Poems: 250822 - August 25th, 2022

[Robert Morpheal]

040822A
-----------

You cannot cry anymore
once you have drowned
in your own tears.

You float past
a crowd of blinded eyes
all looking another way.

Victims of drownings
are commemorated
where no one remembers.

In such a crowded sea
plenty of  fish feeding
on whatever falls in.

People always fall in
until too late to get out
but most were pushed.

They have long stopped
dredging the bottom
for anything remained.

Lining up along a shore
eagerly watching
for the next drowning.

Most are disinterested
and do nothing but skim
across the surface.

Whites of eyes become dry
then crumble away sudden
into outbursts of spores.

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

050822A
------------

People give us things
that fall like bird droppings
onto tarnished statues.

A sort of white wash
picket fence property line
demarcation of relations.

Playing statues as children
was the first lesson
in status and statue symbols.

We retain things a while
knowing full well
they will require disposition.

Some sought to indebt us
while others pretended
to repay various debts.

It is said everyone counts
for something
in any balance of payments.

Any commerce of things
is always very complicated
and it can be very cruel.

Sometimes nothing more
than a proxy substitute
for paying attention.

Sometimes an excuse
meant as vain justification
for their deeper selfishness.

The thing on the shelf
lodged tightly in
to a convenient crevice.

Temporary way stations
everything stops at
on its way to resting places.

A funeral procession
comprised of horse and cart
going to and from markets.

We end up loading up
in a wide variety of ways
before realizing the burden.

Another way some strive
to bury us alive in life
beneath their avalanches.

If we wrap ourselves up
those are the large packages
no one would want to open.

There is that sarcophagus
where we keep our wounds
wrapped in tar & bandages.

Various offerings made
to the gods of the afterlife
that they might enjoy them.

After all and in conclusion
if you cannot enjoy it
then it must be for them.

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

050822B
-----------

Muggy heat seals in
parts of your face
into a preserving jar day
of everything bottled up.

Voyeurs of others' lives
we play all the games
where no one wins
and no one admits losing.

They don't like losers
and least of all honest ones
who sought to do better
because they might again.

Many are kept hungry
slavering sham commerce
at no real meaning
pretenders at matters.

Carried down the up
bound by the slide away
crowds of well greased
along for a low life ride.

No one really understands
what has become broken
having gone wrong being
pushed too hard right.

You won't get any answers
outside of the literal terms
of absolute agreements
made with the common lies.

Full speed ahead
into the same crash scene
feeling a familiar crunch
gone into fast forward.

The quick want you dead
outside their mercurial rise
in the tight embrace
of Lady Amphetamine.

World shudder shakes
its economic engine heat
igniting the long road
melted consistency of toffee.

Sticky fiscal meltdowns
amid violent global buildups
as to food and money
stockpiled insecurities.

Plasticity intoxicates
with the scent of malleable
road kill personalities
litter of highways.

Wanting to guzzle the night
becoming alien life forms
glowing a neon ambient
sensation of anything.

Better than heaving out
contents of the day
over a toilet bowel
retching with more disgust.

What if it is true
about intelligent design
finding an entire universe
the work of an evil clown.

The other side of the coin
argues for committee work
despising individual efforts
having created any good.

Grease paint in the mirror
doesn't seem to wash off
from the Saturday night faces
that we greet on Sunday.

Made too disagreeable
in relation to the trend lines
you take your sustenance
from remaining alone.

The usual false claims
asserting freedom of choice
becoming the hallmark
argument for sanity.

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

160822A
------------

Feeling a sense of exile
to that tower
far removed from sight
and a ladder there
no one who is welcomed
ever dares to climb.

In a different life
populated with more care
might be different words
rather than the many
that have lost their common
and their meaning.

Browsing the uncertain
there is nothing there
I could really want
among too tenuous giving
those vague expressions
to what isn't really love.

Mad dance antics
around half crazed thickets
pretending dead coals
the real hot stuff
played out chimney sweep
into a dark and empty.

They have it gulp down
something to drink to
in the abandonments
dwellings of habits
needs no real courage
in regards to same.

I am gone out
of context and place
trying to put a finger on
something that could be
minded far more real
than the jibber jabber.

Can't find that circle
that comes round
in any my direction
left with a broken chair
where the music stops
at rows of dead eyes.

Crows feet and sparklies
never saw me leave
to never coming back
and if there ever was
anything better stopped
at a point of intoxication.

Just another routine job
done in with no enthusiasm
ending at done out when
the word gets around
among teeter totter crowds
comprising ordinary lives.

