Maybe I'll Learn to Tune it Out

There's a bitterness at the back of my throat
that makes me want to shout out words
like Justice and Fairness,
but they're meaningless,
lip-service words, created to prop-up
an illusion.
Drowning in our vocabulary
we build walls with words
creating opaque thoughts
that even a poet
cannot see through.

An Agony of Hyacinths

Lying sideways in the wet grass,
trying to capture the hyacinth
in late day sun.
The click of a shutter and I look,
instantly,
at the image and smile.
Then a shadow passes
and I wonder what I've lost.
No longer waiting
in excusite agony
for the film to be processed,
wondering,
hoping,
that just one image
would match
what I saw with my eyes.
Befuddled by progress.
Unwilling
to go back.

Don't Fall into the Nothing, You Can't Get Out

Trying to imagine nothing
and failing at something
so small
seeming
of a task.
Adamant,
that empty space
cannot be nothing
for it is space
filled with hope
and dreams
and the fabrications
of millions who hoped
and dreamed and failed.
Peculiar time,
night, as a wakeful mind
and tired body
compete
for attention.
Each losing.

In response to Three Word Wednesday and Poetic Asides Day 6

The Sky is Falling

Today, there is no sky.
Low hanging clouds
and ever-present mist
give the illusion of
cardboard cutout buildings
pasted to Damask backdrops.
Stick, crayon-drawn, trees
are smudged into the cloth.
The space which used to seperate
here from there has been compressed.
Paper doll people try their best
to take form in this
two-dimensional world
but find little hope
of standing out,
so they huddle inside
and dream
of substance.

The Hopeless Romantic

The distance between our hands
is 2 inches
at their closest point.
Yet I can count
a nearly uncountable number
of objects in our way.
Atoms of oxygen,
protons and neutrons.
Quarks,
be they strange or charmed
is the mind of physics,
cannot compel
your hand
to reach out
and touch mine.

*In response to Day 4 of the PAD Challenge

Another Real

The dream shatters
with the noise of morning,
so delicate is the night.
Morning rises, gray and wet,
intensifying the disconnect.
Real seems less concrete,
like it could simply be a message
from another real, onto my own.
And, what I see with my eyes
and touch with my hands
could shatter.
Just like the dream.
I hold the counter for balance,
then pick up an apple.
I can feel the resistence of the skin
as I bite and hear the solid crunch.
Juice trickles down my chin
and I let it roll down,
tucking under my chin.
My vision clears as two worlds
rejoin as one.
Real.
Again.

*In response to Sunday Scribblings #261

In the Cosmic Sense

The world spins in retrograde motion
on Fridays,
though time does not follow.
Clock faces melt like Dali paintings,
to deal with the paradox.
Time shrugs its shoulders and laughs
at our silly machinations.
How we can believe we have a chance
versus the eons.
Against particles of nothing
which have existed since time did not.
So we ask for an explanation,
in terms we can understand.
But Time smiles at the small dimple
in the fabric and knows
that a single stitch
can mend whatever hole
we try to tear.
And so it continues on.

*In response to the first prompt for the April PAD here.