Poems: 270623 - June 27th, 2023

[Robert Morpheal]

140623A
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We invent end games
to rival our beginnings
in the undergrowth
that becomes overgrowth
to conceal the darkness.

We conceal more and more
with whatever we reveal
trying to hide away
the burden of our revelations
as to growth of our discontent.

Few have the imagination
as to practical alternatives
all proving equally impossible
but leaving a parade mustered
and marching through.

They do not know where
they are going or came from
but it is a concerted action
that fills the emptiness
in incomprehensible ways.

The way sex sometimes fills
an otherwise empty place
in that private compartment
along the rattle and bump
defining of common journeys.

You wanted much more
but they always gave you less
than what you needed to make
to buy your way out
from another slow kind of death.

Putting nothing back in
where they take it out of you
and take it out on you
until you cannot look forward
and there is nothing behind you.

There is no way to stop
the turn over and over
when you are on that roll
over and over and over again
as a Jack or a Jill going down.

Take your broken crown
knowing there is no mending
of those fractured trinkets
once seemed wisdom's gems
but only mocked the sparkle.

What to actually do
with life's trash filled bowers
when the dance has ended
as a maze of pointless steps
never discovering any destiny.

Destiny that is something more
than the same steps reproduced
in a faith filled and faithful way
that never questions any such
belief in gametes of meaning.

We hold on to whatever it is
the winds would blow away
from a stunted too short reach
becoming as crumpled up
as is yesterday's news.

We are folded completely up
into our own wrinkles
our paper thin skins stamped
with various processing marks
as to what we have been through.

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140623B
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Those were the days back then
when it seemed there really was
somewhere to be gone to
gave an illusion of difference
in a context of all possible worlds.

Then taken and gone away
there is that variant of purgatory
past a bluff and dragged down
where every gesture is a vague flail
toward impossible haunts.

Joined to no more than ghosts
dweller in death's dream kingdoms
offered vain solace to closed eyes
tormented by lack of substance
that slices everything away.

Oh, what would have been done
if apportioned means and ways
for the sake of plans and doings
before the light was snuffed out
or boredom made its imbeciles.

Having no business with any
plague ridden festering ideas
burst as infected shudders
in perpetually fevered conditions
that are neither dead nor alive.

The brain being eaten at
by a pressing sense of emptiness
where the passing have thrown in
their discards and trash
toward a gradual decomposition.

Trying to fill in fragments of time
with many a worthless salve
invariably fails as curative
physicians ignorant of answers
and perceiving no actual malady.

The normal condition being worse
than the various exceptions
that they say can all be treated
and sometimes actually cured
back into the normal condition.

What malingering state
brings such profound discontent
cleaving whatever soul might be
from any possibilities of moorings
as if lost to all sense of harbouring.

A stranded sense of being
that finds itself on no actual map
as to anywhere or any-when
but left to that sort of wandering
that knows of nowhere left to go.

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140623C
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Sugar drips of syrup sun
into pools of hungry blue
bounce of sky feathers
on the touch and go waters.

A blush on the dimple pool
blazes in a bright of eye
along the chatterbox stream
meanders in merriment.

A rustle among brittle reeds
announces a solitude
causes a flutter of cries
turned to scatter winged.

Dropping their burdens
in spates of hurry down
necks of pillow cases
adrift on verge of blankets.

Feather dust fronds waving
watery edge of morning
slippery in the wind chimes
whispering wild flowers.

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140623D
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That faded out worn away
look that gazes out
into an expanse of nothing
that would break the monotony.

We have no actual business
to enliven the bland repast
creates the strained void
cluttered with trivial afflictions.

A merely affected thing
bereft of true foundation
too poorly built for any stand
that offers any real defence.

Everything being defended
in various trivial absurd ways
from both the imaginary and real
threats announced and announcing.

Romance is not what it seems
but only for the curious
and someone's passing fancy
outside any deeper meanings.

