Poems: 170213 - February 17th, 2013

[Robert Morpheal]

170213A
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The fascism of machinery
forces us to march to its beat.
Everyone seems to be in more of a hurry.

Various failing attempts to break stride,
punctuate the amorphous sea of humanity,
with brief fluttering of failed wings.

Having given up on any solid ground,
they wash away into the heavens,
searching for indications of a new negotiation.

I have no idea where to go,
knowing that the night would open up
and swallow me into its darkness.

Nine to one odds, at best,
and that means being left the odd one out,
in any devil’s dozen of impossibilities.

Mix and match the varied patterns,
never finding anything that really fits,
among all the perfect combinations of disaster.

I am so tired of searching strange haunts,
only to find various vague shadows,
left by stunt actors of dangerous moves.

Everyone wants to sell me something,
but no one is ever interested in buying,
and they are constantly whittling down the price.

That serves to discourage
the more sophisticated customers,
in their avoidance of shoddy, cheap, bargains.

There is only the constant of the opposition,
throwing up barriers and detour signs,
no matter which way one happens to try to go.

It has been far too long
since any of it was really a good time,
making for inattentive restlessness.

Everywhere becomes the same
walking barefoot on hot coals,
treading tiptoe and trying to evade notice.

The hunter with nothing to hunt,
having become prey, looking for a predator,
who is willing to buy into such poor luck.

If one is going to be consumed,
there is the desire to be consumed pleasurably
by someone who at least appears to be beautiful.

The one that does not run away
the way a frightened rabbit runs away,
from all possibilities of conversation.

Perhaps only a mutual desire
to escape the persistence of boredom,
by breaking each other’s routines.

Something to alleviate the all too common,
conditions of perpetually enforced discontent,
the way punctuation alleviates the line.

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170213B
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The cold weather seems colder
than it used to seem.
Something about the loss of optimism,
in the endless litanies
of failed anticipations,
that strikes a chill right to the bone.

You hear your skeleton rattle,
the way dice rattle in a cup
of all the wrong numbers to roll,
getting bumped around,
the way any run aground wreck
tends to be bumped around by the waves.


Broken ice leading to nowhere,
glistening the way diamonds glisten.
No real gems to be found,
and everything is losing its shine,
between one shattering and another,
breaking everything up.

You wonder if you can really survive
until the coming of spring,
trying to hold on to whatever is near,
to keep yourself from slipping under,
and being dragged away,
into ever deeper depths of solitude.

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170213C
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Sometimes it is all in your own mind,
as to anyone really knowing you,
and you learn to close your mouth
as to saying anything more,
because everyone hears something different
than anything you really meant to say.

What you really wanted
was never what anyone else really wanted,
and everything needed someone
completely different from anyone
that you had any real chance to know,
always leaving you at loose ends.

You try to settle for something,
but nothing is ever really settled.
It simply keeps costing you more and more
to not have what you need.
It’s like being in the wrong time and place,
as the clock plays tricks on your mind.

Too early and too late haunt every gesture,
in the same way as too hot and too cold,
too dull and too sharp,
falling from one kind of damage into another,
in all the destructive processes
that falsely promised refinements.

You sit on the waste heap,
trying to gain some modest value,
stripped of whatever you once had,
that made you more promising.
A dirty carbon smudge hardly noticed
from among all those polished diamonds.

Everyone seems to have moved on,
leaving the ugly tailings behind,
and taking whatever it was they wanted.
They did not say where they were going,
but no one ever came back from there,
and there was no one to take you with them.

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170213D
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Everything keeps collapsing,
one mud slide after another,
burying most anything.

Nothing to pull out
what has fallen into it,
with a sinking feeling.

The more you struggle,
the faster you drown.
Eventually you struggle harder.

All the broken lines of communication
leave nothing to hang onto,
that could pull you up.

You did not see it coming,
when it hit you,
taking you hopelessly down.

They gave you mediocrity,
in exchange for all of your dreams,
making you more desperate to escape.


No one would let anything in
that looked so absolutely dirty,
and nothing ever comes clean.

It all keeps going nowhere,
same as an endlessly spinning wheel,
always digging in deeper.

It might have seemed alright
if you could believe in a messiah,
but that is not the way the story goes.

Nothing ever seems to go up,
everything always seems to go down,
and we are birds with broken wings.

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170213E
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When I look for something new,
I only get dragged around
the same old circle.

The same horses, the same dust,
the same flogged feelings
of hitting the same ground.

Failure to make adequate arrangements
for a clandestine meeting,
where there is a shade of difference.

Nothing goes forward,
and everything falls further behind.
Taking a beating at battling emptiness.

I have long given up
on anyone I ever knew anything of.
Learning to avoid answering the telephone.

The same jokers are on the line,
and I wonder who might be listening
just for a laugh, on the other side.


You only came to me,
so you could become history.
Another fossil moment among memories.

They are boulders strewn across a field.
Each a hard thing to get around.
Offering nothing softer or gentler.

There is no chance of an answer,
not knowing the right question.
That is where the dialogue ended.

Pictograms and petroglyphs
would have been easier,
leaving something for future to read.

You were afraid of the guards
who were aiming from your towers.
They would always end whatever we began.

You quickly left me for dead,
and I proceeded to bury myself,
in whatever was immediately available.

I thought that you might have been sent,
because your eyes were steel blue and dry,
while conducting the process of elimination.

Each time that it happens,
I bury another part of myself,
even though no one shows up at the ceremony.

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170213F
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You might say that I surrendered,
giving up the fight,
wrapped myself up in a white flag,
to cover all the ugly battle scars,
of every argument I ever fought.

Wrapped myself up tight in regrets,
as to all the time that was lost,
to pretending our freedoms.
We should have run away together,
to where we could forget the world.

I wanted you too much,
and that always ends in loss,
making me wish I had wanted you much less
than wanting you so much
as that always exacts the highest cost.

I don’t know where you are
and I don’t know what you are doing.
I don’t think about that kind of thing,
knowing what I know about wanting,
and how tragic that always becomes.

Tried to find someone I do not really want,
where the knots are tied in other ways,
in pleasures and pastimes,
without all of that wanting,
because I don’t want to want ever again.

I never want to want anything as much,
the way I chanced to wanting you.
I would rather play in the shallows,
than dive into that deep end,
only to come back to the lonely surface.

I do not want to go that deep or that far,
as to that much wanting,
because if you want anything that much,
you won’t ever get what you want,
it’s simply the way it is as to wanting.

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