Night Comes 3:41 am November 30, 2018

You know, I only have one more month before we are in 2o19! That means I need to write new poetry for a whole New Year. Hope I'm up for it. P.S. Remember, if you can't read the poetry on the art piece, click the pic and it will get larger.

Night Comes 3:41 am

I can feel time passing through me.

My bones argue, shake their fists

at the injustice, the pain time lays

on them. Even my skin won’t accept

the wrinkles, the natural scaring of time’s

stiletto blade as its years cut through

the blood vessels of what was once 

a youthful face.  My consciousness

is reasonable, though. The mind chooses

to be philosophical about it all. But late

at night when I’m falling away inside

a dream, my soul cries out, the unfairness

of time’s hold on the body, the heart.

Unfair that we, we human things

should shrink and slowly fade away

back to the grave from which we sprang.

Woodie 11-1o-17 (rewrites11-29-18)

Reflections November 29, 2018

I've got this collection of ideas, phrases, half written poems that it just put aside to work on later. There's no time stamp on when the originals were written down. Some may go back as far as 4-5 years ago. It's kind of fun to revisit these bits and pieces and work on making each one a "complete" poem.

Reflections

Beyond sight, beyond the fragile veil

where thought haunts consciousness.

That's where my Self lives, forever

perplexed by its own existence.

One day a child, the next an old man

who can barely remember his own name.

Asphalt roads, the wooded trail

where autumn leaves go to die

at the hands of solemn crows.

The memories gather 'round

an empty grave so dark, so black

the bottom can't be seen.

That's where I live most days, these days.

Staring at the reflection

hovering in the window glass,

trying desperately to remember

what the hell I look like.

Woodie 11-28-18

Forgive and Forget November 27, 2018

Here's a funny thing about this poem. I've been reading poems by this woman on Facebook and sometimes I write a critique, you know, an analysis of the structure, the rhyme, the overall use of imagery in the poem. Sometimes I merely respond to the poem with a poem of my own that is inspire by the her poem I just read. Anyway, she wrote a one line poem: Can you forgive . . .  and that sparked the poem below so I posted it as a comment to her poem and . . . next thing I know I got this rampaging message  . . .  why would you say those nasty things to me . . . why are making this personal . . . and so on. So, I told her wasn't doing any of those meanspirited things she accused me of, that I was writing a poem in response to her poem. Anyway, I dropped her as a friend and blocked her from ever contacting me again. Anyway, here's the poem.

Forgive and Forget

I forgive the sun for not shinning as brightly

as once it did when I was so, so very much younger.

I forgive the moon for not remembering my name

on those dark nights when I needed her most.

Yes, I forgive the weather for the rain that delivered me

into the hospital with a temp. of one hundred and three

degrees. But it's easy to forgive nature for the wrong

she does to me because she doesn't consciously

do harm to me, to anyone, anything. But you? Your

transgressions against my wellbeing are deliberate, decisive

actions. You know what you do when you do it. That

makes it harder for me to forgive and eventually forget.

Woodie 11-27-18

Cow Dreams November 15, 2018

Cow Dreams

All the elder men

were pulled from their beds
and forced into cattle cars.
The cars didn't mind.
They were already awake.
The cows didn't mind.
They were too kind besides

They were still in the fields

dreaming the dreams
of horrible, horrible things . . .
like jumping over the moon
and breaking a hoof
when they hit Earth again . . .
or gangs of drunken teenagers
sneaking up from behind
and tipping them over . . . 
The dreams of cows
are far more terrifying than
the ugliest nightmare that
the old man could conjure
up as he fell back
into his normal sleep pattern.
Woodie 11-15-18

Time Keeper November 21, 2018

Poems lost, poems found. Always a surprise when I come across one that still speaks to me, to the writer who wrote it. 

The Time Keeper

I placed what’s left of today

into a nondescript paper bag.

No one on the crowded streets

noticed me gulping down

a bootleg moonlight.

All they knew for sure as I

staggered down the sidewalk,

“He must be damn thirsty,

sucking away on that nasty

old bag as if it was his mother's . . .!”

I've washed my hands of today,

wiped them off onto my dirty blue jeans.

Hard shiny, finger spots appear

on the indigo fabric of my 501s,

creating a rainbow of gray-scum

on both thighs.

No Time left to do much else,

though Time doesn't really exist.

It’s just another fairytale, a myth

conjured up by an insane scientist

with too much String Theory curling

up inside his hairless head.

“Out, out damn knots.”

"I'd rather be dead,”

my father had often said,

"than red on the head."

My mother had fiery red hair

that stretched all the way

to the small of her back.

She passed the gene along to me.

But my age refuses to admit

that once I was a “carrot top.”

I'm not sure why they called me that,

all those drunken friends of my dad's.

Each and every one of them would greet

me with a bourbon stained "Hey,

Carrot Top? How've you been!"

whenever I entered the barroom. 

Each would say it with such

poetic authenticity that I'm sure . . .

Damn, Time . . . again.  

Memory, the Time Keeper.

Nothing matters more to the universe

than the cold, hard facts of memory

resurrected in the dark, right before

I tumble off, away, way down

into that watery grave of dreams.

“The watery grave of a dream.”

