Oops

OK, so the poem everyday thing didn't work out. Surprise! Oh, well. Something is coming soon, though.

Days 4 and 5

I've already missed one, so I will write two today.

1.
A creaking mess invades my sleep
Lying like stone, rigid, unmoving but awake
A blank wall, unbroken until now
Silence like a deep river, shattered by a groan
Only a little like a tramp, fallen from the train
Less pathetic, but more worthy of pity
But, I do not rise to the occasion.

2.
However it may be
On and on
In and in
Inward and outward
Alone and crowded out
A universe, rattling and teeming
With a single thing

Who knows the self
Knows the rest
Who resides in knowledge
Knows how to rest
Call it what you will
Power or repose
It is a response

Day 3

Spittle in the road
Only a bit
Glinting in the fading sun
A tiny, wretched prism

Silence falls slowly in the dusk
Missing the point
And night receives
The final toast

Whisked away by new glow
Filling the wisest course
With tiny hazards
But just for a moment

Second Day

Dusty ray of sunlight
Makes a phantom reality,
Thinly veiled as truth
An open trough of shifting
Light, a seeming lucidity,
Broken streams of awaiting
Laid low by technicality,
A deranged blowing wind

A Poem A Day For 30 Days

Let's see if I can do it. Here's the first:

I lie in a stone chamber and wait
Unsure of myself
Less sure of you
Only a little convinced of the light beyond

Shadows flash across the figures on the walls
Leaving nothing behind
Giving no explanations
Barely registering with you at all

Drip, drip, drip of water, mineral rich and white
Hammers my brain
Is lost on you
A light caress of lunacy showing through a lie

From the Mouth of the River

It is from the mouth of the river that the sea takes its sustenance.

You sit at the table, cigarette in hand, drink before you, and you watch the door. In time, and in libation, nothing begins to matter to the exception of all else. There are comings and goings, conversations and arguments about less than nothing. It is the way of things. It's just you and the six billion. There are too many, you might drown in them. Closing in, they menace with yellow teeth and the sweet, tempting breath of the dying. Where does the time go?

Heading for the door, the poignancy of the scene left behind is not lost on you. Men and women, happy, enraged, sad, delirious, all sliding to their fate, slow as hell. You and the six billion. Where does the time go? The fresh air changes your direction. Suddenly, everything is fresh and clean. Now, its you who are menacing, belligerent and deadly. You see faces, repulsed, amused, fearful. Trying to become invisible, you trip on to your destination, such as it is. Rushing water sounds in your head.

Small Things

What I remember of her are the small things: The way she moved her hands, the sun in her hair, the way the hem of her dress curled up slightly. She would hold her hand over her eyes, shading out the sun, but letting the small breeze blow her bob around her ears.

"What are you doing?" She would ask, but not really expect an answer. It was a greeting, as close as she ever came to acknowledging that she needed someone else's company. We sat together often, usually during a lunch break or some such interval. I would munch the sandwich I brought, she would look around us, and comment on the people. I never saw her eat, which is curious; most relationships center, at least in a small way, around eating.

"I like that guy's hat," she would nod at the elderly gentleman with the fedora and long coat. "You should get a hat like that."

I rarely had a reply to that sort of thing. She couldn't possibly have meant it. I had seen myself in hats, and it was always ridiculous. At the time, I had long, red hair, past my shoulders. Hats just looked out of place.

"That woman is a racist," An unsubtle pronouncement, but when I looked up to see who she was talking about, I wasn't sure I could disagree. The lady did look rather disapprovingly at the interracial couple a few feet away from her. It could have been the overly-affectionate mannerisms they displayed, or the divergent skin colors. It was difficult to tell, and to point that out would be unnecessarily confrontational. I was never into an argument.

So, I let these little comments go, usually without a rejoinder of my own.

These are the things I recall, and little else. She seemed nice enough, and in the couple of months we played at a relationship, she displayed nothing abhorrent or terribly irresistible. So, finally, we simply stopped seeing each other. We didn't even say goodbye in any way. One day, she didn't show up for lunch, and I didn't go round her place that night to make love and examine her collection of novena candles again. I didn't see her again for another six months.

I was at a party. It was a rather large affair, held in a warehouse. Two friends of mine, a couple for a decade or more, were celebrating their anniversary. When they had a party, they tended to invite everyone they had ever known, so these affairs had long ago outgrown their apartment. One of them was an artist, and she liked to turn these parties into an art show as well. The floor was scattered with various heavy-looking lumps of bronze and iron, almost fearful to behold, in a Lovecraftian sort of way. The walls were littered with two-dimensional doppelgangers of them.

I was seated on a bench beneath one of the gigantic canvases, staring distractedly into a mostly-empty glass of gin. "That girl just had sex in the bathroom." She was standing a little to the left of me, gazing off into the crowd. I could see the woman she was talking about. She was the only obvious choice. The rest of the crowd in that part of the room appeared to have stopped doing anything remotely enjoyable years before.

"Her dress is wrinkled in the back, and her hair seems more accidentally disjointed than intentionally scruffy."

She looked down at me. Her hair was longer now, it was in her eyes, and I couldn't see the color of them. I didn't remember it. We smiled at each other for a moment, and she moved back off into the crowd. I never saw her again.