Poems: 030423 - April 3rd, 2023

[Robert Morpheal]

270323A
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We are those deeper regrets
as to what could have been
that we could not change.

Regretting all the bad luck
that made our world contrary
to our own desires and efforts.

Regretting those catastrophes
we could never anticipate
that made it all turn out wrong.

Regretting everything
that chanced to stand in the way
of doing what we wanted.

Sifting through the blame
we divide it up into portions
that are then distributed.

None of it does any good
but nowhere to store it
and it all takes up space.

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290323A
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We want it back
the way it was before

We are made so weary
by the new ways.

The same dulled footsteps
on the same worn floors.

The same jitters jump
to the same sudden sounds.

We want to go back
to looking forward.

We want to go back
to when it was possible.
We want to go back
to when someone could.

We want it back
the way it was before.

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290323B
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Drill a hole
and pour something in
through a funnel.

Any dunce cap
might work that way
when turned on its head.

Fill up your mind
with something concrete
gives you a foundation.

It has to be solid
never seeming empty
and never feeling hollow.

Be careful of any cracks
formed along fault lines
that things fall into.

Guard and fill in
any of those crevices
against clutter and wild life.

Know you will be unhappy
about what came out of it
and what was pushed in.

Why you want it to be solid
rather than remaining soft
despite footprints and initials.

They kept telling you
you could build on that
but it remained too vacant.

No one responded to any
of those little notices
about requests and offers.

You were entirely misled
by what they engraved
into that pedestal.

It was another signpost
pointlessly pointing
in all the wrong directions.

Too late to turn around
as you hit your blank concrete
face into another wall.

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300323A
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Only the successful know
and those who failed
know nothing at all
but most of them talk a lot.

Talking as if they know
in pretensions about loyal
belonging to the mass cover up
confirming memberships.

That is the way it works
in the great dragging down
to what some refer to as hell
and others refer to as experienced.

Whatever it might have been
is getting pulled down
into all that is too common
among the varieties of ignorance.

William James declared eternity
could actually be glimpsed
in a whiff of ether or nitrous oxide
if you want to go that far.

Make believe going that far
might be going far enough
as if it will take you somewhere
that you really want to be.

It is never what you can choose
because there is nothing there
to really choose from
in a pin ball machine ricochet.

Your shiny shot ball drops away
having lost all its momentum
somewhere along the rebound
stretches of disappointments.

You are bounced off the edges
of various obstacles to scoring
points in that big contest
that no one ever really wins.

Your ball eventually rolls down
after a number of hard hits
past the destiny flipper
in a simulation old age gathering.

All lined up for it again to bang
bumping up against one another
reliving the dread and anticipation
as to replays at destiny.

Whatever you learned
in that darkest academy
will never really help you
in any usual matters or ways.

The imagined affairs of life
that seem so strictly regulated
and closed off to your kind
along with make believe options.

You are too given to imagining
the impossible appeal that comes
with various ways of life
that you then find inaccessible.

You used to think you could
persist until you got lucky
only to end it all at finding
it never really works that way.

It would have been freedom
but that too seems a fantasy
about one or another game
that you never got to play.

Some people did get to play
but you only got to watch
the way kids read comic books
and wear disposable costumes.

You took the fool bait
but then they told you
you would not like it
as the hook pierced the lip.

So it all goes as it goes
and most things becoming
another bloody mess
that someone else made.

You scrape away
at the pitiful surface
but you can never get under
in past the hall monitors.

Their eyes pinned up
in various corners
where they stare at you
as you lose your way.

You only get arrangements
that you do not want
and you have never won
anything yet.

You begin to really believe
that you never will
and that everything is a racket
that the fixers fixed.

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300323B
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Not bent enough
for anything to be straight
and not straight enough
for anything bent.

It simply does not fit
and even the tailor said
you have it all wrong
as to the measurements.

You have to be extreme
in order to get in on anything
otherwise it all slides through
and no one ever notices.

Dropping out in between
something normal
and something abnormal
into the unwanted zone.

Cannot really make it
as the one thing
or as the other thing
along the far stretch.

Gooned from both ends
of the same wicked equations
lacking acceptable solutions
for those common variables.

When you get nothing else
common is supposed to appeal
more than it could or used to
but it never really does.

The squeeze becomes deprivation
and the increased challenge
is supposed to increase the desire
for something too ordinary.

A winner is born every day
but you never won
because you never could fit
into any of those costumes.

Someone else got to play t he part
and it never feels really fair
that they could and you could not
as to that or any other stage.

Wondering if they left you anything
more than a few silly bit parts
where you walk on, in, and off
stopped short of any passion.

You feel as unlucky and faded
as the relic of an unwilling saint
forgotten in some back room
among a maze of other props.

At least if it were a good time
that would make it so much easier
to forget all those misfit moments
that added up to missing out on.

You hear rumours it is different
but no invites come in your mail
and you know the real locations
are never on your too public map.

