Tag Archives: behlke

Unfinished

In my youth I found challenge everywhere
hidden in words with dynamic meanings
discovering what it’s like to be new
and make sense of the world I was born in.
I hid behind books and entertainment;
as if that would make me feel less alone.

Once put on stage I had to take great care
to decide on my intent and leanings
and pray to find success among so few
who had failed life and lost all but their skin.
I redefined my goals and attainment;
I moved my failures into the end-zone.

My divorce left me drowning in despair
nothing before had been so demeaning
my children’s vision of me torn askew
losing house, home, and all that I had been.
I traded it all for an arraignment;
she poisoned the term “father” on her own.

The days have since wore me down smooth and bare
given me time for order and cleaning
to find value in the years that ensue.

Goals

Things you should do before you go:
– Love so deeply you cry yourself to sleep
– be humbled as you watch your hero weep
– give up on something you are not good at
– make one attempt at “the aristocrats!”
– teach a stranger how to do something new
– teach them how to do it better than you
– endanger yourself helping another
– have a friend call you sister or brother
– find your real family out in the wild
– be accosted for acting like a child
– break something that is irreplaceable
– discover your goals are erasable
– do nothing so long you are entertained
– build worlds from the errant thoughts that remain
– kill and bury yourself at least three times
– forgive yourself of all your crimes
– transcribe your mind into a work of art
– share the words that are etched within your heart
– lose yourself in a place you can’t pronounce
– find yourself mirrored in someone who counts
– tell someone you love deeply “goodbye”
– be content enough with yourself to die.

Narcissus

Find yourself in the waters reflection
the genuine self in diffused rabble
now a confused amalgamation of light and propagation
spread thin as to be comforted by the prison.

(you cannot leave this place)
the shore impresses on the waves,
as they rail against their shackles
only to split their wrists
and bleed out their intentions.

Might I suggest you just step away
backing out of the commitment slowly
take enough accountability to look yourself in the eye
as you abandon it to the transient and say (goodbye)
leaving it to decay or die
whichever be your predilection.

Myodesopsia

The tramp trembled to look through light
a fast fight with the eyes
against the now nebulous night
filling white wounds like flies.

And the noise! It just kept coming
a deep drumming down beat
to hide the sense of succumbing
in a sweet thrumming treat
ears decisively devour
till it sours and spoils
into something dark and dower
in late hours tired toil.

“Could it be that damn devils drink?”
the tramp thinks through the shakes
light and sound beating him to brink
both synced to bend and break.

Alone

Cold walls make emptiness hollow
a word becomes a paragraph
but the silence is often worse;
that soft, sobered condemnation.

It grows on you like wilted vines
masking mortar and stoic stones
with a web that pulls at the bones
and antagonizes the spine
into emergency room lines.
‘Twas silence that broke Apollo
and surely I too will follow
beneath all this desolation
with my own frigid narration;
cold walls make emptiness hollow

but they fit the mood of the thing.
So I sit, intensely alone
processing all that I was shown
wearing tragedy like a ring;
the whole of my mind in a sling
thoughts circled like an epitaph
rubbed raw in stone on my behalf.
‘Ouroboros,’ the term scoured
when spoken at the right hour
a word becomes a paragraph.

Poisonous prose sinking inside
deep within the ardent soil
that place where thoughts oft wont to roil
and become greater than they should
louder than the self ever could
spitting out erratic free verse
without pause or time to rehearse
and asking, “repeat after me,”
so you spew disheveled debris…
but the silence is often worse.

A void mirrored is oppressive
a wave that splits the earth and sky
sent upon us to purify
turning the peaceful aggressive
the charitable, possessive.
Nothing is more than stagnation.
It’s more than obliteration.
It is the ego sacrificed
sold out for a zero-sum price
that soft, sobered condemnation.

Relativity

There between the stars
are lights from afar
stars themselves
blackened by distance
dulled by time
and lost to naivety.

A certain level of corruption
foreshadows their revelation
some darkness within
siphoned from the void without
to leave these distant galaxies gasping for air
with us greedily grasping at their corpses
and calling it power.


The audacity.


A corpse can’t smell a corpse through its fetid remains.

One Act Play

The air conditioner sounds are raging
orchestrated Freon and mechanics
but the notes fall on deaf ears, just staging
to support a troupe of thoughts in panic
but their choreography is manic.
All the actors have forgotten their lines
they walk the stage like a field of land mines
switchblade feet stabbing at the wooden planks
too focused to recognize the call signs
catching angry vegetables with a “thanks”