presque vu

presqueVu

Said body and senses and instinct and suspense prepare for the violent outbreak of a sneeze.
All that mattered previous to this spasm is as insignificant as a comb to a dying man.
Even breathing would hinder this fixation with readiness of what is inevitable.
I raise my hands in surrender or perhaps simply to coordinate with
The expulsion of air from my lungs and the base of me.
My nasal mucosa and whatever supposed to
Has been irritated and this release
This inevitable exoneration is
On the verge but soon
God will bless me
And I… I…
Ah… ahh…

I choose my words carefully as I narrate accounts and anecdotes of my happenings as of late.
Unlike the fumbling of a programmer who garbles through blurred code and languages,
I paint imagery with sentences as colorful ribbons would blow in the wind at a parade.
And then… suddenly, like some silent, violent sneeze and the void it leaves behind
What was once there is no longer before my memory or the eye of my mind.
A cord has been severed between my brain and my motor skills.
Words not yet said are on the tip of my tongue
As the sneeze was at the base of my lung
Or a familiar tune heard not quite sung.
Something is amiss and near
Will you be there?
Or here?

kenn.

that’s what she said

This configuration of barbed wire, ambitions, and intentions
Draw out new adversaries where there should be rest
And sleeplessness is my only companion
I aspire while trying to inspire
My voice is a weak puff of air
Yet I know that I’m heard
If even so slightly
But sometimes,
It’s hard.

insomnia

Insomnia has become my mistress tonight
Am I the only one she has left alive?
Darkness as sheets covering millions who lie
Me, I can no longer fathom the day from the night

Thoughts of my past and my now and to come
It’s the past that has shaped me of what I now sum
I’m heavy and burdened and she won’t let me sleep
I don’t recall asking her over for a nightcap or tea

My sons and my friends and those who barely missed the mark
They haunt me as ghosts as shadows in the dark
My phone is not speaking but I query anyway
It never suffers silence like this during the day

Insomnia wont leave me as if she’s some hesitant cur
The lines twixt imagination and reality are in post stages of blur
Thoughts rage past me and circle seven times
Leaving me crumpled in corners and opposite the sublime

And kings and queens don’t regard how my story will end
I wonder who will read it and will it sell more than ten
The screams of traffic are muted and all colors are grayed
The tether that once held me is now thinning and frayed

Alcohol or pills or distraction numbs her touch
But I resist the lure to trade a mistress for a dime store slut
So eventually she will tire of me and leave me be
And let me sleep and tire of me be and soon I’ll dream and…

placebo

All due respect to grandfathers and amoebas,
Yellow bunnies, crosses, and ill-fated placebos
But that pink pill won’t calm you, it makes you cough
And that blue pill will arouse you then turn you off,
That horse pill brings restlessness and facial fuzz
And that white, tiny square one – I forgot what it does

Substitutions, placebos, colored eggs, and denials
Thinking to blaspheme and giving praise all the while
With some celebration of Life or Fertility’s egg
Covered idols in chocolate then off with his head
How hollow this apostasy, how empty this ruin
How can not saying His name lead to any congruence?

What is this atrocity that the King is still dead?
The Most High is down low and covered in dread?
Maybe He’ll resurrect from some brightly painted egg?
Sarcasm, lies, and substitutes are akin to vomit, bile, and red.
Long live the living King who redeemed us when He bled
And there can be no placebo… it is written and said.

“The sting in any rebuke is the truth” – Benjamin Franklin

copasetic

It’s forty-five later and I feel fine
My raiment of half-knit intentions and twine
Unfinished commitments on an unstable shelf
Obscuring my menagerie and wax that was melt
The walls are still cracking from our caterwaul song
And my heart is still breaking at what love’s become

It’s forty-eight later and I’ll give it time
Copasetic amidst it all… and I feel fine.

color therapy

I stuck my hand in a thorn bush
To follow what was free
Then painted a pretty picture
With the color that would bleed

I sat on the doctor’s couch
And he said to stay in the lines
I told him he was ash to me
My colors won’t be confined

My offspring are as promises
Pigments in rich oil
My imagination, she always sits with me
Through calmness and through toil

People see all my colors
And they often do assume
That a rainbow would seem pale near me
But they’re so far from the truth

Color brings and freedom rings
And hope is a fragile seed
Ask not for whom the bell tolls
The bell, it tolls for “we”

This chromatic facade that alludes to God
In tints and hues alike
I complete the “we” and we water the seed
And the seed is filled with life

I stuck my hand in a thorn bush
Screaming, “Would you look at me”
Then colored another page
In this therapeutic scene.

seven eight nine

Seven eight nine, this that and the third
The dog ate my homework, eight subjects and no verb
The cart is pulling the horse and other musings so absurd
Am I being too abstract or just layering the fact that I’m perturbed?

Why do today what you can put off tomorrow?
Why feel better now, when in sorrow you can wallow?
If Jesus walks on water again then maybe you will follow
If Nietzsche lives next door to you, my faith I’ll let you borrow

I can’t count on my fingers, I’ve got more sense than that
I can’t count on my money, it all goes to buy more fat
What was that I said about being too abstract?
Seven eight nine and other punchlines, does this verse make me look fat?

a moment of silence

My flag is at half mast
I ripped my garment for thee
My ashen face is downcast
And several doves have been released

Sixty seconds to respect
Much less seconds to be born
And a lifetime to reflect
On life for which to mourn

The bells, they toll for thee
And the rain allays the ground
The earth invites you back
From whence you first were found

My flag is still at half mast
It’s due my time to grieve
While not preventing living.
A moment of silence for thee.