Sepia Tones

Is it wrong to fantasize
about the mundane,
the boring stillness of
absolute nothingness,
amid the swirling madness
of reality?

I don’t think so.
Especially when madness
seems commonplace and
stillness and calmness are
the foreigners in a strange
land.

I long for beige,
manilla,
khaki,
sepia;
away from the burning Reds and Blues
in constant flashing neon.

With age comes an appreciation
for the slowness of things,
glacial movement being profoundly
more interesting than sudden changes
in direction and course.
Look
at
that
paint
dry…

I do like the occasional
fireworks display, in the distance,
the explosions so distant they are
merely popping sounds, but
up close; I’m frayed to my last.
The rumble is an arrogance of sound
I can no longer tolerate.

Calmness absent mediocrity,
Stillness absent rage,
Passion absent jealousy,
Nothingness absent vacancy.
Space, empty,
containing multitudes.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: https://www.saatchiart.com/print/Photography-Route-66-Grants-Cafe-Neon-2012-Sepia/888771/3051890/view

Nearsighted

I have been near-sighted
my entire life.
For the earliest parts
of my life though, it wasn’t
readily apparent that I needed
glasses.
So I squinted my eyes and contorted
my face in squished up circles
to try and see what was in front of me.

This contortionist type way of seeing
the World; a blurry, fuzzy sort of
amorphous shaped place;
gave me a certain perspective.
I either had to be hyper focused on what
I was trying to see, or I would nearly
completely ignore it since I couldn’t see it.

Sometimes I could just make out
what it was I was supposed to be seeing,
other times, when the squint was failing,
I just had to give up and let it be whatever it
was without ever knowing for sure what
I saw.

I can only see to my knees
when I look down.
My feet are a little blurry.
I can almost see to the ends of
my fingers, but have to adjust it
in and out to see it clearly.
Yet, it didn’t bother me really.

I just let the World out of my field of
vision be the World that it was, without
my bearing witness to it.
There was something about it that became
philosophical, that I could only control
what I could see, and what I couldn’t see
was simply out of my control.

With my eyeglasses on,
I see too much.
Too much I don’t like.
Too much that causes pain.
Too much definition in the blurry,
gray areas, that never bothered me before.

In the blurry World,
there’s a blissful ignorance;
a sort of dumbed-down, muted,
fuzzy edged beauty to things,
that when brought into focus
seem to lose their unfocused luster.

But once you see the World,
and all its hard blemishes, scars,
and sharp edges,
you can’t
unsee
it.

Another Turn in the Ring

Another tussle with
the words I want to
use to convey my thoughts
onto this wretched blank
page; this canvas of
pugilistic wordplay.

Do I say fear?
Or Terror?
Do I devote myself to complete honesty here?
Or do I withhold some shred of truth?
Do I say I am sad?
Or Disappointed?

It’s a bare-knuckle brawl
on the tarps,
blood spraying from busted
lips and open cuts around the eyes,
as the crowd yawns.

A Left,
No! A Right!
Another Right!
A Left hand lead!
But the shadow on the wall,
still steady on its feet.
My feet?

Provocative or alluring?
Sexy or erotic?
Complacent or resigned?
Domestic or Imported?
Reeling around the ring,
in pointless pitched punches.

I want to express how
worried I am, with…things…
the world…
the politics…
but the boxer in me,
just wants to brawl endlessly
with the right words.

Because I don’t know
what to say,
and I don’t know how
to say it.

The Ruthless Country

The ruthless country,
where nothing seems to grow
but disillusionment and
a lingering mélange of tragedies,
where good ideas find no
fertile soil, and bad ideas
blight the dirt.

A pitch-dark patch
of corrupted mud,
mixed with treasonous bones
and phony martyrs blood,
topsoil for lies,
and mulched with grease.

Nothing grows in the ruthless country,
barren wastes, pot marked with
foxholes and rusting barbed wire,
lonely winds swirl, stirring the
shadowy soil into clouds of
conspiracy.

The rot of the ruthless country.
A moldy odor, fogging the senses,
blinding the eyes with the stench,
burning the nostrils, and clogging
the ears, wretched and wafting
decomposition.

The ruthless country,
has no patriots,
no memorials to false prophets,
no valued treasures of a lauded
history,
only dirt and dust,
muddied, sullied,
and ungiving.

The Ruthless Country,
begging for the soil to be turned,
the muck re-mired;
but redemption cannot be
grown there,
it’s ruthless.

Sláinte!

An Irish Toast,
that I’ve made up today,
for the festivities and
merriment intended to
paint the town Green
from stem to stern,
from port to aft.

An Irish Toast,
said with a smirk,
a wink and a hearty
laugh, that nothing is
serious, except what’s funny.
And anything funny, is
anything we think it is.

An Irish Toast,
for those in Heaven,
we can’t raise a glass with;
for those in Hell,
we’ll see you soon,
and for those in limbo,
please pay the tab.

An Irish Toast,
for my non-Irish friends,
though you may be few,
you are a lot,
for my Irish friends,
you’re family, for shame.

An Irish Toast,
for kisses we get from
our sweethearts,
or our wives and pray
they never meet.
A toast to Love in
all it’s forms.

An Irish Toast,
for spillers of drinks,
and those with steady hands
who never spill a drop,
be keen and careful of each other,
for while the drinks may be mixed,
you should not.

An Irish Toast,
for Irish folks,
named Vlad or Sven,
Sangeetha or Miranda,
Jose or Reginold,
Maggie or Indira.

