A Few Words

We’re gathered in the name of the dearly departed,
But I’ve one thing to ask before we get started.
Does anybody know where my fucking heart is?
Wherever it is, it’s just not fucking in this,
Look at her there, she’s dead and she’s finished.
Can anyone say that this isn’t retarded?
She was still going out, and still getting carded.

I’ve been asked for some words, I don’t know what my part is,
But it’s her that was asking, so I won’t beg any pardons,
As I tell you it’s shit to say, “She’s in a better place…”
While we’re all struggling, here, not to forget her face.
Is she with God now, being saved by Grace?
I could almost believe it, it sure appears
That wherever God is, he sure ain’t here
Because she’s all gone, and we’re in the clear.

Descendant

I’m not the man my father was,
I am his son, I know because
I pray for music like he prayed for rain,
We pray for strength to take the strain,
Of living as we have before,
Of making it through one day more,

I’m not the man my father is,
He’s not my fault but I am his,
I’ll break before I’ll bend an inch,
I’ve seen his hands, all scar, no stitch,
Or I thought I knew just what I’d seen,
He thought he knew just what he’d been,

I’m not the man my father is,
He’s not my hope but I am his,
He saw me break and learned to bend,
I’ll learn faster, in the end,
From knowing that it hurts to change,
From seeing that it’s worth the pain,

I’m not the son my father wanted,
I’m the one he got, I know because
He’s stronger than he was before,
He says it’s not enough just to endure,
He wants to give me something more,
He’ll know soon, I’ve already got it.

Telling

Tell me what you’ve done, and I’ll tell you who you are.
Uncover all those sins you thought you had forgot,
Still I can only ever tell who you’ve become so far.

The thing that almost happened when you got into that car
Was close enough a thing that you can hardly bear the thought.
Tell me what you fear, and I’ll tell you who you are.

Keep on with dicing and with dancing, despite the threat of war.
You could lose everything you have, even if you have a lot.
Still I can only ever tell who you’ve become so far.

The horoscopes all claim to read the future in the stars.
They say that life’s a story, and yours surely has a plot.
Tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you who you are.

All the lies and all the stories that you made up at the bar
Will never really matter even after you get caught.
Still I can only ever tell who you’ve become so far.

Despite your youth you’ve earned all of those scars.
Don’t say it wasn’t worth it, though you wish you hadn’t fought.
Tell me your regrets, and I’ll tell you who you are.
Still I can only ever tell who you’ve become so far.

The Beach

This is technically cheating, as this wasn’t written for the project.  But everything I’ve written thus far has been written with a doomed-to-fail approach, in one sitting taking no more than half an hour, with no editing or revision.  Good writing is rewriting, but I find rewriting to be so stressful that I’ve avoided it entirely in favor of maintaining my sanity.
I have recently given up on sanity and started trying to actually polish some poetry, which has considerably diminished my productivity here.  Rather than let it languish too long, I decided to post a poem I wrote in college for the one poetry class I took.  I don’t think it’s a particularly good one, but it’s still my favorite of all the poems I’ve ever written

The Beach

Say, say, say,
Do you know who I am?
I’m the dreamer walking down the beach,
Pockets full of sand.

I’ll take it all away with me,
Sand and sea and sky.
I’ll take it all away with me,
Some day before I die.

They won’t believe their open eyes
When they see it’s gone.
They won’t believe their open eyes
Just hours after dawn.

Say, say, say,
Do you know who I am?
I’m the thief who dreamed a beach away,
In pocketfuls of sand.

Wallingford Steps

Riding home after two a.m.
Through a fog of light pollution
Which reveals a brightly colored sign
That says: “Wallingford Steps”,
I imagine it to be “Walligford Steppes”
And, for a moment, smile
At the thought of an exotic landscape,
Here transposed.
What need have I for wanderlust
And faraway places, when
All the distance and foreignness
I could ever want
Lives in the place I’m riding home from,
And the place I’m riding home to?

Sonnet?

There’s water under the bridge, all right
But it’s turbulent and rising
The uneven if of my regret
Stands on the span, reprising
The leitmotifs of that last night
And I find myself despising
All the words I can’t forget
Which leave me here surmising
The person that I was before bodes ill
For the one, I hope, I can be still.

Embers

The dying fire’s light, so tenuous and faint,
Gently reaching and withdrawing, begins to ensorcell us.

This drowsy enchantment is consented but not feigned.
We curl together, and dream the warmth to be sourceless.

Breath slows, eyes blink closed, our minds begin to fade.
The fire follows us down, it may as well be sorcerous.

Our sleep is deep, our love true, we claim this as our fate.
The fairy tale ends here, without need for a wicked sorceress.

The Door

That boy, he sits in a darkened room,
with a tired, despairing attitude.
He looks into his empty hands,
He looks around, and then he stands.

“I can’t take this any more,”
he says, “I fucking won’t.”
That’s when the man steps through the door.
With the blunted end of a broken habit, he leaves
the boy, shattered, broken, on the floor.

That man, he sits in a soft cocoon
of whispered words, shared solitude.
He looks into her fearful eyes.
Her fear’s his own, that’s no surprise.

But he can’t say those few words more,
though all that’s in him knows he should.
Then the coward limps through the door.
With the jagged edge of a broken promise, he leaves
the lovers, bleeding out onto the floor.

This coward self, it nurses wounds,
slouches over unspiced food.
His eyes stay fixed upon the door,
watching, waiting, wanting more.

This is pretty raw.

Against the taste of my contempt
I grit my teeth, my jaw is clenched.
I try to savor that bitterness.
“This is youth. This is strength.”

Long ago, when I was younger,
I looked to him with awe and wonder.
His the shadow I stood under,
The gentle hands that fed my hunger.

A pack a day, and sometimes more.
I waged an endless, losing war;
Though I was older than before
My youthful words still went ignored.

One day I gave it up for lost.
But I didn’t reckon in the cost,
That when I let the subject drop
I’d admit he’d one day be not

And I hated him for it.

A few years more would pass
Before his first real heart attack.
He quit smoking after that,
But that didn’t really bring him back.

The gentle giant I knew is gone.
The man that’s left is pale and wan.
I make excuses, avoid, and run.
I skip a visit, another one.

He loves me still, as he did once.
My own heart does as it wants:
It hates the lonely ghost that haunts
Us all with moans and grunts.

Now in this room, I see him weak
The glaring truth we dare not speak.
The man that I once loved so sweet
Now rots away like so much meat.

And from that end I’m not exempt.
I’ll be there soon, but till I’m spent
I take refuge in my contempt;
This is youth, this is strength.

This really happened. Sort of.

We are, all of us, too small
To see the wind push a cloud
Up Queen Anne Hill.

Uncorrected eyes, cicrumscribed
By human scales, see only mist
Roll up Eighth Street.

But run, or ride, or even drive.
Just move, and move fast enough.

Be something more than you were before.
See wind and water at play.

It’s all right there.