When I Feel:Wordplay:H-DOT

When I feel defeated,

And I am all alone,

I use these words to comfort,

I'm finding my way home,

Was on a path to nowhere,

Was searching for the light

The promise of forgiveness,

Decisions wrong or right,

When I feel forsaken,

Mistaken and ashamed,

To raise my hands in triumph,

To cover up the pain,

Alluding to the process,

Transcending song or rhyme,

When I feel these feelings,

Search deep inside my mind,

For all the years forgotten,

These fleeting memories,

Proceed ahead with caution,

When I feel me be,

The monster in the closet,

Who hides behind closed doors,

That's peering from the shadows,

Beyond lost metaphors,

The lantern shining brightly,

Illuminates my psycy,

When I feel there is no way,

I feel a force that's mighty,

The winds of change can take me,

To somewhere distant place me,

When I feel me drifting off,

The moment overtakes me,

The only thing I'm craving,

But was it worth me saving?

Amazingly I feel alive,

The chains that bound me breaking,

Whatever problems facing,

I'll stand alone proclaiming,

No weapons formed will prosper now,

No drop of doubt is staying,

Enslaved to life obeying,

It costs to live still paying,

When I feel the end has come,

Flesh bones to dust remaining,

Kelly Ephraim Benjamin Jordan

Here I sit

Here I sit

On my assigned reservation

Waiting for a monthly allotment of whisky

With reluctance and hesitation

Waiting for moth-eaten blankets

And the Salvation Army clothes

How will my people survive this

No one really knows

What happened to our culture

What happened to our home

What happened to the time

When wild buffalo roam

They've stolen our waters

They’ve stolen our trees

They murdered our leaders

They put us down on our knees

They've stolen our lands

They’ve stolen our wives

They call it American

They've stolen our lives

© 2024 Jeffrey Pipes Guice

The Arrow’s Paradox Or Hitting the Mark

The Barn Swallows fly 

across my porch, before

my kitchen door

and I catch the curve

of their flight trying 

to recall if I’ve seen

one fly in a straight line,

think not.  If the shortest

distance between two

points is a straight line,

what about the curve

of a hip, the slant 

of a shoulder, rounded

breasts¸ asymmetrical lips,

the crooked smile

that leads to heart and 

soul?  The flow of words

that make the riverbeds

of love?  The Barn Swallows

fly across my porch; 

they make sure I notice.

-Byron Hoot

https://www.facebook.com/hootnhowlpoetry/

 

Hootism:  knowing when to end a piece of writing takes care of knowing how to end it.  When isn’t this true?

the ivory mask

We are both from broken-homes:

mine was built intentionally

from bits of things (defensively),

and yours took form organically

over years and years,

the way that nails grow, but

wildly and ghastly to entomb you.

What is

A Glass House

and

an Ivory Tower?

My Glass House is a greenhouse,

too, and

I can interact and see

beyond my windows,

willingly,

and creatures can look in on me.

So I made mine of glass for

its vulnerability;

because I am on a retreat

from the touch of society—

but, it’s a type of break.

I have not resigned.

I can break this house of mine.

Your Ivory Tower took

shape from inside

as a way to recoil completely

behind an unintentional

opaque design

to be your new exterior.

To this design

your ‘you’ is the inferior.

Subverted by white,

armored beauty,

hidden and stolen from

all that surrounds you:

Your new you

is a hologram slapped onto the face of

your self-grown Ivory shell.

Can a hologram touch things?

Do holograms breathe?

An Ivory that thick takes a whole lifetime

to grow…

It breeds and breeds and breeds and breeds.

And, yes, it makes you

somewhat mystical

to have the ability to manifest Ivory:

but it still entombs you/

still a tumor,

and now I know that you can’t see.

Your beautiful opaque is deceitfully fake

but there is no static cling

in our village,

because we’ve been earthing for 10,000 years

through a wire

in the wall

reaching out to the dirt:

it’s ionized in here

-just right.-

I thought I knew you through my window

but

now I know it was just a shadow

cast by a tower that obscures your intentions:

and your true intentions

hurt me.

Once I saw

a glimpse of the

Old you

Behind the mask and retreated,

hurriedly and safe

behind my Glass:

where I can both see,

and interact.

Thank God there’s no need,

then,

to go outside.

I cannot find the destination.

But I no longer breathe

the air you breathe:

Operation

Complete.

-clw

Reconciling

 

The dream felt memorable. 

Then I awoke and it was gone.

 

I thought how in hunting the moment

has to be just right to make the shot

 

and thought of dreams and memories

being caught, one so like the other,

 

holding meaning.  If I could

swear in sleep, I would have sworn

 

I was going to catch the dream when

I awoke.  It was gone and what remained

 

was that sense of loss, like a kiss not taken,

a caress not felt, a word not spoken

 

and the lingering regret throughout the day

of “what if?”  as a postscript to every moment.

 

I took small comfort in the faithfulness

of the trees and grass and horses

 

in the pasture, the wind, the sky, 

the clouded sunlight saying,

 

“You do not need to remember us,

we are here.”  Could not reconcile

 

the sense of loss to what was freely given.

                                    

                                     -Byron Hoot

                                    https://www.facebook.com/hootnhowlpoetry/

Cave Graffiti

Cave man didn't know what he was doing

As his hand sculpted frantic on wet wall,

Stopped, stepped back to view his stone-crafted vision,

Then proceeded through some shallow shadowed hall.

How ironic that a dark dank ancient museum

Should impart art that in earnest is least.

How ironic that the boorish, unknown artist

Should be man with hand and mind of brutish beast.

Cave man didn't know what he was doing

As he labored to a dazzling drafty flame,

Then darted to display for few friendly others

To preview, then proclaim by clan acclaim.

How ironic that a dark dank ancient museum

Should be understood by mere meager men as these.

How ironic to learn literacy's lost, first artist

Should be man that can neither write nor read.

And what future race may find Picasso dangling,

Suspended on some dreary dying wall,

Only to study for years yet never quite reveal

The intended significance of it all?

~ P.S. Colley

      Fall 1974

Too Close Is Too Close Or The Raven By The Side of The Road

The raven was perched on a guardrail 

on the side of a road

looking down a hill 

as if remembering there

was a tree once where 

there were branches 

its talons once clasped.

 

. . . and then it was the next day and I was going 

to Pittsburgh to my daughter’s and the day after

we were going to drive to Morgantown,

my hometown, born and bred – another

two hours away – her, for an appointment,

me for my birth certificate so I could get

a gold star on my driver’s license,

to protect me from what I didn’t know

but felt the sliver of fear added to the growing

despair of, “What-the-fuck-is-happening here?”  

 

and so we left at eight in the morning on a road

I knew to a place I knew and memories started

to stir mile after mile something was recalled.  

But the speed and distance kept things in perspective 

and now never stumbled into then.

Though a couple times it was close

as I sighed deeply as though memories

were just being made but a cough 

or something in my eye kept me from crossing

that border.

 

we ate at a place, Estab. 2006,

which was a far cry from 1956 when I can say

for certain, “I remember when” before 

that uncertainty of then and now gets confused

and how I got to be so old when yesterday

was only a day away.

 

That raven clasping the guardrail,

looking down the hill as if yesterday and today

don’t know the difference between them.

It didn’t move as I went by.

-Byron Hoot

https://www.facebook.com/hootnhowlpoetry/