So, is this a poem, or what?

You were in my dream last night.
Not really you, though. I know that.

Just a copy, a doppelganger, maybe. A shadow left on my brain, 

but with dim eyes, and a small voice. A pale ghost.
A reminder
of things I thought were done and gone.

And I didn’t know 

if I should run to you or run away,
so I tortured myself instead. 

I opened up the dried box of my heart, 

looking for the words to say
or the feelings to feel that will make sense of it,
and let me be unstuck at last.


Now I lay here in bed, afraid to sleep again, 

afraid to see you,
afraid it’ll all start over again. 

poem

An uncomfortably negative poem I wrote today:

Small Southern City Pastimes

Mall-walking, people-watching
just to break the boredom of the day.

Wearing hair and make-up
unchanged since high-school hey-days,
these provincial passersby
overheard to say
their tepid thoughts out loud
in their lazy, local accents, proud
of their talking-point ideology on display.

Meanwhile…
Over-sized sugar addicts
Ponder the desert tray
With over-priced, flavored coffees—
a double-shot of flavoring today
for parent and child, their waddling
inherited, in a way.

If not for them, how could I feel
superior? Yes, that’s my deal:
thinking my loathing of them will somehow
          help to make self-loathing go away.

4 November 2013

Gadsden, AL

Naked Branches

It’s spring. Things are blooming. I’m sneezing.

There are still a lot of naked trees.

I was put in mind this past week of a poem I wrote in college.

By the way, this is a “po-um”. Not a “pome” nor a “po-eem”. I’m Just sayin’.

Anyway, here’s the poem.

“ANTICIPATION”

Soft-falling leaves outside my window,

while I sit and think of nothing,

suggest an autumn breeze—

the cycle of seasons closing,

preparing for a new death.

I expect dark days,

the gloomy outlook of another beginning,

But the sun shines a little too bright,

the trees show a little too green.

Spring growth, it seems,

pushes away

the old discolored remnants

that held on through a mild winter—

no howling blasts to strip them away.

I prefer the blasts,

violently shaking off all that’s used up,

than a gentle spring breeze

and the persistent pressure

of new growth waiting to show through.

Yes, I think I prefer the blasts.

(March 1992)