Poem : L O V E IS?

Love is many things
And sadly
Some will go a lifetime without ever knowing what it really is
Or worse
Watch it slip away like a leaf floating in a stream
Love is a powerful force
The strongest I believe
So strong it washes away all the mistakes
All the hurt
All the uncertainty in an instant
Melts it away
Like footprints in the sand lapped softly by the gentle waves of the sea
Love mends with precision
Precisely putting the pieces of broken hearts back together
Love is understanding
Compassion
Forgiveness
Love is to look inside one another
To see the real person and love them with all that you have to give
To look past the curtains that were drawn
The walls that have been put up
And to see
I mean really see who they are in their spirit
Their soul
To gaze upon the real beauty within
For the outward will fade with time
Love is not taking one another for granted
Ever
For the sands of time might stop falling for you tomorrow
Love is letting go of all the chaos around you
Come in from the storm and seek shelter
Shelter inside one another
To feel each other’s emotions
To have butterflies floating inside you and your heart beat so fast you want to pass out
It’s taking the time to realize somehow you’ve made a wrong turn
Backing up and working together
To make a new path stronger than before
Love is communication
Love is all of these things
But most of all love is a powerful thing
　
　
　
　
　
　
　

Poem : The Writers Of War

The poet reads, For Whom The Bell Tolls
And wonders
Is this war?
Or is this poetry?
Hemingway and Gellhorn
Entangled in the bullets or war
Behind the barbwire coiled like springs
Lying for miles across the Spanish countryside
Two writers wrote without hesitation
When the sour smell of death hung all around them
Hemingway and Gellhorn continued to write
When the bombs falling on the front
Shook the tables on which they typed
Hemingway and Gellhorn continued to write
Two lovers
Two writers
Living life without the fear of tomorrow
For fear
For them
Had to be not living their lives to the fullest
On the edge of humanity
For they were the eyes of war
Reporting what they saw on the front
Seeing what the whisky could not wash away from their minds
Battlefields drenched with blood of the dying
War orphans roaming the streets
Mothers weeping over their sons not coming home
Lying dead on the hillsides of Spain
Hemingway and Gellhorn
The writers of war

Poem : My Father Wasn’t A Hippie

My father grew up on the edge of nowhere
You know
Out there
Where the sweet southern sunset slips into the horizon
That tawny burning ball that brings on the night and awakes the next morning
You know
Out there
A place where cell phones still have no service
He left school in 6^th grade to cut tall yellow pines for timber
Deep in the black waters of the Okefenokee
With his father and brothers
Hacking away with sharp shiny axes
Or Crosscut saws cutting
Pulling ‘til their arms were on fire
Until the tree twisted and fell to the ground
Just to be cut once more
Then the mules were geared up for the dragging
My father guided them through Cyprus knees and mud
With the dreaded cottonmouths slithering along the swamp’s surface
And the gators lining the banks of the water
My father was far from a Hippie
He was a North Florida Plowboy
Growing up in the Depression
With pockets empty and bellies the same
He could not afford much
But he could afford a hair cut
My father Wasn’t A Hippie

Poem : Mice In The Attic

These days it seems
There are mice in my attic
In my walls
Under my floor
Scurrying about
These mice remind me more and more of the people I see
Well, people remind me of these mice
Moving
Looking
Tiptoeing with tiptoes of quiet
Not wanting to step too loudly
Dancing around subjects of discomfort
With silence
With whispers
With perfection
For if they
Shriek too sharply with shrill sounds that shiver my spine
I would know
I would hear what they were saying
And this, would not do
So they walk and talk
And gossip among themselves
And spread their disease
Quiet like the mice in my attic
In my walls
Under my floor

Poem : Stripped Away

Sometimes I get the blues
I mean the real down and outs
All I can do is play my guitar late into the night
Bending the strings
Into a course of moans and cries that drift away in the darkness
Making them speak so I don’t have to
When my voice is too sad to talk
When I feel stripped away
By life
By luck
By no luck at all
Layer by layer
The feelings fall from me
Until I feel nothing at all
Stripped away
Like the dead ear from a stalk
Dried up and fallen from life
A life of who I once was
Or at least can still remember
So I play these six strings
Even when I don’t feel like picking the guitar up
When my arms feel weak
From depression running through my mind
Through my body
That I can barely hold them up
And all I really want is to sleep
But I can’t sleep
For it was stripped away too
Long, long, ago
Stripped with the utmost perfection
Like a lot that was apart of my life

Poem : Stars In The Sky

As the twilight begins its freefall into complete darkness
When the stillness is only interrupted
By the fog rolling in on the land
I sit outside and remember
Remember my friend from so long ago
For he has left me today
Now his memory is all I have left
I can still see him
In a clip from a scratchy home movie
Out of sync with his words
Yet priceless now that he’s gone
His image captured before good technology
When everything seemed a little more rough
Not as refined
A time when the stars and moon meant something
For we were taught as kids
That’s where you go when you die
“Up there,” My father would say
Pointing high above him
To a thousand pinholes of light called stars in the blackened sky
Yes, it was a time when people actually looked up and imagined
Not type in a description and wait for the flawless image to appear
Appear on their flat screen
Powered by a search engine
When people walked among the wildlife
Without fear that the wildlife would ask them for change
When people weren’t so caught up
In what the world wanted them to be
It was simple back then
Now
It’s just simply painful what we’ve become
Or at least what we strive to become
Flawless
Perfect
Yet none of it will bring my friend back
But nothing can take his memory away

Poem : Dreams Of The Past

I once fell asleep in a boxcar
Crawled in to get out of the weather
Seeing my breath in the air
Seeing rain fall from a blackened sky
Made it an easy choice for the making
This box of steel wheels of rolling
Would be my home for that moment
But the boxcar was not rolling
And I wasn’t a Hobo
I was not even a poet
But my mind was taking in all of the world that was around me
Sub-notes for the pen
For the paper
That would follow years later
A slide-show that every writer depends on
For if you are not in this world taking your punches
Your writing will be dull and tasteless
You have to experience it
All of it
Good or bad
Feeling those cold nights when alcohol fools your body
Into believing your outside is as warm as your inside
Burning from cheap rum in a bottle
With friends that were alive but less than savory
Now
Looking back
Is the only way I can see the wild ones
From that time and place where we didn’t care about tomorrow
Some passed away and are sleeping
Sleeping in the sweet southern grounds of our home
Some went to prison never to be free again
Few escaped either fates handed out by the card-puller of destiny
Yet sometimes I still see them you know
Working together or just hanging out
Like nothing was ever the different
Then I wake from my dream sick from the realness
The realness of it all is too much to stomach
And now I sit sleepless
Listening to the rain fall outside my window
When I know the same rain is falling outside of their cell
Or down on the plush green grass of their graves
And I remember that time in the boxcar
With no where to go
It’s corrugated steel walls were home for a day