Tag Archives: behlke

Bob finds himself in a world for which he has no understanding (painting by David Lynch)

The curtains open on a stage
    familiar in its revelation
        dark clouds pulled down by sticks
     the day dwindling in the distance
        like an unkempt fire tired of all the burning
in a smoke damaged sunset.

          Dead faces stare back at you/nothing
             trapped in agony but free of it
       gifting the burden to another

           to Bob.

      Bob’s life is a thick hide- matted
          Bob is an arm with digits
                 in control
                    part of a clear purpose
              attached to a body of questions
                     used as answers
           and wearing the toll like a tattered flag

                 drowning.

             Bob is wanting.
         Bob is watching
                 While you are watching Bob
Both are trying to come away with loose change from the price of admission

                              Both are broke.

A Night Cap

The universe has brought this moment together
  as it has with every other
    shaped from the courage of stars
      and the tenacity of mutation
manifest as you, here, now.
   Four barbs of a flower
      buried deep within me
         and only digging deeper.
The pain I feel looks like bright colors
    smells like velvet and tree bark
        tastes like crisp ocean salt.
The pain is warm like love
     sharp like satire,
  brilliant like sunlight trapped in crystals.
The pain is knowing what a gift it is
      to have you here
in this moment
in time and space
    but know that you’re not.

The Art of Time Travel

Let us just assume they are entangled,
all the particles within your body
mirrored by another as yet obscured,
for definition will find them strangled.
This form is your new future embodied.
Such speed and distance bends space in contours,
the two forms become unaligned in time.
This is when to become the one copied
if you have lived long enough to endure
and let suicide be your final crime
and cure.

Breanna

Her will to grow, intrepid
as I’m sure you’ve concluded
from all that she’s completed
and what that has included

to become this young woman
and follow her compunction;
climb each rung in succession
in a blur of ambition.

Her laugh is infectious,
a disarming politeness
and a sense of injustice
an alarming forthrightness.

Let the world accommodate
all that she can contemplate
without any caveat
Let her greatness emanate.

Harvest

True love is draws from deep within;
where quiet thoughts can now begin
and extracted from the mind
like ripe fruit pulled off the rind
to be shared with one who is starved
and set their mind to be carved;
the rough edges citrus-hewn
leave you shaped by love’s sharp tune.
Both parties give and they take
yet each for the other’s sake
and both become their better
sharing these adaptive fetters.
For love unshared will only spoil,
never to seed life’s fertile soil,
but when such fruit shares its prize
that bounty balloons in size
and those who are this way fed
find that good health lies ahead;
their convictions will harden
and they plant fertile gardens.

A Shotgun for Last Place in the One Horse Race

It’s hard sometimes to keep control
when the world comes to collect it’s toll,
but the world is such a massive thing
once its intent gets into full swing
because the world is more than it was
drifting from orbit to a new cause.
A harnessed thing with a barbed bridle,
the world gallops towards a false idol.
In time the world will get what it wants
and we will be the ones whom it haunts;
for once it has died a thousand deaths
the world will scream with its last breath,
“the world that birthed you can be no more
all life was sacrificed for this war,”
and the jockey will exclaim with joy
as it makes another world its toy.
But for now this world is tough to bare
as a parasite on a small square
filled to explosion with all its fruit
force fed in spite of the worlds dispute
so the jockey can address the world
with its long fiery cloak unfurled
and an old salt lick in its right hand,
the whip readied should the world demand,
“Woe to the world that has suffered such,
curse these people who asked for so much.”
Both parties will take from me their need,
though surely by now I am poor feed.

A Sense of Purpose

Crash
an impact
felt
heard
something else;
a sense of knowing,
like a phantom limb backwards.
The mind feels the time
though the time is not there
until it is.
Then…
Crash
and you’re in it
but you’re also not.
outside the body is
another sense.
a sense of self.
Your mind coddles the body
through all the trauma
shushes your cries to muted drama
lost beneath a sea of reality,
pain like bubbles surfacing
popping
merging invisible,
while the mind puts it all in a bag
and sets it aside.
This is not the time.
The tide rushes at you with violence,
and…
Crash
Things break and bend
in contortions unending
as if limbs and joints
all scattered in different directions
to escape the aggression
but found that they were bound
to a body that could only yield
by breaking
and then…
Crash
You are hit with the sense of ending.