It finds me....

It finds me every time

No matter how

I've tired to hide

and tell myself

I've intellectually died

Sometimes...

It stalks with a knife

from front or behind,

and I am quickest

to save life

Sometimes...

It creeps upon me

all seductive oh

and it's very hard

to just say no!!

Otherwise...

It lets me think

I can lie fast...

but when I wake

It stares me in the face

Such times...

I deflect I am asleep

but goodness gracious

It converses half-dozed

and takes advantage!!

I swear for Inspiration

there is no clear

route of escape,

It must always be

here or there...

...For when I go

looking in the mirror

and among the silverware

wondering what would

make It a great date...?

Or how It and I could

fake an effortless

impression out

among that Creative

population....?

Then....!

It's gone... off...

unabashed a-courting

and I can SEE IT

....Elsewhere

08.07.2022

Your Writing Habit challenge @Envoia_Emi

I saw beauty

once

in the center

of an onion

I had sliced

once

for the first time

in a dull life

I cried out at

once

for my want of

understanding

07.31.22

Beauty? challenge @Silly_and_Sweet

Don't expect it to be new...

you might lay a self nude,

circle a flaw or run a bind...

Bring erasers of all kinds...

a rhythm will present itself

listening in for what is left...

Surely you've got it in you

if only my friend-in-write

you'll undamit & begin it!

07.09.2022

How to: Poetry challenge @Finder

(*I realize of course the thing is not what it sounds, but here is where I stick my pick:)

He was climbing and sweating. Funny how going up the escalator takes so much effort. He’d taken all the right steps, all the proper precautionary measures… He knew how to outfit; how to fit in; how to stand out just enough to the established yet speculative eye.

But after all these years, today for some reason, having come this far, come all this way, almost to the very, very pinnacle… After having bowed so very low, and groveled down enough for such and such esteem, he now felt a growing discomfort around the collar.

Perhaps his heart was no longer in it? The win: what did it mean? His pulse raced still. A wave of nausea and heat spread across his ample mid drift and a once stalwart chest. A farce suddenly dawned on him in the bright spotlights closing in. Just a few more minutes…

To what? Confusion was setting in. A meeting, yes of course it was! A very important meeting. He needed to prop himself up on all the fragile lines within the building he himself had been so busy building on the back of this who and that deal, and deed, and whatnot receipt.

These stairs suddenly seemed to have so many zombied hands mechanically reaching… from his finely tailored pantleg, to his underpants; from shirtsleeve to his ears… a hissing sound so much like a big balloon deflating, dirigible ...and then he was falling back, backwards, on his bottom, to the very bottom, and someone was stripping him of his Tissot Powermatic and his keys, his last shirt, and now thumbing through his leather wallet. Lies upon lies were cuing in suit, barebreasted as he was, now.

Lights were fading fast. He whispered hoarsely; he had to “make it up to…” but he was in for quite a shock. He might not make it at all... The doors of Heaven of course are closed to the camel’s obsequious cousin who carries more than two humps of baggage.

He’d have to tell the truth. Face the facts. Just once would be enough, to himself, to save this life… Stand clear! And in his darkness, it was soundlessly recognized, the Defibrillator only works sometimes...

06.29.2022

Pick a Word & Pick it Apart Challenge @Last

What is the difference

in this impartial

existence?

THE Great Equalizer--

whose blade's

wiped

by the next

slice of Life,

so distinct

as to be trivial

in distinction--

is not burdened

as judge nor verdict!

Like a fork.

Ahh but the

Great Connoisseur

has distinguished

and in tasting

every flavor of

mortality

brings

all Materia

to a classified

extinction.

06.27.2022

Equality vs. Different Challenge @Uschibear

It must have been,

what happened again

the repeat...

The on the off

and reprieve

the relief...

that haunts

tangibly

the gray halls

amassed within

...the cathedral

of the cranium

and stations

we replay...

the crosshairs

pulling

like triggers

on the brain.

12.28.2020

How I Learned to Remember challenge @Last

I did not expect a visit from Ebenezer.

It was surely my due. I had turned as jaded as the Grinch. Perhaps greener, though the envy was so subcutaneous as to escape any social scrutiny. I was, afterall, quite nice, but... I was 29.

A precarious age, an idiotic one I would say. Old enough to have tasted some successes... To have felt the weight of “potential!” ...And too young to appreciate either. I was, in short, an ingrate. Others had achieved more, sooner, or on time... as if Life were linear! There was nothing to celebrate, in my mind. Winter was a particularly dark time.

By all accounts, I was doing fine. Like more than half of everybody else, I’d guess. I had no appreciable income, no stable job. The idea of a “career” was an abstract slogan for a pamphleteer. I had no children, aged 9 or 10, like so many of my so-called friends. The prospects of it, like marriage, indefinitely shelved. Holidays are a time for family folk to get together, and for the rest of us to get over as soon as possible, was what I subconsciously felt.

I suppose you’d say I needed to get over myself. The rim of my glasses had gotten too thick. I was dull. Tired. And sick. I had little perspective, and was losing even this. I nursed my perceived inadequacy, bit by bit, making everything in my life bland, like food for an invalid.

