MY LIFE

MY LIFE

My life is but a million miles

Of deserts etched with grief

Scarred by sighs

Illumined by the scorching sun

Distant and indifferent stars

Etching in the arid ground

Mendacity and lies

Scoured by times mocking gales

With no shelter, succour or relief

Desire's scorching sands

Blister and char the feet

Of this remorseful reprobate

A purblind foolish pilgrim

Staggering besotted, beset and bestial

Through existences's daily monotony

With endless inconsequential rituals

Struggling against hunger, sloth, insomnia,

A sour stomach or an achy tooth

Regret, ennui,and grief

Until I am rendered

To my essence

Stinking offal, carrion meat

Marching to lust's monotonous

Discordant threnody and beat

A lonely ghost I utter and wail

Tattered truths no one will hear

Screeds only I will see

On paper scraps on which I scribble

For no purpose to no avail

Wrestling with futility

Trying to encapsulate and capture

All my struggles, sorrow, and travail

Until I am erased, effaced and lost

Neither remembered nor forgotten

In the oblivion of eternity

-Michael Murray

Prove Me Right

You'd prove me right

Every time I was wrong

I'd be loosing sight

And the fight just went on

You lit my light

Then continue to move on

The pain it bites

But life it goes on

Lonley nights

But it's long gone

Being so right

But feeling so wrong

Right all along

But man ...I wished you proved me wrong

Before I left she was already gone

it might be wrong

That I feel her in every song

It was her all along

Now I'm lost in the wrong

But I guess I have been all along

-Robert McLeod

05/05/22

THE GREATEST MAN IN THE WORLD

I think of what Jesus has taught,

and stand awestruck before this man.

I find Him that He is the best

of all who've walked under the sun.

I put aside that He is God

and write about His life on earth.

He's taught man love and to support

the little ones, not those of wealth.

He had great ruth on that female

whom none dared her soul to elate.

He sympathized despite the risk

and saved her from her horrid fate.

Who can endure the insults that

He suffered but He could forgive.

We can't withstand a little grudge

till we retort what we receive.

BY JOSEPH ZENIEH

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

"Boondocks Land"

In the end, "the Boondocks" did win,

though we all had our bearings on compass until then.

Paths drawn on maps, over highways

and bridges,

through the valleys

of mountain ridges.

But the map got a crack, in the crease,

from the folding and folding and folding again.

It happened from paths untrodden.

It happened from traces untraced.

It happened from

putting the map in your pocket,

and bending it opened again.

Maps do not belong in pockets.

They belong in hands.

Plans do not remain on hold,

they're to be placed

upon the land of Man.

So, the highway that we traced in pen

split open, in the middle,

from the rip in the bend,

like the split of a vein.

And as a result,

there's no feasible way

to travel/traverse

from point B

to point A.

The rift led us (both) to the Boondock Land.

-clw

5-21-11

C. Ward

Missing

Whenever you hear someone is missing...

While fishing on the Lake, somewhere remote...

They mentioned they wouldn’t be out too long...

But there’s no body in the boat...

After a search for miles and miles...

One that continues late into the night...

But still the body is nowhere to be found...

The search will commence at morning light...

While the family is busy praying...

The neighbors’ hope begins to wane...

And then someone always mentions...

The legend of Lake Pontchartrain...

It happened back in the late 70’s...

When a little girl went for a swim...

She rode her bike off the old Padua Pier...

But was never heard from again...

Her body was never recovered...

The family’s closure was never felt...

Her daddy felt especially troubled...

Because he had spanked her earlier with his belt...

It was because the little girl was playing...

That morning in her daddy’s shed...

She took one of his tire chains...

And smacked her daddy in his head...

She was scared to death of her dad...

Because he had used that chain to hang her cat...

He chased her back into the house...

Screaming “I’ll whip your butt, you little brat!”

She loved her cat so dearly

But her dad was a drunken fool...

He found the cat in his shed

With a dead mouse atop his stool...

He smacked the cat with a backhand

And the cat flew through the air...

He tied a chain around his neck

Until the cat’s spirit was no longer there...

She told her dad “I hate you”

As she ran out their home’s backdoor...

She rode her bike off the Padua Pier

And was seen again no more...

Now when anyone goes missing

From their boat on Lake Pontchartrain...

Eventually someone will mention

The little girl with the chain...

Even though it was years ago,

And the girl’s family has moved away...

The girl with the chain in Lake Pontchartrain

Lives in spirit to this very day...

© 2022 Jeffrey Pipes Guice

THE PROBLEM WITH BEING A POET

The problem as I've come to believe

Poets wear their feelings out on their sleeve

But if I had to tell you about the last couple of days

I've been walking about in an absolute rage

Really ANNOYED because nothing gets done

I keep watching good people mowed down with a gun

They say now's not the time they'll send thoughts and prayers

Enough of your B S you don't even care

Their addicted to the money the lobbyist has sent

They sing the lobbyist song and never relent

Politician , Politician you have blood on your hands

Better listen to the victims cries and demands

You better do something what ever you do

Cause the next mob that comes storming may be coming for you

The poet can take you to places you'd rather not look

Before he is finished and closes his book

-Robert Miller

Poems of the Road

          Sunday Drive

It was a Sunday drive

but I wasn’t driving like

a Sunday driver on backroads 

going to a main highway going

to the city going to a street

going to a house thinking about

the past and future trying to sidestep 

the present knowing how everything 

goes through the moment 

how every end has a beginning 

and every beginning holds an end.

 

 

           Well-known Roads

I don’t know if I can drive well-known roads

anymore the way memories pile up mile

after mile adding weight making me want

to suddenly brake forgetting there’s ice

on the road not being able to stop anything.

There are only so many roads and the new

ones become like the old – memories transfer

from one backroad, from one highway 

to another so I can't tell when I’ll get there

and when I get there if I can say, “I’m here.”

               Ascertain

I am trying to ascertain why some things

remembered and some things yet 

to be remembered make me cry.

What strikes my heart,

what strikes my eyes,

and why I cannot strike 

a refusal to cry.

-Byron Hoot

  hootism:  we should not be surprised by acts of gun violence when so many TV shows, movies, video games, music depict a gun in someone's hand as a solution to a problem.  

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