Mere vagrant tastings
then spoil delicate fare
of morsels that are nothing there
but whispers of failed dreamings.

Perhaps for the successful
haunts of hallowed halls
but not for one always outside
all those mighty bolted doors.

A world for the winners
and not anything for fools
who only know the jest
but never any truer substance.

With nothing to open up
and nothing to do with any
beyond trivial comments
about the most trivial things.

Silence takes hold
as though a scold upon lips
bridling remnants of empty
hopes and other futile schemes.

What point to speak anymore
concerning the impossible
and nothing else worth saying
concerning truth in meaning.

Truly nothing to be done
related to worth that matters
makes all a foolish show
rivals the ado about nothing.

Movers and shakers know
what one knows naught
and there is no pilot to be found
to navigate perpetual dark.

There is nothing sublime
in feeling so outside solace
while the victors celebrate
their ways to the spoils.

Leaves nothing to occupy
and even less to absorb
cruel passages of squalid time
ravaging remains.

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

140623E
-----------

Life makes its demands
and I cannot give answer
in what remains unknown
as to all the tallies up
and all the various measures.

Knowing no deep truths
about any such grave matters
as what is given up on
in not even a prayer's chance
beyond a shovel full of dirt.

Nothing was ever fixed up
nor was it ever arranged
as anything more than grieving
estrangements and changes
provident of illusory futures.

We prefer to believe differently
and particularly about each other
beguiling ourselves with inferences
to pure chance being kindness
somehow directed and orchestrated.

One builds private monuments
to those sorts of tragedies
knowing no recompense
and bereft of opportunities
to evade the too empty.

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150623A
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Puttering with insignificance
as though it can be repaired
in some make shift crude way.

The make do sort of rigging
that prevails in rough edged
renderings of crippled times.

Tie yourself up and rope in
for the inevitable rough ride
that is taking you nowhere.

Knowing no one will take you
that you can stand a presence of
if you cannot take yourself.

For the sake of getting there
on an inevitable Rube Goldberg
trying to imitate creation.

Between the crude and the vulgar
try to make a bit of space
finding no pull or push that way.

Being somewhere in the middle
but what they give you is the same
painted into corners of short ends.

Your constantly fierce incentive
to attempt and do the impossible
seeing that as a way out of suffering.

An unshakable up against it feeling
in the thick and thin of what takes
whatever you do not really have.

Everything is always borrowed
and if you do not wear it out
someone else will make use of it.

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150623B
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Do not know if it means anything
more than a jumble of patterns
rearranged and read into
because we want something
and we demand it from them.

How often do we really know
what we really want
in the not having any of it yet
and knowing it is there
hiding beneath the surface.

There is the animal inside
that wants to dig it out
the way we dig splinters out
from under the skin
easing that persistent irritation.

The way dogs dig holes
throughout the entire yard
mysteriously uncovering
and variously burying
instances of acquired meaning.

We bury those who have died
along with some of the living
covering over with the dirt
passes as a type of soil
where existence is rooted.

History is a mound of dirt
where we imagine we can keep
something we fear to lose
that is mostly lost to us already
between cruel pitches.

Try to wash the dirt off hands
entirely stained with it
while trying to uncover something
in a sifting out of values
among various valuables.

A persistence in the need
that needs to find something
deeply buried somewhere
and sometimes that takes it
from the clutches of the dead.

We are the grave robbers
who are scratching and clawing
at the reluctant ground
in our unrelenting efforts
to try to dig up a future.

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160623A
-----------

Being a victim of the voices
that are in other people's heads
it really does not matter
what you choose to say or do.

It becomes nothing more
than the absolute futility
of a carefully phrased question
or a well considered argument.

Latest spin dry version
of a severely pressed and folded
laundromat brain
tossed in to a clothes basket.

Thought you could iron it out
as to whatever it was
before they bit into you
in a mad dog sort of way.

