Previously Unreleased!

September is the best month for many reasons that shall go unnamed, but it seems to also be the best month for this lil' blog of mine. I mean, I just feel like updating it more often this month. The following are some poems written awhile ago that can't be found online, even on my other site (yes, I have another site that I no longer update. The link is on this very blod, in case you missed it). They're just poems that either didn't feel right at first, or for whatever reason I just didn't pass them around. Some are funny; some are personal; some are just interesting concepts taken from my overly active imagination. Hope you like 'em. :)


Savannah
Would you walk with me, if you could?
Though you were born small
you grew in my heart like this city.
I always returned to you, like the child I am,
but your center is the place I looked for,
where the lights shine. Yet you are hidden
in the alleys of the cobblestone streets
that line the river between us.

You draw me in like the marsh tide
and I cannot escape the one way streets
or the city squares that we would circle.
Time pulls at me; I cannot stay here.

I move away and seeing you becomes special,
as if I never took you for granted,
or wanted to get away from the old buildings,
the hanging oaks that hide the open sky.
Revisiting, I wonder who left who behind.
But this is the last time I’m coming back;
this is the end of the known roads;
these are the final steps of childhood.

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Elegy from Savannah
I.
This is the last look into my world,
one of many created, one of my many stars,
the lighthouses that guide me home.
Even in the dark of night, I could find my way here.
The stars shine bright far from the city;
I would watch them from the lawn out back.

At the peak of my youth, I saw meteors falling
and I too am coming down, one last time
to see the house where I grew up,
the house that I am leaving behind.
The welcome lights are on inside,
but now they remind me of fire.

II.
The boxes line the hallway and the stairs.
Dust, like the sun, hangs in the air.
As if I’ve entered inside my heart
and begun to take the rooms apart,
unshelving the memories left behind.
I thought I would cry, but the feeling’s numb;
this kind of clean-up clutters my mind,
trying to package what I’ve become.
I wish, sometimes, to return to where
the house was the world of each new start.

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College Guys
Some college guys still wear diapers.
Not the paper or cloth kind,
but something a little more spiritual,
not wanting to flush or shower
like they think Peter Pan would do it,
perhaps mistaking regression for rebellion,
because they never learned to spell good.

Sometimes I’m too angry and harsh;
I don’t mean to say I’ve grown up,
being the “capable guy” in a black suit
who slides into work with black Porsche.
That’s not the point, never was.
College isn’t about escaping our home,
but becoming our own parent.

Somewhere in a white room
you’re an old man catered to by nurses
who change your diaper and feed you.
You’re done. You can’t do it anymore.
Is this the picture you’re painting?
You might think I’m suggesting growth
but maybe I’m saying “take care of yourself.”
The original reason you came here, wasn’t it like that?

---------------------------

Envy
I believed it was magical, your life,
like the fairytales I read night after night.
You with her, smiling like heroes
riding away with the sunset in sight.

But you told me it was a labyrinth
with forking paths and no set trail,
no string rolling behind you, and no compass
to the red center, an end yet veiled.

To think a wish could trap your soul
and drag the imagination of your heart
through hedges and dirt, and leave marks
on your world; I, too, want a clean start.

We are alike; I give back the words:
“You don’t know how good you are.”
To think I wanted to be something like you,
I’ll throw away envy, but remember the scar.

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Like Children On Swings
When does love begin?
Even a child can see in my eyes
the embers catching flame in the wind.
He asks his simple question as we stand apart
in a room of crowded people:
“Do you love her?”

I see her talking over there.
Dreams and overplayed images
flow from my mind to my heart,
a flooding river. I say,
“I don’t know.”
and laugh at nothing, eyes looking away.

When does love begin?
Leave it to a child to drag such heavy words
from the depths of my well.

There’ll be no easy sleep tonight,
with thoughts sloshing side to side,
like a bucket, half empty.
I already don’t know when I’m dreaming,
but I often wake before sunrise.

If smiling and laughing with you was enough,
I could give you beautiful words.
If unease and shots to my gut were simple things,
I could move on from here.
But as it is, we’re like children on swings:
meeting for moments and going nowhere.

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The Silent Dream
I saw the closed door at the end of the long hallway,
there where people once dwelled, but now the lights were off
for I knew the furthest rooms were vacant,
the beds stripped one by one, and the furniture put in place.

I stood with cold bare feet at the other end by the drinking fountain
beneath a bright glow that stretched itself even to this distant door,
the one that appeared stuck shut and glued by the shadows
until it silently opened, as if sliding on well-oiled hinges.

My father came out of the darkness as a young man.
He who I recognized from pictures passed the empty places
to put in the mouth of my hands a small gold throne
complete with the old king, whose weight I could not bear.

We held it together, molding away my darker fears
detailing instead airplanes, butterflies, and angels
but I didn’t fly away or drop the ancient treasure
because he showed me how to hold it alone.

Then a child tugged at my pant-leg, my unknown child.
What could I do for him, now with my hands full?
Though he was tired and thirsty I could not carry him,
and my father had vanished, so we were alone together.

The eyes of that child trusted me and looked up to me.
So I took my father’s treasure and formed a footstool
upon which he stood to drink from the fountain’s river.
Surely in his dreams he will remember what I handed down.

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The Old Man’s Torch
In a stubborn dry field
where dusk singes the horizon
and shines like fool’s gold off the tall grass,
but reveals no path to tread
the old man is walking

step by step.

Torch in hand
and wearing the black of night,
he overlooks the unkempt remains
of a long and fruitful season
coming to a fated end

step by step.

The flames yearn to escape
from the dark wind to this wasted space.
He readies his torch to swing like a scythe.
“You’ve had your freedom.
Here is justice.

The harvest is over.”