you'd light it on fire, and all those machines
that twirl and make the ice cream smooth and wondrous would grow overheated,
and may have cause to explode.
Logically, that might not make sense, but if so, if it were such a thing as that, and if no one
could get hurt, just think of the snowfall of vanilla that would blanket the perimeter, all those
droplets of chocolate, and green mint chocolate chip layered trees, think how superman
might cascade across telephone lines and a screen of bright colors would stretch-drop down to tippy-touch the ground.
Logically, it would not be like that, but think on it, think about it, but don't think of the mess,
melted along the sidewalks, in the middle of summer.


12: DRAGON
It is fortunate that the sky is crowded,
with clouds and airplanes, and birds feathering
together. It is fortunate that rain might
escape the sky, and lighting might thrash from it, it is
fortunate that the sky is filled with bird shit, and not
raining fire down below. But we can say that here,
snug tightly in our sweet united lines,
but there are other places where our dragons
send fireballs hurling, and the sky is not so much
crowded with clouds, and planes and birds,
but with bomb shit, that whistles down, or silently
falls, and often we have been the ones to unleash it
and what a shame it is, that we have such mystical
power that we don't seem to use it for good,
for what good is fire, if it kills as it warms.

13: ASH
I wrote a letter to a friend of mine,
but burned it right after,
I thought, why should they read my
thoughts when they can't ever take the time
to hear them. So I burned the letter
and swept the ashes onto the floor,
and swept the floor with a broom,
and I never wrote another letter.

14: OVERGROWN
This heart is a tangle of emotions, all zigzagging as they
crazy-climb up the sides of the muscle that gives me life,
that pumps my life through me.
This is overgrowth, this affection, but it is not like weeds,
although some might be appalled by the general tangle
of my emotions, this is not like weeds, this is like ripe vines,
shaping to the walls of their life, and stretching out about them.
I opened up the soil of my heart and said to her,
plant the seeds here, as long as you nurture them,
you can grow them here, and she did, and they grew, and
they are not weeds, this overgrowth, overgrown around me,
is  like sunset with lover constantly asking to speak sweet nothings,
it is like vines, it is like that.

15: LEGEND
It took me a moment to realize you were full of shit,
took me awhile to realize I ate it up,
so who is worst, the shit giver, or the shit eater,
for who lays claim more to societies invasive eye,
the stupid or the carnivorous.
Maybe I'll write it in a book, nope, I won't,
But its a curious thought. For who is it, and the answer is
who cares what the outside world might think. And
besides I left that behind, its just another
legend of mine.

16: WILD
I might be tempted to remind you that I am happy to follow the trajectory
of greatest smiles, for that is the shortest distance between being wanted and being needed,
it is wild to think that airport terminals are not just places in movies for people
to meet, and feel sparks fly. I've felt the anticipation of reality seeping into dreamscapes
and it caused me to duck for cover around wall of elevator, when I spotted you coming near,
and it caused me to know intuitively that I needed to feel lip to lip electricity,
and that you understood this, and that you understand this, is wild,
I feel the warmth returned when my feet get cold, and I turn my furnaces on full blast
and you still, you still return my fuel.

17: ORNAMENT
The ugliest christmas ornament,
is by far a cheetoh atop the christmas tree,
is by far a repugnant shit sack in oval office,
the ugliest christmas ornament has been
the one we've had going on 3 years now,
its time to pack it away, and put it out
with the trash where it belongs.

18: MISFIT
You ended your life,
this is a statement of fact,
maybe a statement of purpose,
maybe just a statement,
you ended your life.
You chose the when, the how,
maybe you chose the why,
but that implies the why was one thing,
the why was one thing, that is not a true
statement, we don't wake up,
and find out that the one thing has happened,
and decide to make our appointment with death,
its a whole shitlist of things,
you ended your life,
you ended your own life,
and to know that you had your reasons,
you had your whys, you had something
that was latched into your soul,
maybe its not there no more,
but neither are you, and that's something
you might have wanted, or maybe you thought
you wanted, but this has happened,
this is a statement of fact,
you ended your life.

I wish I'd known you back.