You become their chew toy
carrying the impressions that say
that you were friends once
or at least it seemed that way.

Knowing they would crack you
open right down to the bones
to get any marrow out
from what you thought secure.

They do not leave anything
beyond that tragic realization
that you came to the wrong door
for anything you came for.

It does not matter to them
that there were no other doors
that you could actually come to
along that particular way.

You have to stop somewhere
but that will never take you
anywhere you wanted to go
and the other lines are down.

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160623B
-----------

Never hear from anyone anymore
who lives in my little town
but truth is I have been there before
and it is the same as returning
after having been away a long time.

It makes one so much more aware
concerning all of the many changes
that have chanced their intercession
between any then and any now
dangles from that thinnest thread.

As if the ownership has changed
away from anyone I used to know of
and what was once made familiar
has somehow passed away
leaving conditions of estrangement.

The points and ports of entry
have all been closed long since
and no effort or means to open them
would make any actual difference
as to long lost kitchen parties.

Whatever was once there
having long since been emptied out
in all the various and many ways
that contrive to create emptiness
then turning it to unaffordable.

A vague feeling of discomfort
that accompanies the unfamiliar
knowing the signs are wrong
and the map is inadequate
as to being any sort of actual guide.

An uneasy feeling of having lingered
far too long in some particular place
where a stranger is never welcome
and you are less and less familiar
despite being kept waiting.

That was never the planned visit
but it is where the journey took you
and if I had known of that
I would have refused to go near
to that sort of shuttered place.

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260623A
-----------

They will keep you waiting
until you run entirely short and out
the way an idled engine runs out
from whatever fuels its enthusiasm.

Sometimes there are appended parts
that remain in some type of motion
despite the break down
that has seized up any purpose.

It is that sort of restraint
becomes the customary condition
ruins vain hopes of any progress
beyond a perpetual exhaustion.

A throttle of drive until worn out
and having only gods to blame
if keeping a civil and polite tongue
concerning any manner of adversity.

That sort of lingering pass over
and a persistent illusion of something
more than merely to pass on
in the passages of failed anticipations.

There never was anything there
but that too takes too long to prove
the way consumption gradually proves
the condition of its victim.

Ample opportunities to waste away
being doctored into maladies
that are common and preferred
so as to not die quite so totally lonely.

The continually and hopelessly ill
gather together to share their malingering
in their conditions of unrelenting need
as a palliative for any other desires.

It being the desire for the exceptional
that proves so very problematic
where it leaves one strapped in
to a totally shunned and grave state.

No matter what that might be
we cannot allow any of that to get loose
into a well ordered and predictable chaos
with its defined streaks of regulated evils.

The psyche then held straitjacketed
so it cannot do anything at all
that might actually satisfy or please
any unusual and thus abnormal urges.

The father who did not succeed
determining the son who must not
and thus sacrificing a whole world
to maintain a few scant lies.

That destiny which derives from the loins
that you forever try to shake loose
the way prey tries to shake loose predator
before something vital is severed.

Realizing it always comes too late
and one might never chance to be afflicted
with the right sort of illness
despite the facts pertaining to ancestry.

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260623B
-----------

There is always the one that is gone
into the no longer knowing
what was not really ever known
in the ways one might wish to know
whatever might be known.

We live on the cusp of that
and forever on the verge of that
sort of socially acceptable
but utterly pointless type of condition
in the peculiar belief that it is right.

That way there is always something
that seems to have gone missing
either before or sometimes after
whatever we chance to gather as facts
pertaining to acceptable illusions.

We eventually stop saying anything
because nothing that we ever said
actually made any real difference
concerning the direction it all went
and as if none of it really mattered.

We easily blame the clumsiness
representing presumably wrong choices
made at presumably wrong times
then wishing we had done it differently
in the false belief in an alternate effect.