And so I layed me down to sleep Christmas Eve, with the contemptous outlook of another day “off.” Perhaps I was a little more pissed than usual. I had disagreed with myself with a larger dose of disgust. In anycase, I slept. The bored sleep well even when awake.

I got up, showered, got dressed in my usual drab secretarial best. I poured a tasteless breakfast blend, from the autodrip I had predictably pre-set, into my travel mug where it stays hot half the day. Coffee is a bandaid for many things besides physical fatigue. It also remedies conversational awkwardness and social debility. Like the out-of-vogue cigarette-break, it makes one look smart, and busy. I gathered my briefcase and office homework, my overcoat and matching umbrella, just in case. I had five- or ten-minutes to spare, but I hate to be late.

I walk to work, a thing which aggrevates, for embarassing lack of transport. But today was different. As I stepped through the door of my rental unit 9A, a chill swept my face. A pleasing thrill that tousled the hair of an innocent. A child who still believed in a better today stirred. Of course I was grown up, and was about to write it off as sniffling sentimentalism, but I felt... Taller. I realized I was holding my head up. It sounds so silly in retrospect.

I was holding my head up, like an infant babe, sticking out its neck. The world was a strange new place, with much less concrete... Glittery and picture postcard, even in the shadowy nooks. The path that I thought had been so streamlined, suddenly wasn’t as narrow. It sounds all too obvious, but in the moment I was shocked. And all the more appalled when my unwatched feet suddenly walked another way. The long way around. That scenic route, filled with family vingettes, wafting fireplace scents, fantasies and window displays.

“I will be to work late!” I told my former self... but then vestiges of pragmatism recalled that there were five - ten minutes to spare. You see how confused I was. Especially when I sensed something special in the air about me, like the ringing of a bell. Holding my head high, people said, “Hi” and smiled. They seemed shinier, and taking their time. Ornamented. I saw someone sipping a cup of steaming coffee, and remembered about mine. I took a sip automatically, just to clear the morning fog. And it was... delicious! Spectaluous. Devine. I can’t explain it. I was stupified. It was, like I’d said, just the same stupid coffee I buy out of habit all the time...

But in this moment, it was a little party in a mug. My face lightened ten years, maybe twenty. You see how attached I was to my numbers... I had been carrying on as if a middle-aged bodybag. I saw people of forty, fifty, perhaps even well-kept sixty, stepping sprightly along in their daily affairs... They were celebrating something, something in the now. They walked arm in arm, intimate. In pantomime they were wishing each other well. I couldn’t of course hear what they said. I took pleasure in their enjoyment. Damn it, I haven’t done that for a very, very long time.

I got to the office building feeling fine. I even liked my reflection in the big glass door of the skyrise. There was a colour rising in my newspaper cheeks. I took the stairs. I thought to myself, “There IS something to be said for exercise.” Seven flights and I was brightening all the while. It wasn’t just the tinsel in the hall. The security guard seemed a little disconcerted at my sight, but I gave such a pearly smile that it was as disarming as an extravagant tip.

I even (imagine this!) started humming a tune I’d heard from childhood. Snow and sleighbells. I’m sure I messed up the lyrics, but not the cheery message. And so elated, I arrived at the office door to find it thoroughly locked. Huh, just my luck!

I was dumbfounded for a moment more... till it hit me like an organ. The sign on the door, simplified as it was, written by my own hand: Closed for the Holidays.

This really was my day off.

12.22.2020

Happy Holidays Challenge @LexiCon

I never knew you

how I wanted to

you’ll say that’s cause I

never knew me and

you’ll offer a cold

logical critique...

handshakes... so to speak

as you wave a palm

magnaminously

to the open door

with its double-hinge

...keeping the outside

out, the inside in

behind the newspaper

and the coffee rim

the war is brewing

as turmoil within

to better ourselves

and the sty beneath,

but just what is sin?

putting on our best

collective chagrin

one leg at a time

it’s hard to extract...

where we might have been

this is not a tear!

in our underwear

the fabric of our lies

is much stronger than

what has disappeared...

faith, trust, years, but enough

of this rolling down

with underbelly

spilling on the chin

I was meant to stand

tall against your wall

where I measured up

always below the

arch of your eyebrow

the spectacles of

the past have caught up

with me at long last

and I am ready

to level my self

here in the cave of

misunderstandings

out of which my breath

is fast escaping...

10.03.2020

Be Vulnerable challenge @spurtsofdark

To the Dead

and not forgotten

to the ones gone

still and

unforgiven!

To the Former

and the ladder

to the rungs

of heaven

over which

we hang

our hearts

unrequited

and clatter

our naked soles

over hellish coal

quenched with

blood gone cold!

this is the open letter

the penknife

that rips

my envelope

of Life

and bids me

hearken!

to lick the seal

with living tears

and remember,

remember dear!

09.21.2020

To remember loved ones challenge @7ERSUS

Two on a bus bench compared notes... They had some valuables. One had some coins; the other a metal cross. Neither had enough. The former decided to prostitute; the latter to pawn the pendant. They both took a loss, but satisfied that they did what they could, they both boarded the bus in good faith that at some point they would get off.

09.17.2020

Ask an Atheist Day Round Two challenge @Harry_Situation