Just Poems: Self
👤
For You
Pixel Poets,
The well will never go dry.
The pen will break- for sure.
But the well; we’ll never go dry.
Keep it going
This is for you.
I’m writing this for you.
For you, for you, for you,
This is all for you,
You for all, and all ways
You
Keep it going
I’m saying it cryptically
Because sometimes
That’s the best way
The only way for those
Who don’t see
Who won’t see
What we see
As we see
As we can’t
Help but see…
Well, you see.
Keep it Going
Because if this means
To you
What this means
To me
Right now
Then my right now
Is gone as far as
I can tell.
So this is for you
Keep it going
I don’t know what it is.
I know it will rule your life.
I know you will be misunderstood.
Everywhere. Except here.
I get it. I’ve got it.
Keep it going
I wonder how long has gone
Since I put this down. 2018
And almost Christmas. That
Doesn’t mean much to me
Now. It didn’t mean much
To me when then was now.
But this does.
Keep it going
Once you’ve seen
The light on things
There no longer are things
Just one thing and you’re
A part of it like everyone
Else except you see it.
I’m here seeing it,
Probably there too,
But how?
Keep it going
You’re gonna hurt hard
For this, they’ll hit
You, but that’s only
Because it’s important.
The only Important.
Too important for anyone.
But you are: Someone.
Keep it going
I wish I could sit with
You awhile and know
I’m not alone in knowing.
But I am with you now,
And you are with alone;
The alone we share alone.
Now you know alone is not
Alone: You are not alone.
I was never told directly.
Keep it going
This best life.
This only life.
Walt wrote about it.
Emily was here, too.
Ralph Waldo and Maya.
Sylvia never quite
Made it to knowing.
But you will.
Keep it going
It gets better.
Not the part
That is horrible.
No- that
Stays horrible.
You get better.
You get stronger.
You hold more.
And more will make
The empty from others
Not burst you into
Empty rooms so much.
You will march
To one empty room.
You will leave
Shame on the couch.
You will always be
Full like you are now
Reading this.
Keep it going
Don’t make excuses.
You are necessary.
Look at these words.
You read them.
You are here.
You are necessary.
Keep it going
If you were here, we
Would laugh and talk,
Maybe go for a walk,
But we would for sure,
Share the lonely
That comes listening
To light too long
To loud to listen
To listen to look
Not any of those…
All of them
-and-
All at once.
Keep it going
The poem, the heart, the voice
That won’t quiet long enough
For you to realize you’re in love
With love and love loves a poem
Of love and the love that comes
From a poet is Love’s love direct.
Heart of the Poet!
Sing Love’s imperative!
Keep! It! Going
I’m tired.
Love won’t let me be-long
Enough to be acceptable.
There’s no other life when
Love direct has come.
You don’t stand a chance,
Rejoice in the futility
Of being Love’s choice.
Rejoice and keep
Love’s love going
One day someone will need
To know what a poet is for,
One day someone will need
To know poetry is the sweet
Cruel song that never stops
Stomping the Dance of Love.
Keep it going
Stop the song,
You stop the dance.
Don’t stop that song,
Stomp that dance.
That’s Love.
Keep it going
Love Is
Insatiable in Your Hands.
Waiting on Your Whisper.
Feasting on Your Words.
Shouting Your Divine.
Keep it going
You Are a Someone
When the dream of who you want to be seems too big…
And the bar stretches too high for you to see.
Remember this:
If you dream to win a gold medal,
Every gold medal is won by Someone.
You are a Someone.
Why not you?
If you dream of an All-Star jersey to play on the team,
Many different Someones play on an All-Star team.
You are a Someone.
Why not you?
If you dream to lead a nation,
Every nation is led by Someone.
You are a Someone.
Why not you?
If you dream to soar through a Supernova and see the stars behind The Sun…
Someone made every impossible possible.
You are a Someone.
So why not you?
Convinced
It was well before morning almost a year ago:
“You got to do something, you just do, before you know it you wake up and you’re 40.”
An old memory back with the first Happy Birthday to tell me it was right again.
It was a hotel outside of Concord, Massachusetts, Closer to a shopping mall than Walden Pond.
But close enough to see, just yesterday at sunset, birds flying from the pond’s shore, where everyday tourists who live a few miles away were diving in headfirst in swim caps and goggles: Like insects smacking into Pages of a history book made with sheets of flypaper.
