Sonnet

He lays in bed expecting to get up
Before his final day has come around.
He begs for wine (at least another cup)
And hopes they won’t forget what he has found:

The more you’ve had, the shorter all days get;
Unfinished works are all there is to read;
The things we care for most, we soon forget;
Our favored paths must always backward lead.

Expecting more is what the foolish do:
They smile and try to live the perfect day;
They cross their fingers, pray the truth’s not true,
Pretend their sun will never fade away.

But one more day is more than one day earned.
We cross the only bridge we’ve ever burned.

After his sixth day
listening to beepers
tangled in wires
plugged into monitors
and injected and injected
again and again and again
his seventh day dawned.
He closed his eyes
and it occurred to him:
it was only Friday,
not his usual Day of Rest.

I’m extremely grateful to Tiny Seed Press editors Emily Cayer and Laura Stone for including my poem “The Calling” in the recently released (ie October 12) print anthology entitled Poetry of the Wild Flowers, an outstanding collection (almost 200 poems!).

I apologize for not getting the word out sooner, but, ummm… life happens, eh?

You can purchase the anthology here
and
You can Read “The Calling” here

Absquatulater, Baby!

“Absquatulate?” he asked. “Absquatulate? I never heard of it! What the hell does it mean? It sounds like something you’d do in a gym, y’know, like doing a whole bunch of squat thrusts to tighten up your abductor muscles. Absquatulate? Are you sure that’s even a word? You’re not jerking me around, are you? You know I take my vocab shit serious, right?”

He stood there, waiting for a response, then looked over his shoulder to discover that she’d slunk out the back door.

Vanished.

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Sammi Cox Weekender #334
10.21.2023 — 85 Words
~ Absquatulate ~
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His current black-bound journal
(the cheapest he’s ever owned)
has scars and stains on its cover
and nothing but drivel inside.

His favored pen these days
is still a Pilot G-2, 1.0
with ink darker than dark and
smudgier than any ballpoint,
but totally incapable of
rendering anything worthwhile
no matter how much he writes.

And he used to love waiting rooms;
used to drive to the hospital,
flip a coin between maternity
and the same-day surgery ward
and sit there, scribbling, all day long.

But not so much, anymore.
He’s all alone in the world now,
waiting with the other waiters
with nothing but his ratty journal
and a splotchy, almost empty Pilot
to help him kill his time.

He’d like to think
his waiting days are over.
Apparently, they’re not.

It’s Quadrille Monday again at the dVerse Poets Pub; time to create a 44-word poem.

This week, we’re asked to create a poem using the word “Fold” or some incorporation thereof.

Thanks to De Jackson (aka WhimsyGizmo) for hosting and getting us started.

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Killing The Visionary

Not believing my claim of blindness
they blindfolded me anyway.

(Not that I needed to, but
I could have just closed my eyes.)

I would have preferred earplugs
so as not to hear their rifles loading;

not to hear the orders: “Ready! Aim! Fire!”

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dVerse Poets Pub
Quadrille Monday #186
~ Fold ~
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I’m honored to be included in Christine E. Ray’s ongoing Brave & Reckless blog project, posting newer works in support of her (already published) print / Kindle anthology Darker Objects. 

You can find and order the anthology HERE.

My poem “l’objet sombre” is up today, posted at Christine’s blog, Brave & Restless:

Meanwhile,
Read  l’objet sombre  Here

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Lost In Space

Some nights I can stand outside
and stare at the Milky Way,
study the uncountable stars, marvel
at the magnificence, and know that
(no matter how far away) it’s all a
part of my home, all just a distant
room I haven’t yet fully explored.

But tonight the Milky Way is just
a million billion stars, a million billion
miles away, not brilliant, not even
bright, certainly not home, hardly
worth even a second’s thought.

Tonight is the darkest of nights;
there is no Milky Way. Tonight
I am a million billion miles away.

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10.14.2023 – Lost

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It’s Wednesday. Ronovan encourages us to try an Ovi Poem.
Read about the Ovi form here.
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Lissen Up, Hater

There’s no such thing as victory.
As any lame-brained fool can see,
there’s only us; it’s you and me.
Let’s give peace a chance.

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Ronovan’s Wednesday Poetry
10.11.2023 – Ovi Poetry 17
~ Victory ~
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A Shadorma sequence, originally composed for last year’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo), but edited and re-presented here today for this week’s Wednesday Writing Challenge from Gerry & Sue:

“Identity”…

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Some Other Guy, Maybe?

Is that me?
Are you sure that’s me?
Wait. Wait. Wait.
Let me look.
Have I shaved off my eyebrows?
Who took this picture?

When was this?
I don’t remember…
Is that you
behind me?
What the hell were we doing?
Are you sure that’s us?

I get it.
You’re putting me on.
Ha Ha Ha
What a joke.
You almost had me there. Wow.
No? No joke, you say?

Well then, what?
When was this taken?
Yesterday?
Are you sure?
But what about my eyebrows?
Wait a minute. Wait…

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