Between despair and anger
Defiance took its root;
Whatever cards she had been dealt,
She wouldn’t follow suit
And carry other’s well-meant dreams,
These burdens they’d lay on her —
For only when you’re true to you,
Have you behaved
With honor
Tag: Character Sketches
24 Indulgences – VIII
He chased a hundredweight of gold,
It fled from him like it had wings;
She sought her pleasure in the wind,
An all the promise summer brings
They stood out in a field of red,
Him, focused on his troubles,
While she was barely listening
And mostly blowing bubbles.
“It is a scandal how things are,”
He thought he saw her nodding —
And so he angrily went on,
Which took but little prodding
But when he paused to take a breath,
She said, “It’s gotten breezy.
And how you choose to live —
You had to know it wasn’t easy.”
He watched her purse her lips again,
The flowers swayed in rhythm:
And he thought, maybe blowing bubbles
Is a kind
Of wisdom
To share is human:
To Walk Together —
He’d never been the high-achievement kind.
He heard about it from his ex a lot —
But yet, he is not lazy, just the type
Who’s happy taking care of what he’s got;
Instead of restlessly acquiring more.
She’d wanted more than just to share a bed.
Relationships of hers had all devolved
To homely power struggles in the end —
With men who knew no ease from problems solved;
Men she left off as tendentious and sore.
But then, they met, and it was love at once.
Her love to him engendered his content:
He loved her as a wildflower grows
To watch and cherish for its sight and scent,
Without attempting to improve its store
To walk together:
Life and love, explore –
To walk together —
All they’d each
Longed for
To share is human:
both always sides
she tends to see both
always sides and
likes to argue soft
and long
and there encircles
hair and eyes that will
at once be here
and gone
for somewhat sadness hides
her smile behind
the brown that
signals love
and every heart is hers
to hold and
everyone she knows
she’s of
To share is human:
Meanwhile, In The Real World
Cassandra writes far better than
I ever, ever could;
But keeps most of it in her mind
Where it does little good
Abiding with her cigarettes
And straight Crown Royal shots;
Anesthetizes her regrets
Picks off her straggling thoughts
For cynical and sexual
Is how she likes to be:
But yet beneath the skin and ink
Is pure humanity
She lives in an apartment
With a lingering touch of mold;
While I live in my luxury
Amidst suburban gold
She scorns me, but she’d do me
To submit me, to control:
As nightly, she must strangle out
The poet
In her
Soul
To share is human:
Salesman
He never takes the window seat
He still takes yellow taxis
He knows the world is round he’s felt it
Spinning on its axis
And Thursdays mean one more hotel
A bad night’s sleep to follow
A different type of homelessness
And every kind
Of hollow
To share is human:
quarantine
a job that feels like quarantine,
and he a leper, cast away,
that is the way that is seen
for roughly half of every day
until he goes back home at night,
and locks his bike up to the bars
and lets the little spaniel out
who thinks he hung the moon and stars