Well before morning almost a year ago and not surprised to find:
Friendship, Loneliness,
Love, And What
Home Might mean,
Casting Shadows And Shapes
On this hotel ceiling.
Above this hotel bed.
Covered by this hotel
white Puff comforter,
Full of more air
Than Comfort.
Not surprised to turn on my quiet flashlight, at my customary time, and join my intended laptop at the table, to write about: The juxtaposition of the birds of Walden Pond, to this hotel so covered in scaffolding I couldn’t read its name from the street.
“You gotta do something, you just do, Before you know it you wake up and you’re 40.”
Then a voice from 20 years ago:
“If you’re a poet when you’re 20, it’s because you’re 20; If you’re a poet when you’re 40, it’s because you’re a poet.”
When you’re up before the birdsong, before the sunrise of your 40th birthday, and it’s just another lifelong everyday morning that has you writing on
Friendship,
Loneliness, Love
And What Home Might Mean,
And everyone you know is sleeping in a house with family, or under an empty comforter you just walked away from;
And they all think you’re awake because: You don’t need the sleep.
You are doing something, and you
Most Definitely,
Quite Seriously,
Are Convinced.
Dance in the Rain
I used to run outside at the first clap of summer thunder to dance in the rain.
The steps are easy: tilt your head back, stretch your eagle arms out, and spin.
It tastes like salt and showers and growing things.
Like Yes! Yes! Yes!
And Grow. Grow. Grow.
I miss my friends who would dance in the rain without a question, but with a look of recognition, we would bolt.
First one there gets one drop more.
Dancing in the rain was just the right thing to do.
It was the necessary thing.
But now, I’m without a dance partner.
Now, with the closeness of expectations supposed, of duties to show being done, I’ve lost the dance.
But somehow the song of it still wants a voice.
Somehow that thing with feathers still flies a short hop inside and stirs what’s left of what dreaming and passion and the immediacy of dancing in the rain can do.
Now there are headphones to dampen normal noises.
The happy wag of a dog comes from the sky like shrapnel in my back.
A cat on a counter meowing to signal the sun squeezes my burning shoulders with expectations of duty.
That same wagging dog paces in the swampy night air.
He repositions himself on the floor every few minutes to find a cooler spot to lay.
If there were a clap of thunder now, would he know the signal?
Would he go dancing with me in the rain?
Would he lift his head up and taste the pregnant potential of growing things and know what clouds might do?
Of what reckless compassion might do?
Of what dancing in the rain with a friend would most definitely do?
It will be 45 degrees cooler than yesterday when I wake tomorrow, when I walk to the kitchen to toast a frozen waffle, fill the electric teapot, and take the first pill of the day.
The Poet
Done in -Done up- In wonder.
Worn in -Worn out- In awe.
Homeless alive in so much beauty-
Fully boxed in so much comfortable awful.
The Poet is not the sky,
But The Poet told you of Heaven.
The Poet is not God,
But The Poet told you God’s name.
Todos
Todos estamos un poco locos.
Todos tenemos un poco de genio.
Lo que no está en los libros,
La vida le enseñará a tú corazón.
Tu locura viene de la melodĂa del alma.
Tu genio viene de tĂş devociĂłn a su canciĂłn.
Baila tĂş corazĂłn.
Canta tĂş alma.
El latido del corazĂłn de todos es un baile.
La sonrisa de todos canta una canciĂłn.
El mundo entero habla el mismo idioma.
Si quieres la atenciĂłn del mundo:
Balia con todo tĂş corazĂłn;
Canta con toda tĂş alma.
You’re About
You’re as fragile as a sky, as constant as a cloud.
So willing to hold a sunrise you know has no choice-
But you let yourself fall from the setting.
Why do you hold on when you know
That’s what a sunrise does, sets?
Why do you fall down when you know
That’s what a sunrise does, returns?
It must.
Why not stay so tall you can catch a sunrise?
Why not let fall what was made to fall?
Why not know, how strong, how light
How fierce, how wild wonderful a gift,
It is to hold fire, to survive fire,
To let fire drop to drown in the horizon?
An embrace is not an embrace if it lasts forever.
It’s standing still, squeezing the Sun,
Falling, flaying, shouting saying: “Not this time.”
Ears too full of fire to hear, you said,
“Not this time.” Again.
Let a day burnt be ash; yesterday’s Sun is gone.
Fire burns the world turns, each star finds
Its sky again, by making a new star, each sky is relit.