No good endings
to any of those stories
but we tell them anyway
to have something to say
in the perpetual break ups
of impolite silences.

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


180822A
------------

Which dream was that
that someone came from
must have been one
of those better dreams
that I cannot remember
making it all feel so unreal.

Having seen party pictures
that showed me how it was
and how it could be
if one could find a way in
through anything as thin
as a piece of paper.

The world seems so unreal
existing as it actually does
between waking and sleeping
the way solitude exists
between others and self
making both seem illusory.

It only really matters
or could really matter
if it makes it seem unreal
as to the situation
and the context
arranging ordinary things.

Everything we have at hand
is memento mori
pertaining to lost lives
could never be lived
except as endless numbers
counting pointless deaths.

Barbarous little hooks
getting under the skin
in fish for something
gives all the pain
associated to anything
held dear or precious.

All would be nothing
if it were not for that pain
that differentiates
continually stimulating
diverse and futile searches
for impossible cures.

Whatever else happens
there will be an awakening
and then it will all be over
the way it always is
when anyone chances
happenstance to dreaming.

In the realization we could
never really have each other
in any sort of dream
but only our pitiful selves
each driven to imagining
something different.

Same above as below
any slice of the threshold
whatever catches attention
becomes come and go
and go is gone forever
thrust and parry to never.

Never as to never again
but not necessarily
wanting it to be that way
at the blink of an eye
speed of passage
toward the next finality.

Maybe we imagined
there is something
instead of the nothing
usual menus every day
garnished occurrences
into detailed notebooks.

Where there is no name
no forwarding address
and no connecting number
written in between
the lines of events
annotated in the margins.

The forbidden catch
as to a stray eye
becoming burst bubble
signifying thin layer
reflective disinterest
momentary turn away.

Timelines of incidents
threatening intrusive
countless afterlives
cavorting a twilight
comprised of tiny taunts
and big teases.

I stand condemned
as being lost
for a transgression
of trying to find you
in everything I ever did
everywhere I went.

The penalties are severe
and the entertainments
always fail to satisfy
though continually promise
much more than than causes
for a wandering attention.

Interludes of imagining
that they speak of us
in the gap between
the guesses and the facts
but it isn't really us
because we stand alone.
 
We don't really know
where we are welcome
made up as we are
from all of the usual
concealed parts
and wrong intentions.

They want brilliance
and they want angels
but we are nothing
that is that bright
or even that pure  
under broken wings.

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

250822A
-----------

The taste for the flesh
fails in the disappointments
concerning real intimacy
leaving nothing much
more than what is left of beasts
in the butcher shops.

You can secretly wet yourself
with your tears and sweat
bloody thrashing yourself
with the impossibilities
that left you your licking
stale self sustained wounds.

If that is what it takes
to keep you going
then that will have to do
but there is an added toll
exacted at the gate
each instance of leaving.

Nowadays public places
are the parade grounds
where sanity is a parade
of the usual public lies
closely observed by mobs
by critical strangers.

The style of criticism
has changed again
into new forms of silence
where anyone can play
at being the angel of death
that passes over.

Every form of sadness
a feeling sorry for yourself
in your pitiful state
made typical needy greedy
mouth waters its envy thirsts
for hallucinated salvation.

You have to believe
in buying what you require
and there is being let go
at every hour of need
right to the bitter last
better luck next time.

Entire lifetimes passing
exactly that and away
leaving a sense of dread
that they will kill you
if you want anything more
than the usual poisons.

Blue sky reflects the meaning
of your social calendar
displaced by long lists
of vain attempts to do right
to bolster failing belief
that busier is happier.  

Seems no one really
knows anyone
and exposing yourself  
is increasingly unpopular
from under digital raincoats
into mental exhibitionism.

Almost no one really cares
what you happen to think
and they care even less
about what you think about
as they muscle in
on nothing special.  

If you could only contrive
to hide away a naked mind
there is that vain hope
you might yet succeed
to be something popular
to the public eye.

If there were souls
they were beaten to death
in chin dribble exudations
comprising acts of philosophy
descended brutal variant
genres of verbal porn.

The great ideas don't sell
so they aren't great anymore
but you can find them
in a curiosity shop
in a vague far corner
behind the skulls and quills.

If anything would suffice
to make you happy
it is either too expensive
or it will be forbidden
in your specific case
leaving bits of voyeurism.

You get to watch
but you don't get to play
because they know
that will hurt you more
than all the other ways
they hurt you before.

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