| Poems: 270317 - March 27th, 2017 |
|
| Robert Morpheal (morpheal@yahoo.com) |
2017/03/27 21:19 |
270317A
-----------
What it means to be discarded
in that land of the misfit toys,
where no one wanted to play with you
so you sat on the shelf watching
with a kind of relieved envy
as to various goings on.
A tangle of arms and legs
that you struggled to sort out
before the one would trip the other
sharing out skinned knees and blame
having learned a kind of concrete poetry
in terms of leaving temporary inscriptions.
It was about learning rudiments of pain
the way musicians have to learn music
never certain which key to play a life in
and with what types of emphasis.
One does not think much about sustenato
when one is that young.
Stinging antiseptic bringing relief,
to the patchwork of torn and reddened skin.
A way of getting unwanted attention,
to the fact of having tried and failed
while learning what it is to fall in
into one or another secret maneuver.
We were always playing soldiers,
until the streetlights came on.
It was as if we knew of nothing else
between episodes of playing house
until the enemy returned as it always did
to break down the walls.
-----------------------------
270317B
-----------
I gave up on you,
because there is too much else
that I am too afraid to lose.
It was at the beginning
of one of those chapters
that threatens to be a last word.
I have begun to seriously wonder
if I could withstand anything
intruding into habitual solitude.
It is always easier to mourn
what one never actually had any of
than to risk other types of loss.
I could pretend you were seasonal
appearance and disappearance,
into blanked out dread and cold.
Another symbol of space I cannot fill
with various customary placeholders
serving as dressings to the usual wounds.
I am certain you wanted something special,
and that I had nothing to offer
beyond the bondage to my discontent.
There is a sense of freedom
as to not being tied to any lifelines
that allows thinking about cutting loose.
It is not that one intends to do it,
but instead the simple fact that one can
without inflicting it on someone else.
---------------------------------------------
270317C
-----------
I could have imagined you
on various desirable landscapes
that I had always longed for.
Instead I chose to put you out of my mind
as something equally as distant as those,
and living in some similarly forbidden land.
The easiest way to prepare myself
for the usual disappointments
that footnote any such intrusive episodes.
A lifetime of learning what to expect
in each always too similar instance
as to what comes after what came before.
Easier to remain strangers
so as to avoid crossing anyone else’s lines
in all those impositions of conflicted purpose.
Once I lived in illusions of choice,
but found it easier to give those up
in favor of illusions of their opposite.
Patterns of emotional loss have a consistency
that one eventually learns not to disturb,
making it a safer sort of preference.
I rarely feel like venturing out anymore
beyond the edges of myself
where there is nothing that you really want.
-----------------------------------------------------
270317D
-----------
No one hears my voice anymore
and why would they really want to,
knowing that I do not spend enough money.
Most people do not really seem to listen
unless one pays them something
so as to make them pay attention.
At least making them feign paying attention,
as there is very little interest given to anything
unless you make a much larger investment.
It is too hard nowadays for a poor poet
to find the right ways to buy an audience
unless risking quick deaths by bad habits.
Once upon a time a four color litho was enough
to gain a kind of superficial and entitled approval
that most people found to be sufficient.
It served to display a certain type of wealth,
which was taken as synonymous with success
regardless of what slept between the covers.
At least that is as far as it goes in the flesh,
and you can stand at any crossroads forever
left to staring at the discarded surplus of souls.
Nothing is ever as cheap as it seems,
but everything ends up being cheapened
until you are left scraping for any further value.
I used to go out to what I thought was happening
and dreamt of meeting the right girl
only to realize I was not what she wanted.
Somehow that too served as the price of words
and in that respect my lines could have been rosaries
strung along in novenas to one or another devil.
-----------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|