Poems: 180213 - February 18th, 2013

[Robert Morpheal]

180213A
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The cold light of winter
is reflected in those eyes.
It cuts the landscape
into black and white.

The wind swept paralysis
leaves nothing of intimacy,
making everything hard
and painful to the touch.

A time of forced solitude,
concealed away
within the dead shells
of slowly decaying memories.

Flesh feels flayed from bone,
as the wind of cruel conversations
bites deeper,
leaving its marks.

There are initials carved there,
as all that remains of lost loves,
and of the empty places
when everyone is gone.

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180213B
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We kill ourselves slowly,
with little doses
that pass for attempted escape,
looking over our shoulders,
every time a shadow passes.

Everything else was pre-empted,
pulled from the line up,
cancelled from the program,
leaving nothing but a re-run,
with nothing new to say.

There isn’t anyone interested,
so you shut up about your dreams,
learning to listen to random sounds
marking the crawling passage of time,
made too aware of your own breaths.

You carry more random labels
than a long distance suitcase,
assuring you of going nowhere.
No one backs your ideas,
and it is pronounced dead at the gate.

The look of the condemned
greets you in the mirror,
appearing as something to erase,
but you cannot wash off
the engraved expression.

There is no point talking
about what is not happening.
It all sounds too much like a shell game,
and you don’t want to play,
to always win the same nothing.

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170213C
------------

It takes more than you have got,
and no one rallies round,
so you have to bury the idea.
Might as well bury yourself,
having held your bit of ground,
trying to raise your little flag
to get a hint of recognition..

It is only another rag,
among millions of other rags,
scattered across the wasteland.
Everyone has their own plan,
confined to their own territory,
but they are keeping it secret.
No one wants anything you offer.

The streets are a no man’s land,
woven between fences and borders.
Demarcations of all the places
where you go looking
for whatever it is that you cannot find.
The local inhabitants gaze at you
with the usual suspicion.

People are talking in little circles,
about none of your business.
The usual casualty count is posted.
There are habitual mixtures of lies,
based on beauty and ugliness.
Skeet shooting at selected egos,
to burst a few balloons.

The party really is over,
and everyone has gone to war,
claiming their own territory.
No one stands to be recognized
at the challenge.
No one falls in behind you,
and there is no one at your side.

They say that these are the good times,
but the good times were never so bad.
It is all a dream
because a dream is always dreamt alone.
It’s a room full of talk
where no one wants to hear your story,
having made you completely invisible.

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170213D
------------

I went to all the places
where I thought I might find you,
but none of what I found was you.

I could not find you
in the crowded or the sparse.
It never happened by chance.


I tried to go where people go,
and tried to do what people do,
but nothing ever took me to you.

It is harder to be in love
not knowing who it is
whom one loves.

Not knowing face or name,
I kept looking for you,
expecting we would know each other.

Don’t believe I ever saw you,
anywhere where I have ever been.
Though I waited there a while.

I wasted so much of myself,
in never finding the answer,
as to how I would ever find you.

I always knew for certain it wasn’t you
when I was mistaken for another,
whom you would never really want.

More the stranger than I was,
I don’t know when, or where, or how,
but I keep looking for you.

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