An Irish Toast,
from one human heart
to another,
wishing you the kindness
and blessings, good cheer
and love you deserve.
Or at least the one you can afford.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Sláinte!

Rise

Above the rabble,
we should rise;
beyond lowly dubious
discourse or disingenuous
diatribes, and
elevate to honorable
heights.

We should rise away from
the screaming throngs
demanding their idiotic
voices be heard, because
they are comfortable yelling
with their own, and too deaf
from their own shouting crowd to hear
anything but their own screaming.

Rise, towards lofty dreams,
and worthy goals,
together, an esprit de corps of
humanity, bonded by our desires
to be better, kinder, empathetic,
and less divisive.

The fires of Hell are hot
enough without the burning
contempt, hatred, mistrust
and denial of the truth or facts;
espoused so often and so rudely,
by fork tongued charlatans,
fanning the fires beneath our very feet.

I do not want to burn my feet,
I want to rise above the very,
burning coals of hate and
flames of lies, and cool off
in clouds of optimism and
truth.

Basking in the cool stillness and peace,
only found in those souls who recognize
our collective humanness, above
any ideology or religion, and choose
to rise with it on thermals of good.
Above the Rabble and their rabbling.

https://www.masterworksfineart.com/artists/rene-magritte/lithograph/golconde-golconda-1953-series-3/id/w-2861

Where Does it Go

“How can there be
such a deep, dark, hole,
so vast and wide, so clearly there,
yet hardly noticeable in the
middle of your forehead,” I asked.

“Hm?” said the man, “The Black Hole?”

“Yes, Sir, the black hole, smack dab
in the middle of your forehead,
sucking in all your hair, and skin,
muscle, and brain.
Yes Sir, that hole,” I said.

“I’ve had it since I was a kid.
Just one of those things I guess.
Some folks have moles or freckles,
I have a black hole in
my forehead,” said the man.

“I haven’t seen anything quite
like it,” I said.
I tore a corner of my newspaper and
gently floated it towards the hole,
it was quickly sucked in.
“Where does it go,” I asked.

“Where does what go,” asked the man.

“The black hole on your face. Where
do items go once they get sucked in,” I asked,
“Do they come out somewhere?”
I tried not to stare at the swirling infinity
furrowed across his forehead.

“This is my stop,” said the man as he stood
from his seat on the bus. I heard a faint
whooshing sound as he stepped past me,
and exited at the rear door of the bus.
I watched him as he stepped down onto the sidewalk.

A pigeon flew to close to him and was
sucked in to the black hole of his
forehead. A few lingering feathers in the air,
followed the bird into the black void.
No one else seemed to notice.
No one else seemed to care.

Worthy Luster

Worth, is a shiny thing,
or dulled and dim,
glittering and gold,
muddy and dark;
depending on ones
perspective.

How much worth,
is worth; worth,
when we don’t know
the worth of its
worth?
And usually too late.

I often cannot comprehend
my own worthiness,
or the worthiness I have
in the minds and eyes of
others.
Am I shiny and gold, or dull and dim?

The worth of these words,
hastily typed,
the first words of 2024.
Can I calculate their value,
their worth, to me,
to you?

Is there worth in merely existing
as prose on a page,
or as a background actor
playing on Broadway,
or the busker in a subway,
playing harmonica over an empty cup.

Worthy deeds,
worthy of praise,
or worthy of derision,
splattered with suspicion,
self-depreciation, and
general mistrust.

Is it worth the worry?
Is it worth the anxiety?
Shiny and gold.
Dim and dulled,
worthy of mysterious luster.

And So It Goes

And so it goes,
another year passes
us by in the blink
of an eye.
And I hardly remember
most of it.

It was a good year,
if memory serves me,
life has sort of settled
down in a good way,
and it’s all entirely
… good.

There’s no more late
nights at a bar, sipping
sorrows from whiskey,
as sexy couples twirled
across imaginary dance floors
and bartenders loved me.

No staring at pulsing neon signs,
illuminating the dark confines of
old man bars, rife with crusty
opinions and dizzying conversations
about life, religion, or politics.

Another year freed from the
shackles of intolerable loneliness
and depression.
No dark valleys of the mind,
crowded with the melancholy thoughts
of the perpetually alone.

Untroubled, but still…,
troubled with the state of the World,
race, religion, politics, sex, booze,
and all the tidbits that seems to
fill up every year.

There’s something about the past
year, something that retrospectively
seems inherently good, but I couldn’t
tell you any specifics, it was just,
a good year, like fine wine or old
cheese. And so it goes.

Meh at Best

I haven’t felt the ink
in my veins for a while,
as it were.
The urge to mash these
words onto the page,
has been, “meh” at best.

It’s okay to have a period
wherein the awesome magic
of prose seems to dwindle for
a time. Where things don’t seem
so fantastic or awe inspiring.

When things are just,
“meh”, or, “So-so”, or
just “blah”.
Manilla, milquetoast,
bland, without form
or structure.

Amebic,
a great sedentary blob,
of ennui and
laissez-faire,
curling the fingers into
mitts, rather than flying
over the keyboard with aplomb.

I get the sense that I’ve
said it before,
it’s been said before,
what ever it is that needs to be said,
has been, to whomever needed
to hear it.

Yet there’s still something,
thumping in my chest,
an irritated beating,
a thudding anxiety,
begging for my fingers,
to uncurl and unleash
their typing terrors.

But then,
“Meh”.