Pub Questions For God
I’ve oft wondered in the clam pockets
And dingy dungeons of sleepless sleep,
If paradise is simply an inverted dream,
Spun wild from gold
Now wintered, spent, ingloriously old,
Stranded in quarters reserved to gally
Our spider sly upwards tremble of a crawl
Towards the waking and winking stars,
Where truth condemns her knowing to obfuscated riddles,
That God never intended to give ear to?
The hobbling old man raises a grail to desert lips,
And drinks up to long ago sailed away ghosts,
That parted through time’s
Charmed enigmatic mists,
Only to sink
And never to float.
And he sings off key like a paranoid ambulance scream,
Breathless chaser after chaser,
In between melodic snatches of amnesiac songs,
Sourced from a creaky film reel mind
Feebly roaring through its tentative loop with furious steam,
That always slithers a simmering glimmer
Of head scratching cosmogonal showers,
As his lost echo pulses, dies down and bleeds,
While he hunts through the unearthed glow
Of a dream’s stubborn playful light
Now dug up from a fog shrouded brain,
As it warps, darts and weaves,
Through bent projections,
And dead transmissions
From unswept nebula’s torchlight gleam,
As he asks aloud to God with blithe uncertainty;
“Perhaps paradise is an undreamed dream,
That never was,
Or was it
A dream undreamed,
That bulwarked her beauties
In tedium’s sobered dried eyes,
Where the start of our dreams
Begin at the end of our lives?”
And he drowns deep in scotch,
And whistles a tune,
That charges the air
With hope and with ruin.
And everyone stares
As if this were true;
For if life is a lie,
Then are we one too?
To My Prose Friends Here And The Prose Team
Hi all!
I don’t know how to tag names.
I just wanted to send a very sincere thanks, with hulking heaps of gratitude to all who have taken the time to read my poems, whether you commented, liked them or didn’t.
Just knowing some fellow poets read them really blessed me.
I want to thank Prose and their incredible team for their literary platform, as it has opened me up to some truly daring, cutting edge and inspiring poets. I was also speechless that “Beguiling Eye” was chosen and read on your channel! I shared that with my family and friends like a kid at Christmas.
I’ve completed my first book, 50 poems chosen out of 80, and it’s being professionally formatted by an author friend.
I have zero idea on the next step thereafter:
Self publish or shop it to UK Publishers? (Comments are welcomed on this one ☺️)
Either way, I believe in it, am blessed and grateful that the good Lord gave me the desire and ability to express my heart through words.
If you happen to read this, I encourage you to realize that Prose has offered a home to us; a literary dorm, think tank, social club or the equivalent of hanging with good people, enjoying what’s on our minds and hearts, where no one is too weird or too normal, but everyone can come as they are.
No stuffy pretension, just a wonderfully raw place that has afforded me the kind luxury of excitedly sharing my poems, and the thrill of discovering brilliant poets that inspire me (and I can’t tag, as I don’t know how, but you all are terrific.)
Prose and the community has been a profoundly wonderful find for me, and has encouraged me to move forward in my book, and believing more in myself.
OK, my morning cup of coffee is wanting to prattle me on, but anyhow, a huge thanks.
Be well, be blessed, be happy and never give up.
LDW
xx
A Good Mother
I close my eyes, and I see her.
In my mind’s eye,
My mother looks many years younger than when she passed away.
I delight at seeing her glowing face and her gorgeous blond hair.
She is smiling.
She exudes happiness and peace.
I am fascinated by the brightness in her eyes.
It’s evident that Spirit inhabits her being; I see it resting in her gaze.
I know that her old appearance, brought by years of deception and hardship
Was only hiding the truth,
I know that behind her tired face,
Her etheric form always shined strongly.
I sit with her quietly, and her presence feels new and unfaded.
We do not speak words, but our hearts understand our sacred dialogue.
In silence, we hold hands
Moved by grace as profoundly as we allow our core to be touched,
In silence, we sit
Embraced by this moment
In eternity.
Of A Life Lived In Reverse
Do not say at my funeral,
He could not cradle
The cross of his hearthstone carriage
By way of phantom limbs,
Though succored by hyssop,
And lulled by cherubim hymns.
And do not compound goodbyes,
Wrapped in paper thin sighs,
Stretched tall and long,
As far as heaven is wide,
Besieging ears,
With a warship of cries,
Deaf to the wreckage,
Whispers and lies.