Anomaly - a poem

I never believed in fate.
I do not believe in fate,
I've witnessed enough rain droplets almost kiss
and then differentiate trajectory to send shock waves
that ripple outwards into the vast oceans of life.
But, then I saw it,
this dance of two droplets of differing speeds,
that graced each other as they twirled down,
and one with elegance matched its pitch to the other
unsure of itself as it careened to be a collection
of water as far as the eye could see. In steps improvised
to the rhythm of the winds the droplets synchronized
and somehow, beyond all possibility, met, and kissed,
and the trajectory was shared, and each kept its dimension,
but they were conjoined, so that even in slow motion,
one would see that they were altogether one but separate,
a tender embrace and when they pittered down in the way
rain drops patter, it wasn't so scary.
What else but fate could do that, but I don't believe in fate,
but I smile at the idea of it,
and I want to believe it, because I have witnessed something
impossible occur, an anomaly among the constants,
that proves that nature is not one-hundred percent
and it is,
beautiful.

InkTober #10: Pattern

Pattern

what happens if you break a chain, that you had used
to restrain yourself back from escaping from this hideaway
you've placed yourself in. well, you are free to choose
to find that paradise you'd always wanted, and its scary
to be greeted by the sun because you'd felt that burn before
but you now feel its warmth, and realize it wasn't just to kill ants.

InkTober #9: SWING

Swing

to and fro motions are what make life a ride, joy or otherwise,
sometimes down right scary because you don't know how you're going
to rise above the top bar, and if you can get the courage built through
the pumping of your feet to send you careening through the air and landing
with the grace of a gymnast. More than likely when i hit the ground I'll twist
my ankle and fumble to the ground, the way a quarterback lunges and grasps
at air and kicks his feet forward trying to recover what he lost, but the audience
won't be standing on edge for me, there will be no audience, and yet, for some
reason as I'd leave the swing I'd imagine flashbulbs of camera, and in those
moments through space to ground it will seem that my most embarrassing
moments has been captured by the the crowd, the crowd being the non-interested
children at recess, the crowd being god, the crowd being me, a party of one
playing on a swing set, hoping i remember how to dismount. this is enough,
as i go to and fro and away in a throw to the earth, maybe that's okay,
but i will always be my harshest critic, and the reviews will be scathing and the point
boards will rise up in the non-judges hands, one, one, and two, but the two will
be for sympathy, and the only reason their ones is because zero was not allowed, nor
negative numbers.

InkTober #8: Frail

FRAIL

it only seems fair to warn you that this skeleton suit is my real self,
and its brittle and has not aged well at all.
when they date my dental build, they will note the extremely weathered
condition they were in, they will see that time was not kind, the worms
considerate, nor the wind calm.
i hope by examining closely the calcium deposits on my joints,
they might determine that milk did not do my body good,
nor grant me the serenity to accept the things that I could
change.
its my deepest, deepest wish to leave behind remains that will stay intact.
that i'd be a good cadaver to lay out on a table and put back together like puzzle
pieces, but i have a sickly feeling where my stomach used to be,
that when they go to lift me up i'll fade away in a dance with the dust
mites.
on second thought, my last will and testament, which you cannot hear, is that
you do not disturb me, treat my body like the door of a hotel, where two
lovers are spending time getting tangled up in one another's flesh, its not polite
to disturb, to interrupt.
it only seems fair to pay me the same respect i paid you, but not reaching a non-muscled
arm out to grab you with these bony boned fingers, lanky and chalky, seeking a hold
on your ankle.
i hope that that courtesy might be enough, might be the ticket to get you onto the train
back to where you came from, or flew on, or drove to, or teleported.
forgive me, i do not know the time,
because i'm dead, and i'm a skeleton in the earth, do what you want with me,
i guess i can't mind.

InkTober: October 7th, 2019 - ENCHANTED

ENCHANTED

Maybe its that you referred to coding, coupled with forest,
a code forest that I imagined was a group of interconnected
root systems somewhere in cyber space that reached out to
take the hand of the fellow flora, and how this reliance
on some under-earth connection helped the trees grow higher
and then they get to extend their branches heavenward
and provide shelter from storms with a canopy of leaves so
dense and whole that no pain could get through. But, in
a computer language, with numbers, and algorithms,
you tried to explain this to me, but the whoosh over my head
was audible, but i swore i heard it in a movie. Maybe it's
still like that, some version of it, and you are out there
planting little trees, and making the timid little tree sprout
up and jut out, and there's all these little trees with family now
because of the connections you created in the computer-brains
synapses. Maybe you are a miracle worker, painting with
statistics, and mathematics, one bio-medical necessity at a time,
or maybe youre just a graduate student attempting to do your
work, and get through till the next project, and hoping you're
appreciated. Maybe that's what it is, but in some symbolic
ethereal place, I think you're making magic. And that,
that is enchantment.