Brighter, hotter, truer, every Sun returns home.
He must.
Why not stay so tall you can catch the sunrise?
There is a Peace
There is
A peace
That doesn’t
Need you.
That’s
Me.
Not certain why,
After all this time,
I still want so bad
To give the world
So
Much.
Not certain if any thought,
Anytime, at any place,
Has ever been worth more than the air
On a Wednesday morning,
Windows down, listening
To the radio off,
Wind through
Every way it can,
Washing what
Was before,
Wishing what
Lies ahead,
Leaving it all to be one thought,
One single thought throb,
Persistent,
Persistent,
Persistent, throb
Of a single thought
colored over
Persistently persistent
Present Moment
A thought and not
A moment too soon,
Come
Again
Come
Again.
Happy Dancing
You did dizzy.
Then spun around
In mind and dream
Like you do in this chair.
Like you as a toddler
Your spin dance
In the center of the kitchen,
Head back,
Eyes on ceiling fan,
In twirls,
“I’m happy now!
I’m Dancing!
I’m Dancing, now!
I’m Happy! I’m Dancing!”
Hope he remembers
The joy of dizzy dances
Under a ceiling fan,
The whole wearied whirl
Around world watched
And wondered while you spun
Happiness was
As easy as
Happiness is
In an unwearied world.
WYSIWYG
The world
Is nothing
Like you
Think it is,
And so much more
Like you hope it might be.
The world
Is nothing
Like you
Think it is,
And so much more
Like you hope it might be.
These are steps worth repeating.
Giant
There’s a peacock sounding race relations.
There’s a fox snarling this and that amendment issues.
There’s an angry man, not really angry, playing angry
For your angry pleasure, on the AM dial,
All not-really-riled up-riled, rolling in his not-at-all-angry dough.
There’s a housing shortage in the neighborhood of the last school shooting.
There’s good people in blue and good people in red blood on the streets.
There’s medicine and there’s insurance.
And there’s the bank. The Bank.
And there’s a loan where the front door used to go.
And there’s a rainbow and there’s the way over it.
Now, we’re talking.
And now, I’m talking about living in and out of a white cardboard box.
So now he’s talking about a white-cardboard-Banker’s-Box-box.
The man wants metaphors.
But I don’t want a metaphor,
I want out of this cardboard box.
“That’s quite a cardboard box you’ve got there,”
He says to me from his perfectly good not cardboard,
White-cardboard-Banker’s-Box-box.
So, we’re healing.
So, we’re doing what we would not do.
We’re being who we were afraid to be.
Finally.
But we’re afraid of it.
But we ought not be.
Because we’re already what and who we need to be to do the thing.
It’s just a matter of doing it.
So, the only thing in our way is yesterday.
But that was yesterday.
So, we don’t know
What’s in our way.
But I do.
It’s today.
It’s this Right Now.
We spin against it.
We crash against it.
We wham.
We bang.
We boom.
Boom against the doom,
That’s not in the room.
But We
Must win.
So We
Do win.
One win
At a time.
So…
I am a giant and a giant killer.
I am the mountain and the moon.
I smash it down.
I raise it up.
I sculpt it
Into
Something
Beautiful.
All of Her Poetry, Still
I didn’t know Mary was dead.
(No one told me about Maya, either) A blank
Pause when I read about it online.
Poets don’t go out when we die.
(We live with Death while we live.)
We stay home.
Which is why when Walt said to me
(The other day)
That to die is luckier than I suppose,
I believed him.
Y Nt Rn?
Where’s your ambition?
Why are the lights still out on tomorrow?
Where is the New Home?
The New Friends?
The New Love?
Where’s the Money?
Why is life OTW?
Life is rn not otw.
Why is life always otw w u?
Y nt rn?
Y otw?
Y s lf otw,
Wynn,
lf
s
rn?
“Life is not about what you’re going to do.
Life is about what you’re doing, right now.
So, what are you doing right now?"
Beats, Slams, and Yes, I Am(s)
We call it poetry for the ear,
But that’s not where we hear it.
We call it poetry out loud,
But it’s an inside job.
We call the meter measured.
We call the measure divine.
I call the words: All Words!
Sweet- Sweet -Tweet-Tweet
Twitter-Tatter- Beat-Complete.
A feat- of the feet- of the stomp,
Of the never pomp- of the heart.
We call it poetry for the ear,
But that’s not where we hear it.