For come what will
And come what may,
The sleep of youth
Will wake one day.
And may I most cordially
Be unearthed to the upturned,
Or upturned to the unearthed,
To scrabble for the amnesia
Of a life lived in reverse.
For the passage rites burn,
With a most ardent greed,
And time must collapse,
To bury her grief.
So do not say at my funeral,
He sung damaged psalms
With rote and reedy
Courting spells
To salute the gilded age;
But rather that
His heart locked cold
Behind candle box bones,
Sparked wings of gold,
Then flew away.
Lost Lament Of A Former Catholic Schoolboy
High school was,
A barren womb,
Ungainly dressed,
In mottled wounds.
Where winter’s sickness,
Slept around,
It’s fevered cage,
My burial ground.
High school was,
Choice rotting fruit,
It’s nuanced slice,
Skinned trauma blue.
But I could never,
Breathe it in,
To suckle fast,
On soot and sin.
Oh mother Mary’s
Wishing well,
Lies leagues above,
A crater’s hell.
My angel wings,
Grew scabbed
Then sore,
And halos shrank,
Fell to the floor.
Superior mother,
Buried in black,
Sheol has rung,
It wants you back.
For love is hollow,
If sprung on clod,
It’s withered roots,
Upturned to God.
Now shackled to,
These memories,
In earnest want,
And grievous need.
I might have been,
Rued royalty,
Anointed youth,
Of bitter breed.
But such never was,
Nor willed to be,
An arcade angel,
In stained glass bleed.
I dragged my heart,
In catholic guilt,
And slipped on blood,
That Jesus spilt.
For He did turn,
My frame of bone,
From gargoyle slate,
To precious stone.
Now the stride of years,
Do paint wrongs right,
For the keenest eyes
Are second sight.
color like mixed paint
simple times. spread your wings, jump into the sky.
feel the air ripple. grasp at the sunrays, breathe in the clouds.
its four oclock almost, raining outside.
dog sits by the fireplace with its head on its paws, you spill tea on your favorite rug.
keys in the bowl, like a fishbowl, warps the face on the other side.
boots by the door, two sets, two pairs. coat, coat, hat. like its meant to be
simply a dream. lettuce growing in the flowerbed, weeds and worms too.
yellow paint on your fingers, busy drawing lines in the middle of the road.
directionless. salt in your mouth and stuck in between your teeth.
buzzing on your phone, not real. you forgot the mail, its raining somewhere.
wet dirt, stars on your shoes. glasses with no eyes behind. sky.
expanded to the other side, rotating and unconscious. lightning.
night swept all the dreams under the bed, blankets up to your chin.
fell through the air, head hit the clouds. dark and light all mixed up.
fingers on my lips. quiet, no clock on the nightstand.
flowers out the window, parallel. tied like balloons on string. just wishes.
spiraling, gnawing. bones being bones, sky forgetting.
mixing paint until its all water again. lanterns in the air, sparks of light.
spilling ink
the night is tender when i think of you, a mouth of love with a wandering hand. have you loved me then? i think about that moment. the way your eyes undress me to see my most vulnerable state, i haven’t forgotten your expression. until i remember such sour words fed, placed upon my tongue by your mouth. i think of you in this way.
i’ve deprived myself of sleep since then with sick intent to mesh my days together so that the memory of you is faraway. an achievement of mine is to ruin myself completely, to destroy every part of me. i yearn for me, mourn for what was left of my soul. i ate from the palms of lovers who promised fresh fruits only to be met with rotten core. hunger overpowers the mind, how could i have cared when starved? when desperation is the only thing that filled my belly?
maybe my goal is to villainize you, to make myself forget why i ever wanted to return to a familiar comfort. you see, i could love again but the consequences are always near. they fear living without my existence, feeding upon my entirety. the poetic existence of you makes me want to run back, to kiss you again and again until i am left breathless.
why do you haunt me? i’ve tried to forget you, but every single time i fall hopelessly i am reminded of you. the way the bark of the trees curl upwards and pell from them, i think of how well you used them to ignite flames. was your goal to destroy a forest? if so, you’ve succeeded successfully in ruining me. i am nothing but smoulder that clings to the clothes of those who try their best to fight flames, yearning to be close to anyone who gives me the chance. their hands gnaw at their skin, pulling and peeling away.
please leave me alone. it’s so hard to breathe…