Poems: 250313 and 310313 - March 25th and 31st, 2013

[Robert Morpheal]

250313A
------------

When the ground thaws,
from a rigor mortis hardness,
comes the coldest time.

The clenching and unclenching
of the clawed earthen fist,
as it grabs at the chill light.

There is a feverish restlessness,
of wanting to get away,
and having nowhere to go.

Reminders of one’s sex
raised up from the dead ground
of hesitant loins.

Spears rising up,
along the ramparts of contention,
all pushing their points.

Thoughts toss and turn,
making the mind seasick
with all that turbulence.

The commonest of conditions,
is that of complete confusion,
where it is all turned around.

Everything sinks into the soft
yielding mass of ground,
where nothing seems solid anymore.

The way the body drops
into the mattress of an old bed,
held only by that solitude.

-------------------------------

250313B
-----------

Sometimes one does not know anyone
who is really any personal comfort,
and evading any sort of confession
is better than revealing the beast within.

Avoiding maddening conversations
about the weather,
and other mundane contrivances
while struggling to be polite.

Nothing much holds together anymore,
beyond a few sparse habits,
without which one might really vanish
into a more complete invisibility.

It is easier to be alone
if one can forget those who made one lonely.
Sometimes that means forgetting everyone,
for all of their lesser contributions.

Perhaps there is small comfort in knowing
that one cannot possibly go to seed
if one never really had a chance to flower,
living in a peculiar suspended animation.

The years seem so cruelly taken,
hearing one’s own footsteps in the dark,
sounding the way a metronome sounds,
its pulse measures of time.

I know that I still want you,
but I am more certain we have never met,
so you have never haunted my dreams,
and I wonder if we will ever really meet.

--------------------------------------------------

260313A
------------

Wars are similar to love.
Each provides something to fear,
and each has its own inevitability.

Moments of forgetting
the otherwise all too present self,
reasserting more ancient instincts.

The desire to lose consciousness,
and being so bound up in reasoning,
where logic has made its sharp cuts.

It all seems like it is life or death,
for at least a few moments,
when the arrow strikes the chest.

Waking up to tenderness,
or falling into nothing at all
where the loss is no longer felt.

Most lovers and heros are similar
as to both being a sort of fiction,
that neither really chose to become.

--------------------------------------------

260313B
-----------

I was never the right ugliness,
to simply sit in a corner,
and chance to be found.

I could never stand out that much
from the other objects in the room,
each trying to attract a stray eye.

Maybe I looked at you,
with too much sadness of desire,
when you were finished for the day.

There was someone else
waiting for you to be ready to leave,
and no one else came for me.

I repeated that same scene
the same way, far too many times
and in far too many places.

Why I gave up on long journeys
for the sake of chance meetings.
My motives were always too suspect.

I never knew your name,
and you never took me home with you,
so our record remains clean.

You went to a party up the street,
and I disappeared into the night,
hearing rumors in passing conversations.


------------------------------------------------

260313C
------------

The map is haunted
with all the places
where I did not find you.

I have marked them off,
one by one,
narrowing down the possibilities.

I don’t go there anymore,
as they are all too haunted
with traces of forbidden loneliness.

Loneliness is similar to a ghost,
hiding in various parts of the room,
the way lovers make out together.

It was all about the wrong ingredients
mixed together in the wrong vessel,
giving me that feeling of nausea.

I could never understand the saints,
until I accidentally almost became one,
flagellating myself for all of my sins.

It is easier to tear down temples
when you have been so utterly betrayed.
Easier still when completely misunderstood.

An existential cataclysm,
in all those waiting rooms,
finding no exit from that discontent.

Hell is other people
when you are with the wrong crowd,
and needing other types of intimacy.

I heard about it later,
knowing that you did not want me there.
You knew I wanted someone else.

You would have been more comfortable
keeping my remains in a reliquary,
than with anything I really wanted.

You were never the one who asked,
and so you were never the one I told.
We never really knew each other in that way.

That is the way that it often is,
in all those battles
of specific versus generic instances.

You might have believed you were the one,
that I was really looking for,
when I was looking for someone else.

----------------------------------------------

310313A
------------

Monotone grey
gnaws at the bones.
Makes flesh squirm
as though worms,
are in under the skin.

Fingers become maggots
feeding on that slow death.
Words buzzing around
the room as flies,
leaving stains on paper.

The stains add up,
forming lines and columns,
marching towards the end,
past the margins
of any decency.

The lights stare down,
in constant condemnation,
watching everything.
There is the desire to leave
and there is nowhere to go.

-----------------------------------

310313B
-----------

The universe proclaims
that peace is merely paralysis,
and everything happens
violently, with explosive force,
the way ideas come suddenly.

The way people have sex,
gun blasts of spurting ejaculate,
outbursts coming from friction,
rubbing sticks together
until they become red and hot.

The swellings of pride,
and the inflammations of injury,
mingled into victories and defeats,
as to breaching the walls,
and getting in past the guards.

Birth and death mere shadows
of that same violence,
coming into being for extinction,
everything eventually rubbed out,
in one or another cosmic hit.

We try to preserve something,
of each other, and anything else,
trying to stop the endless process,
by varying the red blooded futility,
while watching our histories decay.

We do not remember each other
the way we used to remember things.
We keep fading gradually away,
across distant event horizons,
collapsing into the dark of monuments.

Every so often something explodes,
shattering some of our illusions.
We wipe and sweep up the pieces,
trying to go on as if nothing happened,
getting ready for the next battle.

---------------------------------------

310313C
-----------

Lovers in the park,
with their star struck looks,
used to make me jealous
of their obsessive oblivion.

It looked as though
they had really escaped,
processing and execution,
at least for a little while.

I had always wanted
to become one of them,
so that I too could escape
and maybe never come back

It was always all about getting away,
knowing who will cheer and applaud
if you ever really pull it off,
and find a way out.

Never knew anyone
who really understood
where I was coming from,
or where I would want to go.

I tried to make up something,
that would seem plausible,
fabricating ordinary conversations,
to avoid repeating other people’s lies.

No point in getting personal.
It was always the wrong group,
and invariably the wrong time.
Identities as shallow as wallet cards.

I was only interested in being set free,
the way lovers set each other free,
to being obsessively star struck,
in their escape from the crowd.

--------------------------------------