So you’re waiting for someone to die
You’ve had the chance to say goodbye
Have sat at the bed and had your cry
Begged a god and wondered why
Asked the person to live, to try
Facing it you no longer lie
They’re basically.
Already.
Dead.
You laugh in the next room
While they lay unmoving
Unspeaking
But technically still there.
You really do care.
But in the end.
You just.
Move onto the other edge of the limbo
Try to have a life as theirs end
And you never say it aloud.
But finally
The tunnel gets darker
as you travel down
and your hopes and dreams
are further away.
The light that started at your back
cheering you forward
sending you with waves
of heat and heart
fade as you saunter on.
Soon you are alone
in almost dark
and almost cold
and not quite there.
Yet,
within the darkening is a narrowing
and focusing of direction.
Within the tunnel branching paths
do not exist for you.
A promise made at the beginning
that the end would bring relief.
That you would see the world correctly.
So only hurry down the path
set in stone and worn by eons.
Hurry down the trail
with purpose aiming true
as years before
and decades future will be wont to do.
Reach the end in comprehension
not an exit but a wall.
Life a journey worth the taking
not for finish but the sides
filled with offshoots,
dripping wonders mighty,
textured in life.
The wall is the constant
the hitting of it the reckoning
the stopping the inevitable.
During the day
the dandelions reign supreme
over the blades,
over the soil.
But at night they wilt in shame.
They blind the bugs
that crawl beneath
that bend and strive
still out of reach.
They primp and sway
under breeze’s praise.
But only feature at the sun’s say.
They mock the tired hand
that cuts them down
or bids them go.
On and on
they grow and grow
no mortal thing
acknowledged foe.
But solely in the daytime though.
For at night,
at night they feel their worth.
Little blemishes upon a small plot of earth.
Cowering under the fallow sky.
Filled with stars’ mirthful cries.
For shame,
for shame what lusterless stalks.
How dare they look up
from their tasteless rock?
For shame,
for shame such insolence.
Pretenders, false glimmers
lack in beauty as penitence.
The dandelions weep echoing
for shame,
for shame that’s in our name
we did not truly see
the vast field
above our heads
filled with that which
we can never be.
Shame ages them gray
beyond shine,
beyond prime.
Until all they could do
was flee
into the next generation.
Never escaping the censure
of those who laughed
at their simple nature.
What is the rope that tethers me to this orb
hurtling through space in the dark moments
of the night that breeds existential crises?
No ignorance of the abyss
that is acknowledgment of pure chance
acting on what used to be will.
Alone,
in the quietest moments
my mind is the loudest
screaming that it can feel
reality thinning,
the ties loosening.
At any moment the tapestry could fray
leaving a chaos of meaningless threads.
Any moment the world will agree
that I am pointless,
driven by happenstance,
and release me from gravity
Into nothingness.
So I must lay perfectly still,
make no error,
and pray the stars don’t notice.
I’ve heard love is like a dress.
Try it on,
Decide it doesn’t flatter,
Discard it.
Except,
Love is absolutely nothing like a dress.
It can’t be custom ordered.
It doesn’t come in sizes,
It doesn’t come in styles,
In colors
In separates
In layers.
Well, maybe in layers.
But there is absolutely no way love comes in patterns.
There is just no way love is a gaudy floral.
I look back on when I was but a bud
Recalling how I longed simply to bloom.
Released, I smiled along with the sun
Fully nourished by my ancestors’ tomb.
Promenading in my virgin colors,
Still free to stretch my roots and charm the world.
No single flirting bee did I prefer.
Growing long in the leaf because I could.
But now the frost is creeping down my spine.
My time basking in the light at an end
Petals fall – as if a flower could cry.
The weight of winter forces me to bend.
Wrinkled, I regret wasting the season.
I know next year I will not rise again.
In answer to “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in the wood and I
I took the one deep rutted
by traveler’s feet.
A time tried trail
vetted by those that came before.
I aimed for the town
those consistent padders’ own
and made record time
as they must when coming
to the place that is mine.
I took tea and broke bread
and all things that come
with taking the normed path.
I conducted my business
and profited us both
and left with a smile
to plod back home.
I thought on a tale
shared over our cups
of a daring man who tried
a different path and died.
Well, at least that was the gossip
and it made as much sense as not.
If his aim was mine
then he failed in that
and if he aimed
where I headed back
then he missed as well
and if he wanted a different place
then that’s his chance
he took with fate.
Instead, I chose to travel twice
along the path
along my life
and headed back to home I go
along the path of safety known.
The shot is just the beginning
As the world life traveled
Flashes across the mind
And neurons fire in desperate red.
Claret pools. Mind bogs.
Brain makes a desperate plea.
Our Father,
My father will bemoan
And curse the god
He swears against existing.
Holy Mary,
My mother will weep.
I have failed her.
I have lost the world’s game.
Choking on Jesus wine
My battle cry comes out
Only a whimper.
Amen. Amen. The End.
I believe in Dandelions.
They are freckles of the earth
Who only want to reach a sage stage
And bring you luck.
Not acne,
Made worse by picking.
I believe in Queen Anne’s lace.
I believe you can’t even really see the little black bugs
Unless you look for them.
I believe Thistles are prickly
Because they have been hurt before.
Someone told them they were pretty
But abandoned them for something with petals.
I believe wild Violets blush
Because they know they are whores;
Ashamed,
The try to hide their parentage
Behind deceptive good looks.
Pretty enough for you to pick
But not worth bringing home to meet the family.
I believe in weeds
Far more than the vanity
In a hybrid rose.
The Proud Dandelion 
Hangers
Inspired by “The Hollow Men” by T S Eliot.
I.
They are pedestal women
They are the mannequins
Posing together
Faces with no eyes. Alas!
Their mummied senses when
They gather together
Are dull and rotting
As bulbs in constant permafrost.
Their bodies with heads lost
For aesthetics.
Form without point, frame without picture,
Will-less hands, Shell without Ghost;
Those who inhabit
With disinhibition, life’s other kingdom
Remember them—if you care to—not as being,
Vapid husks, but instead
As pedestal women
Hanger women.
II.
Lives you dare not picture
In life’s dream kingdom;
They run amok:
There, the wits are
Knives without a whetstone
There, are shiny things
And thoughts are
Quieter than the wind weaker
Than an ant’s sigh.
Let us all draw away
From life’s dream kingdom
Let us not wear
The vain guises
No, no no no
Not live by others’ signals
In the gleaming kingdom.
III.
This is the false land
The vacuous land
Here the gold images
Are gathered, here they waste
Until the last moon is cast
And the future is past.
It is like this
In life’s other kingdom
Never alone
But a spiritless mass
Quivering with potential
That seeps away
Unused through seamless shrouds.
IV.
Their minds are not here
There are no minds here
In this maze of linoleum
They are hangers
In this post operation nose of a kingdom
In this meeting place
Young pods group together
And avoid speech
Of any weight more than a pebble
Agencyless, jointless
Prefrontal cortexless,
In life’s smudgeless kingdom
The realm
Of pedestal women.
V.
Sometimes fate
Is really just cross gartered socks
Between place
And thought
Is silence
Hold your peace
Between mouth
And chord
Is inactivity
Speechless
Between brain
And mind
Is care
Less and free
Care
Less and free
This is the way the world ends
They don’t even know how to regret
They have no words to regret
Only an animal’s whimper.
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Posted in Poetry, Social Commentary
Tagged hanger, mannequin