All I Know Is This

(We were given our choice of openers, but we were FORBIDDEN from using any words with more than FOUR LETTERS)…

Adirondack Center for Writing

All I know is that
most of the guys I hang with
are as old as mud; as old as
they will ever be, even if
a year or two more (or even
five or ten) go by.

Five or ten, at our age,
is a drop in a pail,
like dust in the wind:
gone as soon as it’s here,
only a bit of fade
lost in the new deep dark.

All I can say to them
(not that they ever ask)
is what I have come to know:
Ache and pain and fear
are the new way of life;
—the new here and now.

Get used to it, dude; it’s
all you have left. It’s the
ruts in the road you are on,
the wing that won’t work,
the thin ice you must trod.
We’re old. It is what it is.

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Reunion

when she goes away
July slips into August
he remains alone
dreamless in an empty bed
under the fullest of moons           
.
morning is birdsong
silence in the afternoon
twilight advances
.
night on green mountain
he imagines her ocean
pours coffee and waits
.
another clear sky
ocean air washes inland
distance vanishes
her garden fountain singing
the bed no longer empty

tanka / haiku / senryu / tanka

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Thanks to Frank J. Tassone over at the dVerse Poets Pub website for encouraging us to deliver some imagist work(s). I polished up this series from the Works-In-Progress file.

~Imagism Revisited ~

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The Drive-By

No matter
how clear the windshield or
how bright the headlights,
there comes a time
(usually late in the journey)
when the big show
is in the rear-view mirror.

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RDP Thursday
Rear View Mirror
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Flashback Advisory:

A great (2015) Anthology. (I’m included!) My Flash CNF Revisiting Venus is on p.78 but you can READ IT HERE

Failure Remedy

A tangential response to the Poets And Storytellers United invitation to generate a Weekly Scribble (#24) on dealing with failure…

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When All Else Fails (Again)

Bhagavad Gita:
Cling only to the Nothing
—nothing else exists—
Outcome is irrelevant.
I will be (re)born. Again.

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Poets And Storytellers United
Weekly Scribble #24
~ When All Else Fails… ~

Music Lesson

He can’t say for certain which he likes more— Susumu Yokota ambient Asian on the notebook laptop or the garden’s new water fountain’s concert. It’s pretty clear that the chipmunk, the butterflies, and the fledgling redwings all prefer the fountain. And why wouldn’t they? What do they know about Japanese synthesized melodies, electronic percussion, or the meditative properties of computerized harmony transformation? For them, scampering or fluttering by, water, flowing and singing its totally unregulated and spontaneous aria is Life itself; is music without which their lives —all lives— would cease to exist.

He reaches out and presses the laptop’s Mute button.

Some creatures —most creatures— know far more than he.

Agenda: Hot Dog

visit the dog pound
—bring home another ‘rescue’—
make barbecue sauce

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RDP Tuesday ~ RESCUE
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Quadrille: Even So

It’s Quardille Monday over at the dVerse Poets Pub, where Promptmaster / Drinkslinger Mish asks us to create a poem of exactly 44 words, using the word “Drum” or some derivative thereof.

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Even So

He spends his morning
banging his various drums,
trying hard to remember
he has better things to do;
more important things than
drum-banging and dreaming
of a worry-free world.
Even so,
the soporific drumbeats
beckon him
into a state of stupor.

Again.

He somnambulates.

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More Quadrille Here:
dVerse Quadrille Monday #106

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