Category: New Poems

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.

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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’.

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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

Hey! I wrote this on the bus. Apparently it IS possible to be creative even in an imperfect environment — though admittedly I had to tweak some words over the following couple of days.

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We are wading in a steam:
Some near the center
In the rushing current
Bravely standing, stumbling
Sometimes falling
Carried forward

Leaving those behind
Who are in the shallows
Clinging to branches
That reach out protectively
Impeding progress
Safe, but still

Sometimes the current
Overtakes those who embrace it
And dismiss its mad danger —
Only to fall beneath the surface
And never rise again

In the shallows, some relax their grip
And let the current take them
Slow at first, then faster
Alive, joyful
But angry that they waited for so long to let go

Most never leave the shallows
Still holding tight
Or worse, decide to seek
The cold solace of the riverbank
This time, this time
They find it

This was inspired by watching my lovely wife at the Russian River yesterday. I had lots of problems with this poem because none of the verses wanted to be like the others — I still have a long/extra line in the second verse that refuses to go away. Plus there were fish and slow moving animals in an earlier draft of the poem — but they kindly agreed to leave and await some future opportunity to help out.

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She rises golden from the water
The current cradles her memory
Her name echoes in the depths
And is whispered in the shallows

She moves with grace through nature
Which is bettered by her presence
…..and depleted by her passing
The animals bow down
And stand silent once she’s gone

She is Artemis, Athena
She is Helen bathed in starlight
She’s the west wind from the desert
Bringing promise, bringing change

I wrote this poem by dictating into the phone while walking the dog — which suggested the first line — and it progressed from there.

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Some things must be spoken
They cannot be contained
Confined to the page
Or worse
Never released as words

Some ideas should be shared
Far too big for one to lock away
And keep concealed
At risk
Of being buried with their keeper

Some rivers overflow their banks
Unbounded by the past
Too much too fast
Seeking
New paths, new hope, new life