InkTober 2019: October 1st - 6th (speed round of poetry)

October 1st - Ring

Samwise Gamgee could have carried it all the way but
Frodo Baggins was a little selfish. Wanted to save the world,
wanted to be the selfless one. Took it all on himself,
when, not up for argument, he had the real hero standing beside
him the entire time. But we don't have time for great halls, or dark times, even though we live in them as a constant of every minute, of everyday.

The point being if you have a Samwise, who goes about "dropping eaves" while being curious about the general well-being of the garden and his master-friend, do not let that hero go on simply
being your cheerleader, share the load, carry that burden together,
that's what friends are for, so they say.

Each day brings about a bit of nonsense, but don't be a Frodo, don't be an attention hog, and whine about how hard it is, and let your Samwise watch you suffer, he's there to help you, she's there to help you, they're there to help you.

So don't be a Gollum-Smeagol and give up the ring already, you're only making it harder on the both of you.

October 2nd - Mindless

It seems a bit funny,
doesn't it?
To argue with a pumpkin,
with fish lips, and the language of a four-year old,
except for maybe rape, except for tax evasion, except for Ukraine.

But its not funny,
because you can't hold an empty gourd up to any standard,
can't beg it to be civil, when it don't even know how to
speak.
It seems funny,
but it isn't.

Doens't it seem so, though?
As the orange-whatever is rolled out in front of the podium,
unsure of how it got there,
never took the time to watch even a movie, let alone take a course in speech,
to understand you don't have to flail your arms around,
and if you flail your arms in mockery then you should probably
be filleted up in a garbage disposal.
But the orange-whatever,

pumpkin,
gourd,

is left to dangle arms in wild gestures, flailing back and forth, because
the puppeteer didn't get their training as well.

its a little unfair?
comparing a president to a pumpkin, unfair
to the pumpkin,
and unfair to us.

October 3rd - Bait

We catch and release for sport.
Sounds about right.
We are men,
I suppose, men as in mankind,
but it aint so kind.

Hook the jagged little pill into the cheek of some little guppy,
should be a blessing if it aint too big, too small to eat,
to small to bother to be chopped up.

The bigger you go, the more likely you'll be objectified,
stripped, and gutted, but then you gotta be filleted,
gotta be cooked up. but maybe not right away,
maybe you get put on hold, on ice, get locked away in
the dark, till the craving comes along.

i guess that's like men sometimes,
not mankind, but like men, but mankind too.
Catch and release, 
move on to the next fish in the sea,
not all men I suppose, some catch em,
and some toss em back, and some take great care,
admire what makes them unique in a fish tank,
but not as a prison, as a haven-place.

that's like mankind too,
and man, or woman, or them.

Not so black and white in the water,
though it can be murky brown,
there's still some green, some blue,
and if you go deep enough some bio-luminescence.
i think,

I'm not a nautical expert,
but I think we can be better to the fish.

October 4th - Freeze

Isn't that what they told them,
then they did,
they froze. Shot
them anyway,
why not, their frozen,
paralyzed by the light,
by the trained gun.
Considering that the owner
of trigger finger might
might might want to just
try it.
Freeze. You're it, tag, I guess
but no one wins it,
no one does.
October 5th - Build

How do you build for a future,
when the foundation was not there.
Because plans changed, didn't have any cement
to hold me in place.
How do I build this,
discovering self at thirty,
it's strange, isn't it, to think that
the future is finally viable-visible.

Foundation is going down now,
cement is being poured, mixed, I'm transfixed
on the notion that its tangible,
and difficult, but why is difficult
a bad thing.

I've never been a builder, an architect, but maybe
I was all along, after all I've come out someone
elses dream, and miracle, but these extensions
I nailed up myself, painted, and finished,
remodeled, and tour down, maybe I did have a foundation
in the form of a motherly hope,
maybe I did. I think so.
I think I did.

October 6th - Husky

It used to be a euphemism for fat.
"You're not fat, you're husky."
No, you're fat, a husky is a dog.
You are fat. Not as fat as you have been,
but still up there. Personally,
don't find that okay, personally
always wanted to change that, be nice
to walk up to a clothes rack and not have
to settle for what works for my frame.

Husky dogs are cute. Loyal, take charge,
vigilant. But maybe they are not husky,
maybe they are fat.