What a sad and tragic thing we are
regarding what we never really have
among the having of what there is
that the having is confined to being about
with all of its symbols and allusions.

That does not make it any easier
and in fact makes it much more difficult
as to the weather, menus and other details
that glue together bits of fractured time
into the usual runaway babbling streams.

We become so easily dissolved away
merely sugar cubes into tea cups
wondering where the sweetness went
along with the time being spent
finding suggestions among tea leaves.

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260623C
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In the time of strawberries
when the fields cry bird song
along tree lined breezeways
we search for hidden meanings
beneath tufts of green leaf.

There is very little to say
that a bright gleam has not said
between tree limb movements
swaying near a deep rooted pond
bubbling skittish excitements.

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260623D
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We really must not pretend
that we can be more than strangers
and much less that we are
of real interest to each other.

You tell parts of y our story
and I avoid telling you mine
in the frustrated attempts
to produce some disinterest.

Perhaps one learns to ignore
in the manner of being ignored
then becoming a teacher of it
having mastered the same ignorance.

The years have silenced me
in the realization I do not enjoy
the ceaseless banal drivel
comprising small talk conversation.

Finding myself entirely disabled
from continuing to do the necessary
and feeling shunned by the shadow
that incessantly follows after me.

It makes me want to move on
to something of a true romance
the way life appeared to be in novels
but never in the doldrums of reality.

A sort of action figure
made for a different twist of fate
and playing piece in a vintage game
that has entirely different rules.

Wishing that I could dress up
to engage in play and pretend
proving more true to my reality
than the usual daily pantomimes.

An obsolete thing been put aside
gone along the street side
in a vague cloud of reminiscence
about what some used to find.

Just want to get away
from the smell of smoke and beer
mingled with other hard things
looking for what is never there.

Makes me wonder where
they found any of those movie sets
appeared in black and white
intense scenes of anxious flesh.

At least they were well dressed
and the advertising was mostly honest
giving clear enough suggestions
as to where anything might be heading.

Too many places now locker rooms
stale with the talk and odours
arrives in an influx of footballers
intermingled with boxing matches.

And the girls in the bar down the street
are from the bordello next door
doing their tricks with the regulars
while playing the naive for drinks.

Some never go out anymore
because it makes it too hard to dream
and the high price of disappointment
is getting pushed up beyond reach.

How many pointless words
are contained in a twelve dollar drink
all about irrelevant Internet subjects
and what went on in the office.

Do not know any way around
this brave new world desolation
becoming so hair split divided out
into countless sorts of dead tease.

Does not seem to be really human
but maybe the species died out
somewhere sometime long ago
and something else was ghosted in.

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270623A
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Lingering in the throes of doing
our usual presumed instances
might be exchange of value
and then when it ends
we return to estrangement.

A commodified condition
that is an expanding spectrum
includes our interactions
until we are never really friends
but we often behave as if we are.

That is the shallow of it all
and if we had known
we might have been all business
in the cutting it short
and engaging in cost reductions.

Moving on to next, next, and next
developing no attachments
having the same feelings for anyone
which means no feelings at all
beyond the work at hand.

Knowing nothing to be gained
in the shallows of pass through
reduced down to the coin
for something we do not need
all that very much of.

The frugality of the competition
laughs at our spates of excesses
knowing the future is a wrap
at the end of whatever production
where it all goes away.

We never hear from anyone again
when the gig is over and done
and all we get is a change of scene
where there are new estrangements
to be temporarily cultivated.

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270623B
-----------

I see you
and you see me
going round the brambles
that threaten to scar up
the wayward gesture.

All the holding back
that is the flesh and blood
until no blossoms of thought
remaining to be seen
beyond crowned with thorns.

I hear you
and you hear me
in the gulf of our silences
where we hunt for the words
that comprise acceptable statements.

Caught somewhere in between
the fact and the immediacy
trying to avoid the finality
that comes with any revelations
deemed far too intimate an ending.

