Mad Poetry Tuesday

These words aren't for everyone. They aren't your standard party platter fair, But the acquired taste developed over time by feeding a love and a hunger for rich, dig-in deep sounds and meaning. I can't feed the masses, dear. But I can try to feed the broken, the people who feel like they deserve a second bite at life but can't grasp it in their cavities. I can hold out my hand And the few who haven't eaten of that juicy, dripping-down-your-face purpose today, They will come pecking. And that is why this meal is served.

Sound asleep Or so I thought, Until right then when I was brought awake and shaken, Stirred. It was like cold lightning, A chilling surprise When I saw a phantasm Before my eyes. An austere spectre Gazing at me Reached into my bleary soul, Addressing and assessing all of All that was me. And in a second It fused with the all, the all of me. Part to whole, we were all, My being became synecdoche. It was like a paramour Inside me, incandescent, searching, Finding all the chinks In my soul-china. “I got that one From my mother's mother,” I told it, wearily. Years had passed, maybe twenty. It stopped looking at the pieces Shelved on my life-hutch. This ghost dug in deeper, Like a tick with pride. It grabbed the wheel. Swerving this way, Veering that, looking For all my alley cats now. It found the reigns Inside my bones And cantered toward That softer place. That space where struggle Comes to rest And in me that vision It said its prayers

Take this cup, you're going to need A little dram of courage. Because this life, it ain't Something you can slink away from, My dear. You might want to hie down to The River of Regret and Wade in your behind-the-scenes Sorrow, but that just isn't living, Is it? Turn in that badge of shame And guilt, and cast your eyes To shore. You may totter At the rocks, but you'll stand Once more. You've been burnt by a thousand Unapproving glares, but you tell them You've come from the same life-water That slistered all of us into Existence. And despite the moke-words that drubbed You in the thinking place that day And knocked your soul toward the door, You're done listening. This elision is Final, M'dear. Peel off that lowring face Winnow opinions so only the ones That heal you remain, and breathe in All the graces of the sun before The grave. Be done with everything that slues you Off your course. Wake up to Living dreams, no m

She was more of an idea Than a person, yet Her arms reached through The wrinkled pages As I was planning Her defenestration. “Don't,” she said, holding My hand steady. Her typical loquaciousness Gone in a moment - being At the rim does that. Her desperate idea-fingers Grasping, trying to stop The Dusk. I brooded over her Resistance. This story Would be knee-deep In hardship, in never-before-felt Pain. How could I put her In the middle of this Vast dystopian wastebasket And hope she clamors Out? Perhaps I could give her A companion, a slobber-filled Canine or a not-so-kindred Spirit? I could fill her days With synchronicity, with a This-leads-to-that purpose, to fight through The drawl and the drudge, The beginning. In this oneiric world, More nightmarish than The last, she would find Herself at the cusp of Her Self. First demure, red lips Parting only for candy-laced words, And then later, only To respect a humble god or command Her hunger-ridden army To live. Yes, I see the smoke

Looking down, I read the priceless pages, Someone else, sweetly, precisely, Had written their drinkable life on. And I drank in the appreciation Of her words, one sentence at a time, A good, fresh white. Sensational, the clouds were Pouring in, filling my cup,  Easing in, with a soft voice that said, "Look up!" My eyes glanced, only peeking At first, toward the sky. Those rain-bringers harnessing My irises with glee. And as if it had been there All along, the whole long while, A sparrow drifted into the Watercolor before me, soaring. It glided on the currents That were my own world, too. And we shared the view, Him up there, I, eyes lifting further now. And then the wind found itself Playing in the cottonwood's hair. And I smiled, thinking About how good it probably felt, Those wind-fingers, sifting through. 

Between the laces of her fingers There were empty spaces, places That showed what wasn't her. I'd trace the places with my own Something, wondering what made her, Her and what made I, me. I found myself on the cul-de-sac between her middle and her ring. That sexy center, lingering. I'd give up all of my inimitable Parts, to find myself in the abyme, Blending deeper into her herness, a real, Real sublime. This separation’s superfluous, Didn't you know? No one's an island, This world's an archipelago, gathering. I docked my Something all around her, Harboring individuality, docking identity, Beating to the cadence of her drum-mind-drum. I left my repugnant self in the sea, To become the protagonist of some bad noir, And leaving behind the awful miasma of me, I surrendered to becoming One with the divine resting place, her eyes. The hand rested into the Nothing places, filling, Feeling everything, everything inside. “Where do you end

What was that? "The old house, it creaks," he says as if he knows And accepts. I don't investigate. I become a ball, wrapped up in forgetting Cozy in not-knowing. Huddled in for the long ignore. These ghosts, they don't live Outside.

Sleep, that juggernaut of consciousness, Washed over me, beguiling in its way Of easing us toward the darkness. With eloquence, it bade my mind “Good evening,” and then made it so. Truncating formalities with heavy lids. Conquered, I lay there, inching inward, Feeling the wind now, the sempiternal Soul caught between two worlds, each alluring. A blur, a not-sure-where-I-am, but I know, Know this form, this intention tension, To follow or to lead him to the End. To the final story, where he will lay His pen down on the paper like eggs on land, Reptile-like, he’ll slither into nothing, as is his wont. And the air will be moist with Fresh rain, and someone alluding To meaning, and tomorrow, and Then I wake and pick up the pen. -- Mad Words List 5.1.18 Juggernaut Impetuous Truncate Allude Conquer Eloquent Mischievous Sempiternal Moist Reptile Wind Wont Inch Beguiling Allure -- I’ve often been fascinated with dreaming, with being asleep, the a