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300323C
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I used to care too much
about who was in my dreams
but now I do not care at all
knowing that dreams
are all about the same losses.

I used to care too much
about who the tears were for
but now I do not care at all
knowing the tears
are for those I will never know.

I used to care too much
about what tomorrow brings
but now I do not care at all
knowing tomorrow
is a day that never comes.

I used to care too much
about what would come of it all
but now I do not care at all
knowing nothing ever does
really come of it at all.

I used to care too much
about you and about me
but now I do not care at all
knowing there is no one
that comes that near.

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310323A
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I never measured any of it
the way you measured it
so it was never really as good
for me as it was for you
as to any of those measures.

I wanted so much more than you
but I thought we could share it
and that too was my mistake
about the limits of what is true
and how severe the world is.

So I lost what I really wanted
and it is not what I can replace
where no one ever shares
as they seal each others' fates
to what is then lost and too late.

They told me it was about love
but that too is another fiction
and though love is nice to have
it was not what I really wanted
to be left to trying to measure up.

It was so much more than that
but I cannot find my way back
from all those ridiculous places
that you used to send me to
to look for what was never there.

You could give me all that love
and it would never really satisfy
as to my hunger and my wanting
for all that I have lost
as to what I really wanted.

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310323B
-----------

The night winds are cruel
where they deliver their mischief
and where they leave their marks
as less than pleasant reminders.

There were things to do
amounting to nothing much
but nothing of that was anything
of any dream to live in.

It all seems far too severe
compared to anything severe
that could have pleased me
in any smaller or larger ways.

Wondering what I could have done
to free myself from all of that
but there is nothing in the wind
that would or could ever tell me.

I am still the same prisoner
headed down the same old roads
to the same old places
I never want or wanted to go.

There is no reprieve at the place
where I am kept hanging on
at the frayed end of a sputter
of anything I knew to be better.

Better for you is never anything
that might be better for me
and it all seems too broken off
from anything really satisfying.

I will never get there I guess
because the wind slammed the door
and I do not know how to open it
from the way it has closed.

I am not really getting through it
and everything else has gone
the way everything else goes under
where I stopped digging long ago.

It is piled in the far corner
defining another heap of problems
that could never find solutions
so the wind can laugh at that.

I tried at for myself
and I tried at with others
but it all ends up the same
at the bitter end of anything.

Still the same cruel winds
in these same cruel times
blowing around suggestions
that mean the same nothing.

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310323C
-----------

Imagination is the beast
that keeps howling at the moon
left to its starving for anything
that it ever comes up with.

If only I could turn it off
the way one turns off a television
terminating the program
that failed to satisfy my cravings.

Always the wrong channel
tuned in on that broken dial
and the wrong program comes on
exactly at the wrong time.

There is nothing to invent
that would serve as an invitation
having tried that before
and each effort a similar failure.

There is no one that I know of
would really make any difference
to a waiting game that waits
for whatever it is kept waiting for.

We fill up the time in between
in various unsatisfying ways
and there are always some lies
to tell to make anyone else happier.

The problem being in the knowing
of which there is precious little
in places of wandering forever
among those contrary intentions.

Looking into broken mirrors
that display the passing of time
and knowing everything wanted
has turned to imagination.

There is talk of a cancelled meeting
and talk of a chance was lost
but you do not know what that is
and likely did not want it anyway.

It all seems to melt away
the way a New Year's candle melts
away as games of prophecy tried
to anticipate materialization.

Imagining there could be something
comes from a puddle of wax
and reading between the lines
of so many types of prohibition.

Maybe the spirits will speak
where everyone else was silenced
and any objections over ruled
by one or another toy monkey.

There being nothing really solid
about any of it anymore
and perhaps never really was
a slightest chance of that.

We can blame it on imagination
as to someone, something,
being somewhere as someone
but nothing ever comes of that.

I never knew I was only howling
at that same laughing moon
trying to make a connection
to imagination's ends.

In the end I imagined that too
and there is nothing for a beast
other than devouring itself
while the moon still howls.

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030423A
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The many awful places
that one falls out with
and falls out of
where there are only men
and prostitutes
all wanting the same thing
for their different reasons.

You did not go there
searching for men
and you did not go there
to consort with prostitutes
but that is where you failed
to understand the realities
of who does what with whom.

Knowing it is nothing
that you really wanted
and at least not in that way
that they want it
you try to write your own
very personal version
of a book of the dead.

You suspect you are dead
and it is only a question
as to the time and place
where you chanced to die
to expecting anything
that might ever pass
as some sort of satisfaction.

You try to illustrate
what it might have felt like
if anything had been real
beyond the self flagellation
and any sort of sainthood
that you never wanted
and that you never tried to earn.

There is that deep resentment
as to how they told you
that you could have some
then laughed at your searching
for what you could never find
within those tight bounds
of a stiffed and straitjacketed time.

You were not for the men
and you were not for the whores
who were always waiting
as if they were waiting for you
so you passed through
the way the dead pass through
as the dead walking.

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