Tag Archives: Brendon Behlke

Wrenched

Caked car parts
            thick with darkness
            dripping

                            drip

                            drip

                            dripping
                                a pool of introspection
                              soft echoes of the world
                            in hollowed tones.

  no one dares the dipping of a toe
growing
            undisturbed
                              save by itself.

the mended
                                          the broken
              both remain

the world flows through and spills out
                      all the same.

Jerricho

Seven times the trumpet sounds
seven times around
and with that
what was pillaged from the earth
is reunited,
a victory born of loss –
to herald a loss
forged in victory.

Shattered stone
cast like die
looking for lucky numbers,
while the whole world waits
silent and still
for revelation
the stars beyond run from one another
terrified to confront
any semblance of themselves.

Fortune

Like cracked crystal
broken lines questing
obscuring the path with the journey

on the other end of the beginning
there can be found only resignation
the planting of oneself.

Forgiveness, nurturing and
eventually dead dreams decompose
flourishing in the compost of our lives.

Enriching the time we have
sending our leafy limbs outstretched
embracing the sky

Like cracked crystal
broken lines questing
obscuring the path with the journey.

Earl Grey

Where the clouds drop
and dip into the streets
they find mystery;

city blocks that disappear
as a tree felled against the river
carried away with it’s rage
dragged beneath the surface.

In slow drama
the world becomes a blank face
wholly unforgiving.

From within the current
we can only ask
“is this what always has been,

blinded by a sea of clouds
severed from the world?”

The city
through the fog can only reply
in a hurried whisper secreted away,

“All dreams die in the sun.”

Planning for the Future

If these are to be the last of our days
I will tick through them all in slow seconds
never so bleak as to call out the hour
but aware enough to know the minutes.

Every moment respected and cherished
I will stay with them as long as I can
while able to wake, early and witness
these last few sun’s to rise on human eyes.

In our end the sun will not set upon all things
only on all things that include ourselves,
so as we come now to disinherit the earth
let us make it better for those that remain,

for what concern is time when it is good?

Thus We Shaped the World

Nothing is so tantalizing an emptiness
when plated against this cornucopia in time
eyes as full as stomachs
intestines balled up in knots
more discerning than the rest of us;
once, the way out was through

               It can’t go on like this.

A broken kaleidoscope is chaos;
where order was found
compartmentalized and mirrored,
now those borders are gone
the colors bleed – running
blindly into each others darkness
no longer unique – or isolated
a singular malady of the spectrum.

                It can’t go on like this.

Our voices war with the silence
raging against the rocks that choke our shores
calling out to be heard
to declare, “Once the way out was through!”
but we all speak in tongues coalesced as cacophony
and the horrors of the world demand, “listen,”

                 It can’t go on like this.

Puzzle Pieces

            We look for solutions amongst lights in the sky
    that can only be found in broken pieces
                fragments of the whole
illustrative only of what is missing
            finite space        finite only in our           limitations
        so eager to find themselves fit amongst the stars
                  to burn
                      then burn out
                                    fade
                              to darkness

                                             but always,
                                                              stars.

                                              too far away to grasp

                                            but close enough for envy.

Full Stop

Between this place and another
                  a red light hangs;
      it – the resentment,
                the pride
  opposite the green lights apology
                    unwritten
                      unspoken

pregnant with time,
    holding us hostage
                                                                                  awaiting delivery

        so we can all just move on
    get on with our lives
arrive at a destination.

Bill Brody

“It was the drugs,”
              they said,
“the trauma”
“the loneliness,”
loading him up with excuses
              he had no business
              nor inclination to carry.

He was busy,
                    always.

Ideas, drawings, paintings
            inventions, stories
                              political campaigns
                                          music, movies,

             shooting out of him
                              all hours of the day or night.

Leafy green things, alive and vibrant.

      though in the winter he would turn statue outside
                                  naked
                                        cold

                          for hours alone
                                no one to prune the eccentricities
                                      or take him inside

      and he would call me sometimes
            to talk through the night;
screaming at me of
                        decay, darkness, the hollow in himself
                    but never saying any of it out loud

Like a dead tallow tree bursting with life.

Nightmares

These days,
              if you’d seen him…

           If you could freeze a man in time
      you’d call him a cowboy.

         that’s what he looked like
                a ghost in a graveyard of mythos
        seeking asylum in the present.

But…
                                      John Wayne he wasn’t.
  Even the most brilliant of the ephemeral
              will disintegrate
when the somnolent wake from
          slothful slumber
              to find the dream to prosper
          dead and mangled

                            hanging from wires

                     dripping with joyful progress…
              each drop that falls
                                grows wings

             swarming the sky

                      blotting out the sun

         the earth
                it’s comeuppance.

Indubitably, this was his curse
          a wide brim hat
                  the shade of dying dreams
                          the ages echoed in his footsteps.