Category: ☆ BEST Poems

If everybody living now
Was always giving all they can
We’d find ourselves within a world
Where all would love their fellow man

The point of giving is to show
The value others are to you
Plus those that give create respect –
Receivers now know what to do

We should value one another
As much as we respect ourselves
A world where everyone would give
Would be the best world for ourselves 

So please assume those you don’t know
Are kind and loving, just like you
Assume they’re friends, connect with love
This is the best thing you can do

I wrote this before I knew I had depression caused by ALS. I’m taking depression medication now, so my head is in a better place, but my body isn’t.

The life I lead is less than the life I follow
I need to find more purpose, more value, more soul
My emotions are empty, my brain feels nearly hollow
As if I’m buried in a deep, dark hole

My wife fills most the gaps that I am missing
She feeds me, pays the bills, maintains the house
I feel guilty, but too lazy to contribute
She’s wonderful — my lovely, helpful spouse

I’m trying (hard?) to move in the right direction
Exercise, therapy, and meds
With luck, I’ll make real progress going forward
And fix the challenge swirling in my head

Larry’s secret autobiography

So, to explain – there has been an ongoing joke among my siblings that my brother Larry wrote an ‘autobiography’ about my mom serving chicken every Sunday (which she did). Weirdly, there is an actual book titled ‘Chicken Every Sunday’ where one of my siblings subbed in Larry’s name.

We talked about it on a video call, so I felt compelled to write ‘the story’, but ended up with this poem – which I shared with my siblings. Each verse captures something from our childhood lives in West Virginia

May we have some frozen carrots?
May we have some frozen peas?
May we have some
chicken chicken
every every
Sunday, please?

Running barefoot down the alley,
Dust and oil up to our knees.
May we have some
chicken chicken
every every
Sunday, please?

Paint the house pink every summer.
Paint the bottoms of the trees.
May we have some
chicken chicken
every every
Sunday, please?

Bluegill fishing at Westvaco —
Catch one? There’re no guarantees.
May we have some
chicken chicken
every every
Sunday, please?

Find a horse and bring it back home
In the 1970s.
May we have some
chicken chicken
every every
Sunday, please?

Garage sleeping — we all did it.
Breezeway always brought the breeze.
May we have some
chicken chicken
every every
Sunday, please?

Love is an endless plummet into a dim but sparkling chasm
Hand in hand
Trusting the other to hold on tight and not let go
The destination less important than the journey

Love is a favorite novel, worn from use
Delightful and comforting
Each passage familiar, but with details missed or unremembered
Savoring each line, but eager to turn the page for what comes next

Love is a mad dash at the carnival
From ride to ride to ride
As many as we can before the lights go out and the fair closes
Out of breath, still smiling, long after the music fades from memory

Love is a timeless summer evening
The sun setting so slowly, it seems to hang in the sky, unmoving
Casting its copper light – embers visible well after the heat dies away
Until the welcoming night reaches its fingers to guide us home

It’s been a while since my last posting — mostly because I’ve been working on this. This is the longest poem I’ve ever written (it’s really nine smaller poems) and it was somewhat arduous to complete. But I’m happy with the result.

Once I was abandoned in a nursing home
Trapped in a failing body
Surrounded by confusion and fear
Living my days
Memories fading
Those around me dying, one by one
Numbly waiting for the end

Once I was lonely and alone on the playground
Each day — excluded, friendless
Acting busy doing nothing
Praying for the bell to call us back to class
Knowing that the teacher, at least
Pretended we were all equal

Once and again, I was beaten, abused
Covering up, making excuses:
Just a bad day. He’s not really like that.
It will get better. Maybe if I try harder.
Stay together for the children.
Until the day it goes too far

Once I was waiting for the train
Feeling powerless, unloved
Certain no one cared
The present unbearable, the future worse
Finding no point in living
The train approaches and I take that final step

Once I lived poor in an undeveloped country
Ignored by an ineffective and corrupt government
Watching disease take my children
Talk of a better life — just so much empty air
Stretching what little food I could get
Beyond hope
Simply existing

Once I didn’t fit someone else’s definition of normal
My hair, my clothes
My sexuality
Unthreatening, but threatened for being different
Brave, but so exposed, so afraid
If it were a choice, I would choose the easier path
I can’t change who I am

Once I was looking for a job, a way out
But opportunities were unavailable
Because of my race, my gender
Those who mistakenly believe
That minorities ‘get all the breaks’
Will never understand
The impossibly tall mountain
That we view from the bottom

Once I was slowly dying
Fading away
Whispers in the hall
My family full of tears, but already moving on
My friends avoiding me — not knowing what to say
Living my remaining days like a ghost
With one word on my lips —
Unfair!

Once I lived on the streets of a large city
Cold, tired, hungry
Sleeping on cardboard, digging through garbage
Not fully sure how I got here
People pass
To them I’m nothing
But I know how small and easy the step is
From their lives
To mine

What got me going writing this was a sidewalk sign in San Francisco inviting me in for lunch ‘if I had an hour’.

If I gave you an hour
Would you spend it
On inconsequential nothings
Thinking it too short to do something worthwhile

If I gave you a day
Would it pass you by so quickly
That tomorrow looking back
You would wonder where it went

If I gave you a year
Would it fade into the stream of your existence
Just another fleeting summer
One more sure step toward death

If I gave you a lifetime
Would you, looking back
Wish for an hour, a day, a year
A lifetime – another chance
To make it worthwhile, to do it right