I end you
and you end me
in the social maelstrom
that invariably takes us away
from whatever seemed special.

And if we might have loved
it only means someone else
will conduct a usual intercession
the way a fresh bullet enters
through the same familiar breach.

I bury you
and you bury me
in the out of sight and mind game
as to the forgotten and forgetting
all that once never was.

What could have been
in such a precise and divisive way
that is the all encompassing system
determining all giving and taking
that creates and ends the living.

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270623C
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We would never get along
in all the too early and too late
inevitable failures of the mesh
that comprises time and place.

If there was any option
it was of the never was sort
that is never actually found
but consists merely of searching.

Perhaps the doors that chanced
were doors we should have closed
while never wanting to remain
as merely something on the way.

Torn by that sort of sentiment
we attempt to crudely mend
whatever there is of ourselves
that has not fallen entirely aside.

It was about getting there
even if it never came to arrivals
before the usual departures
from any of the might have had.

We might have had
but no idea how or what it was
and being treated as lost luggage
that no one wants to claim.

There is always something in it
that is entirely necessary
that we do not have any of
and cannot seem to get anywhere.

A tragic condition that changes
with the seasons and situations
knowing no reasonable remedies
on the way to somewhere else.

Nothing is ever really settled
at any of those stations
filled with usual ritual habits
as to being in and on the way.

A feeling that keeps saying
that one simply does not have it
and having no idea where it is
outside the bounds of constant need.

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270623D
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It is what we do not know
either how to find or get
that gradually destroys us
in all of its innumerable ways.

Having put down roots
into the emptied dead soil
purely on the basis of our faith
from which nothing grows.

Then there is a science
that teaches us something
that we cannot put into effect
but it is full of great ideas.

So disappointed and diverted
until we ourselves begin to claim
we could never really want it
and blaspheme spirit and name.

There is always something more
we cannot have and cannot get
that would take the attention
away from what we have not got.

A new algebra of need
more devious than prior equations
as to incalculable damage
that is a wasting and withering.

Eat of the great feast until full
to the weeping with what it brings
that leaves one feeling emptier
in its lingering consequence.

There are no humble beginnings
where nothing begins that way at all
in the wasteland that feeds neither
any sorts of ambitions nor any dreams.

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270623E
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They would only trade something
for what one does not have
and some still name that as love
within the cruel terms and conditions
as to what some call endearments.

They do not want what you have got
because that too is feared as only
another sort of infection
that might make them too sick
and in need of regular doses.

Particularly if it is not to be found
in any of the usual commercials
and maybe only in rare instances
of obscure pulp fictions
written by demented geniuses.

Knowing Quasimodo is no trouble
but you might be too much trouble
whenever you cannot or will not
whatever it is that you cannot or won't
no matter the cause or the reason.

The market has steadily shrunk
concerning that type of thing
in lands of insipid tea and fake honey
past the boom box sounds
knuckle scraping the throughways.

It is surely a very desperate world
would deprive so severely
that it removes so much eye candy
from any public marketplaces
so that loose ends no longer meet.

A future proved to be more cruel
than the past that threatened it
into its abject present condition
concerning dots the i and crosses t
within the letraset alphabet.

We were told we could be free
but we were denied the experience
outside the restrictions imposed
by those boundless arguments
that destroy both the pro and con.

Thus ends every proposition
keeping each instance sequestered
within its own bad judgments
and the jury is always out
squandering itself on the town.

We can still choose beer brands
from an ever wider selection
but that too is a temporary trend
and the kids no longer play
any of the games we grew up with.

Everyone is trying to look normal
hiding away their inner cripples
from any sort of public view
avoiding guilt by association
as to those sorts of people.

They all seem to want something
more of whatever it is
someone else has in theirs
that the commercials are saying
everyone now wants.

Take your rejections and go
to some other playing field
where they might let you play
a game that you do not want to
in ways that you really cannot.

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