Not about writing but....

one-guy-with-a-marker

Lazarus

 

Come Laz, come sit up,

have a chat these last minutes 

before the sand demands a re-turn.

 

Remember that day we played 

down the shadowed sideway of your house?

You were six and I five; your quietly shaking hands

lifted my blue dress up to my waist 

then dropped small stones 

onto my yellow panties as you sang, 

‘When Johnny comes Marching Home.’

Come Laz, just for a time,

sit up and talk some more

about the summers by the ocean;

remember the pier at Ocean Grove

you were fifteen and we dove together, 

your hand slipped, touched my breast, 

we kissed that evening as we sat 

on the grass between your father’s tent

and mine, the stars shone above and your brother

threw water over us.

Please Laz, stand up for me.

I want to hear your voice, I remember

the way you screamed and laughed 

all those summers ago; when I got lost in Spooky Forest

you were the one who found me, your voice

called out my name, I was able to follow it 

out of the maze and there you stood 

smiling in the dusk, my father

stood behind you with a torch and a worried look.

I know our lives have separated since then

but ancient nights and days still have their place

and even though our adult minds pretend importance

those memories are as dear to me now

as when they first happened.

Please Laz, life has been cruel to me;

two children lost to drugs

and a third in prison,

but the memories of you have held me

through some of those dark evenings.

Please Laz, my beauty is long gone

and my skin, once smooth,

now wrinkles like the ocean;you are always in my background,

a hope, a possibility - the way to combat age

is with memory and yearning. 

Laz, I am lost;

I want to hear your voice

calling me out again.

Bury me Standing

 When I die

 bury me standing;

 don’t lay me flat,

 stretched out on my back

 staring up into the night sky,

 stand me straight,

 plant me upright,

 plant me like a tree,

 bury me with dignity.

 When I die

 bury me standing,

 make sure you put boots

 on my naked feet

 so I cannot feel

 the worms feasting,

 so as I stand I can see

 what is happening around me.

 I’ll be dead for a long, long time

 so stand me upright

 not flat, like stinking meat

 on a cold, hard slab

 waiting for butcher Fate,

 with his bloodied apron

 to slice me asunder.

 Stand me up,

 push my lips into a grin,

 stick a pen in my hand,

 paper in the other;

 let me stand facing sunrise

 with a thousand new poems

 ready for the capture.

 When I die

 don’t listen to the undertaker

 stand me straight,

 drop me down deep;

 let me face the future

 as if I was still in the wings

 waiting for my cue

 to make another grand entry.

The Foggy Day Made New

The mist spread, like a parent’s warning,
upon the grass; grass so wet
it grasped the feet as they stepped, making the mind -
in the silence of that morning – a god
strolling
upon the stuff of dreams made real.

The mist caught thoughts and turned them
inside to out to right to left or worse, shrunk them,
like a twisty’s packet placed in the oven, so everything,
even memories
fell away;
rabbits down the hole.


The mist
waited
for the sun to act as a sponge
and soak it up: I waited too,
for that distant giver
so that the world might fall back into place.

Farewell Geppetto

The old man hardly dents the bed; bone-whistling chest
sinks into a sea-green song's lulling depths.
The candle light flickers, casts encroaching shadows
upon the ceiling and wall as if friends have gathered
to the final farewell. The middle of night meets the dawn
with a fork – fool's choice offered at the last.

Pinocchio holds the withered hand
that once gently held him; strokes
the knuckles and nails, studies the elongated fingers
that carved him into existence; feels
pain as his wood atomically realigns into flesh -
regrets his choices made along the way that moved
him away from the voice and touch of Geppetto.

'Father,' he whispers into the galaxy of the old man's
ear - sees how the hair that catches his sound
has turned grey, 'Strings force steps along preordained
ways but at least they offer an uncomplicated path.

'Father, existence is easy as a tree
or a log to be burnt, it is life's choices
that unnerve me,' he whispers at three
in the morning. The old man's chest creaks
like an old galley ship...then moves no more.

Pinocchio knows no prayers to say over the body
and cannot see the spirit leave the flesh, but feels
tears slide down cheeks that once sprouted leaves
instead; cries into the dark 'Geppetto is dead! Now
I understand what it is to be alive, Geppetto is dead!’

Pinocchio's toes wriggle to break past the floorboards
and enter the earth – seek sustenance in a connection
to everything his long-ago dreams made him abandon.

Thus Spoke... (an edit)

There is more to the action
than the way a tongue moves; the way it
approaches or retreats from teeth, or the manner
of lips shaping themselves first as sly, sunlit maid
and then as aching, grieving mother.

The chords thrum as breath weaves a wand
and turns into sound - the voice in the dark
catches light eyes cannot see.
Pause and listen to the tone; never the words,
the words
are the illusion, the packaging.

Imagine the world
as small as a heartbeat, as large
as a mind.

In the room, or out and about,
several companions lay down
or move around, breathe
their thoughts into a conversation
that is let loose…


It travels into a space
none of them expected -

not even the finest of poets -


the way a dance becomes something so much more
than a body moving from place to place.

Thus Spoke…

There is more to this

than the way our tongue moves; the way it

approaches or retreats from teeth, or our lips

shaping themselves first as sly, sunlit maid

and then as aching mother.

 The chords thrum as breath weaves a wand

and turns into sound - the voice in the dark

catches light eyes cannot see

if we but pause and listen

to the tone; never the words,

the words

are the illusion, the packaging.

In the room, or out and about,

we several lay ourselves down or move around

and breathe - imagine the world

as small as our heartbeats, as large

as our minds

and we let loose a conversation…

It travels into a space

none of us expected -

not even the finest of poets -

the way a dance becomes something so much more

than a body moving from place to place.