070123A
-----------

Comes slam down hard
as a dog eared cliche
yellowed pages
well thumbed
copy of those games
people play.

Playing cards
stained with body fluids
spelling out permissions
given specific moves
and bumping off
any maybe competition.

People play games
making carnal wagers
gambling money
and various body parts
feathering gaming rooms
gilt with desire.

Objects of lust
and lust for objects
throwing themselves
across wide sprawls
between the bar stools
and inked in arms.

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

110223A
-----------

Editing and revising
those regretted words
ought to be retitled
Book of Common Mistakes
a definitive guidebook
for the romantically inclined
leading to do it yourself
versions of disaster
that you can never untangle.

Those misguided knots
that most people end up tying
that needed to be cut
because they do not untie
same as ruined shoelaces
that would not come undone
loose ends taking up time
and no other way to spend it
within the tight constraints.

You cannot know
what you do not know
and worse yet
when you most need
to know it
because the truth really is
that what you need to know
is entirely irrational
and entirely absurd.

You could never guess
even half that much
before it was too late
when all you have done
is to make more mistakes
concerning all the mistakes
you never knew you made
and never really knowing
what the truth is.

It is that sort of place
and I know
you will disregard this
and every other warning
because it feels right
and it seems reasonable
feeling it right down deep
in your misleading skin bag
of rattle and laugh bones.

You did not have a prayer
of any real chance
because no one told you
but they let you think
that you really knew
and there are always fools
who really believe
you will figure it out
for yourself, given time.

You never did
and you never will
and that is what living it
down is all about
while learning to pretend
in convincing ways
you have really discovered
your true satisfaction
in nothing of the sort.

Eventually realizing
if only you had been
so much better informed
as to the real options
that you knew nothing of
before it was too late
and only after thoughts
making no real difference
in terms of losses and gains.

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

130223A
-----------

Cannot put spilled milk
back into the bottle
to make it good as new
after it hits the floor.

The snow on the ground
reminds you
of the spilled kindness
that no one wanted.

You will live it down
as it melts away
into the same old mud
you crawled out from.

You had no real right
to be anything
other than selfish
but you made the mistake.

It all goes sour
due to immediate lashings
curdled by acid tongues
deep as blood and marrow.

You had no right
to try to save anyone else
except to realize
you could not save yourself.

Your white flag
signifying total surrender
appeared far too late
spilling across the floor.

That too going sour
torn into yellowed strips
to bind up the allegations
of our cowardice.

No one living or dead
really cares anymore
and you can join them
when you are ready.

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

130223B
-----------

It is not those we held
within the prisons of our lives
that were loved most
but those we chose to release
to some other different fate
that were whom we really loved.

Love ends up that way
though that is not a sort of love
that we ever really wanted
as though shooting ourselves
so someone else can get away
from nothing to offer.

Those instances that pass
as rare self cognizance
knowing who, what and where
we really are in relation
to the blind side of our wanting
no matter harm or damage done.

Love is such a contrary matter
defiant of what is common
as to what we were taught
and what trended to be learned
in contexts of ordinary desires
and common fears of loss.

As long as it was very ordinary
and nothing exceptional
that we feared to lose
we might have been condemned
to suffering it
rather than losing it.

We were once beautiful losers
in our fear of losing
letting go of the wrong things
and holding on similarly
to lost causes and lost flesh
making saints of our devils.

Love being the saddest thing
we ever came to know of
and the most misunderstood
among all ideas and reasons
for every love is a wanting
loved at some other's expense.

Even the wealthiest impose
their cost of love on whatever
thus seeking to possess
falsifying any generosity
in bad bargains made
on false and vain pretense.

Footnote :

As I was editing, amending, various old writings, from the early 1990s, there were some thoughts in mind. So I penned that little bit of verse based on those thoughts in mind. As to how wrong everything so often is, even if we truly believe it is mostly right, at various mostly wasted portions of earlier life. Only to realize too late that we had it mostly wrong, rather than right, along with everyone else that we once knew, who also had it as wrong as we ourselves tended to have it. No one having taught us any better, even though definitely ought to have. How we ever got any of it right at some later time, if we did get it right as some of us did, is a mystery and a miracle of sorts. We would never have guessed how to do that based on what we were taught, nor based on what we were inculcated with on the basis of "peer pressures". Quite the contrary. Quite amazing really how utterly insane our society is from that sort of standard. It simply keeps promoting and perpetuating its same old mistakes as if they are the actual truth.

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

1302223C
-------------

These times of blood
and seething crisis
stirred in to thicken
vices and corruptions.

We once dreamt
such beautiful dreams
but those too are turned
into too rich a feast.

Left neither the time
nor the means
for the raising up
of better monuments.

We are the cancelled
left tangled up in the red
tape, flags and banners
that ended our ambitions.

Too late to start again
with new red tape
waving flags and banners
of our personal revolutions.

It would take years to try
to resolve the little details
thus it would cost far too much
and we no longer have the time.

Left to challenged to keeping
our mementos and bodies
in mock semblances to order
as if it really matters.

Our defects are too many
for any further marketing
to the sell out crowd
that sold itself out long ago.

The audience has gone
on its quest for sex and death
leaving our bones rattling
subsequent to a usual gnawing

Reminded of the threats
promising constant hunger pangs
leaving you chewing
on bits of competition.

There are so many more
ways that lead to dying
that we can longer really find
any of the ways to live.

Feeling lucky if we can pay
the price for failed attempts
at the few remaining
parlours of common amusements.

They are there to pass time
but offer nothing interesting
and no one really wants
what now counts as leftovers.

Knowing we were closed down
as soon as we ever learned
how to try to open up
even if to the wrong people.

We wanted to be freed
to choosing something
that would be more interesting
but that was a fatal mistake.

A few ghosts congregate
less and less often in relation
to official national holidays
celebrating consumer products.

Nothing strange or different
can be permitted into the midst
of the failing conspiracies
that pass as friendships.

Some still make things
if they get money for them
but nothing they make
is really that interesting.

More are practising
wearing their boredom
as if it is a badge of courage
and a necessary identity card.

Sentenced to a die out
bang and whimper
obsessively pulling at straws
from their stuffed heads.

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

240223A
------------

You deploy your love
to fight against anti-love
in a valiant battle
that you always lose.

It is not anything much
better than shooting
yourself in the foot
as far as that goes.

A little more
and it would kill you
leaving a stain
where you had a life.

You can join up
with the resistance
but then you will lose
for not taking sides.

Never really mattered
what or who it was
that led to new wounds
bleeding all the same.

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

270223A
-----------

We were mostly tricked
to pursuing freedoms
that we did not really have
and could not really get.