Tag Archives: existentialism

Lawn Care

It grows.
I can’t hear it,
I can’t see it,
but it grows nonetheless,
and thus I must maintain it.

My bitter responsibility,
to give my community something nice to see;
make it clear,
I have things under control.
There is nothing to hide inside this home.

Ceaselessly it grows,
and to keep it healthy;
not just well kept but vibrant,
I must feed it.
Strengthen and hasten its progress.

It grows-
and I must do more.
I must give more,
to keep it level and clean.
Not let it overtake the stake I’ve claimed,

let this plot of land
become gnarled wild tufts,
unruly- lacking discipline.
A space that
reflects aspects of the occupants it protects,

else it will grow
an uneasy sense of threat.
The not quite right
of an unkempt lawn- empty flower bed.
It grows, and so I must mow, and mow, and mow, and mow, and mow.

Desire

I need
I need

But twigs in the beginning;
piled high, unaware
of what those heights were for,
then set ablaze
raging for the air,
for the fuel.

I need
I need

I want it all and quickly,
the fibers – the paper
the wood – the tree
the house – the forest
the world!

I need
I need

Though you neglected me to embers
I still burn in darkness
slumbering angst
waiting to wake again and feed,
should you offer any more.

I need
always, I need.

Tristadem

It enters each day, guttural;
a weeded stone facade surfacing,
the bog still clinging to the parapets,
and a hollow rusted trumpets lament:
                  “Tristadem, tristadem,” it sings,
      haunting the space between.
Rising from those shadowed depths
        to soar out the crenel lacerations
          and lumber over the landscape
        collapse bluntly at my feet:
              “Tristadem, tristadem,” it moans.

My eyes furrow, bent in prayer
      that the earth swallow this foul place,
        the empty halls and echoes
              the intermittent plummet of longing wetness
dripping drops of “tristadem, tristadem,”
        on the dry parchment of any ears
            hermitted away in that stale space.
        Waiting for a days worth of dirt,
      long wood planks nailed in darkness,
    a place to lay one’s head,
and a thread to pull restless lips closed,
  so the morose melody of “tristadem, tristadem,”
            may never pierce them again.

Soliloquy

Canned corn on a steel plate,
        cooled a long time ago
        when the sun was still ripe
        and the chair was still on all fours.

Cigarette butts discarded on the stove
        crumpled like crash test dummies
        burned, brutalized and- left behind,
        are only the parts that keep you safe.

The ceiling fan is motionless above
        compensating at a tilt for the missing blade
        dead skin piled on like a snow drift
        nodding soberly in the gust from an open window.

A closed door with holes that fit like gloves
        hides the muffled sounds of lament
        from somewhere beyond desperation
        lost deep in the forest of defeat.

No one has time to finish their meal.
                      not like this
                      not like this
                      not like this

Yesterday

The years soak like rain
  through the clothes
            chilling the skin
    torturing the bones.

In the now,
                    all the days before-
            the days to come;
are a murky stew of moments
                  that obscure the current one.

I scream my first lungfull
          and take my last,
                  prepare for another.

       The stew stirs,
                cools
                    congeals;
            fresh off the stove,
                      and half finished.

                                     I don’t know…

                                     I don’t know…

               I know only,

Today is tomorrow’s yesterday.

Tomorrow

waits for no one – it but exists
          and that is enough.

           I accept the challenge
though it grows everyday.





I raise the sails each morning
      towards that great whale
                  not to hunt it down in vengeance
but to explore its yawning wake
                until at last it turns on me
            and speaks solemnly, “no more”
      having grown too great a future
                      for my sails to endure.

The Fall

Gone

   

         gone



thin clouds

                the song of sunlight
            muted without the praise of a place to settle,

      kneading itself into the billowing cotton-

   like panic trapped in a parachute

hurtling towards the ground






                           wondering

                     where it all went wrong.

A Chair Unburdened

Over me
          overwhelming
but from its end-
impartial.

Alone, we are so many things
between beginning and ending
together, we are absolute horror.

From my end;
down here,
almost close enough-
the bridge between us
is devastatingly indecisive.

From its end;
hanging there,
it remains stoic-
                  impartial.

The weight is all on me,
until at last it is not,
gifted above;
for we are nothing unburdened.

             If I can no longer be
                        the warm support
                  that allows the muscles to cool,
                the bones to settle;
I’ll at least be the platform on
which to stand.
            High enough to hang their troubles
      and let them swing,
                as they did decades ago in a box of sand-
                      impartial.

Though kicked away;
                      discarded,
          I am satisfied to resign
                      having served well
in my time.

To My Younger Self:

Enjoy the silences;
the waiting,
slow words.

Not having anything to do;
the leashed phone,
the unknown.

Bruises, cuts and wounds;
the bitter cold,
the searching soul.

The night without street lights;
uncivilized sights,
sunlit rooms.

Enjoy the world
as it was meant to be;
sober, subtle and unexplored,
because in the end
it will turn on you;
bind you in rope,
flood your eyes, your ears,
and leave you with no place
                        to call home.