Woodie o1-21-17

(rewrites o8-o7-17, 11-2o-18)

Hyde & Hype November 19, 2018

Hyde & Hype

I've taken a pill to put me to sleep,

my blue eyes haven't taken the hint.

A moon stares at me. The sun too

far away to laugh at the joke.

Elm trees get it, the sidewalks

choose to ignore my sleeplessness

they're too busy plotting my demise.

A conspiracy of concrete.

Moreover, I feel rainy in my heart,

a steady drip of wet and glassy.

I feel darkness, cold and clammy,

finding its way through

the many veins that carry

the red river throughout my system.

I hear it, my life,

drowning, one drop at a time,

slithering around the clots

of uneven rust that has

labored for years to kill me.

If I do fall asleep tonight,

I will not dream, not of you,

not of her, not of red hair

dancing on your shoulder

whenever you forced me

to awkwardly "get down."

Some men dance with arms

flailing at the air, some men

merely swing back and forth

like slender trees caught in a breeze.

And some men incase their feelings

in knotted fists stuffed inside pockets.

There's magic in that . . . 

no one knows what I'm hiding.

Woodie o2-18-18

Almost Cut My Hair November 15, 2018

One poem that keeps popping up . . . and I feel compelled to post it. P.S. IF you want to read the poem off the picture, you can "click" on the image and it will enlarge. {smile}

*Almost Cut My Hair

. . . my long hair bothers me . . .

a dirty red symbol of rebellion and—

dare I say it—youth.

Worn-out now, thinned to string now,

slowly evolving, dissolving into a winter,

a winter it will never recover from.

The spring no longer sings to me.

What’s left of it, my hair,

spends far too much time this morning

tickling my nose, and my ears and high diving

off the top of my head into my coffee cup . . .

I must be getting old, or older, or something.

Last thing to go?

The childish addiction for coolness.

These days I favor comfort over fashion,

sweat pants feel more at home

around my expanding waste than blue jeans.

Beards are out, too messy a thing,

a goatee remains but merely as a cover-up

for the saggy skin below my chin . . . chins.

No cause to march for anymore,

to fight and scream for . . . anymore.

Black Lives Matter! White Lives Matter!

It’s all just vacant noise to me ‘cause

matter just doesn’t matter anymore.

The news . . . weary, dreary tabloid vomit

mouthed by trained canaries,

melting one into another . . . short clips

of weeping widows and angry fathers

and store-bought politicians

banging impotent fists against the podium . . .

for as long as the cameras continue to stare at them.

Everyone raging these days, everyone shouts

so loud that the world has gone deaf.

Fingers wagging in the stranger’s face

like a babysitter scolding an unruly dog,

“Bad, doggie! Don’t drag your ass

across the carpet . . . Bad, BAD, doggie!”

Kent State

not even a bloody memory anymore.

The stains wiped clean . . . time . . .

such a diligent, thorough housekeeper.

Where’s Janis, and Jimmy, and David C,

faint echoes now whimpering

from iPods and CDs

or whatever the hell

they call those other damn things.

My past . . . vague glimpses of acid trips

and drunkenness and cigarettes

and girls with flowers in their eyes . . .

Made it through another war

not much different than the wars to come.

I’ll keep my hair long for as long

as it cares to stick around.

Maybe some years from now

I’ll notice it . . . 

“tickling my nose, my ears

and high diving off the top of my head

into my coffee cup . . .”

And I’ll wonder why I never got it cut.

Woodie o9-o6-15 (rewrites 11-15-18)

*Song Almost Cut My Hair 

written by David Crosby

Morning Ditch November 14, 2018

This is new, written in October and worked on for these last couple nights. It's weird how the life "adventures" from way back there in the past pop up into the consciousness and are relived in a bit of insane poetry. Here's one.

Morning Ditch

Where will the morning find you?
Face down perhaps in the naked lap
of a girl whose name you can’t remember?
On your back more than likely
staring into the sun that just arrived,
just in time to revive you

drag you out of a deadly dream, deliver

your breathing corps into the wet reality
of a muddy, grass ditch
right behind the service station
where your car was being fixed.

“Girls, wanna see a dead body?”

The gas-station attendant spoke

with the accent of
an Oklahoma rain drop.

Your ears woke up first

to that snowy sound

giggling girls make.

“Hi,” you smiled at them,

you laughed as they screamed
and ran away when the dead
body opened its bloody mouth.

Woodie 1o-18-18 (rewrites 11-13-18)

Dragon Day November 12, 2018

So, I'm looking through some older files and I find this little dragon poem. Be totally honest, I was looking for another dragon poem when I found this one, and as is usual I really didn't recognize it as being one of mine . . . but it is.

Dragon Day

Waiting on the edge of it

in a cage, in a rage

creating the fire

that will devour him.

His feet, his thoughts

floating like ash, up

towards the ceiling.

A murmur, like a river,

a disturbed sound

bouncing off the wall.

At peace, a ghost wailing.

Woodie o5-o8-2o16, 11-11-18

My Eyes Have Left Me November 09, 2018

Another new . . . er one. As I grow older I begin to see changes in myself. Not changes for the most part that I welcome, but those inevitable changes in my physical and mental being that I must accept. It's hard to give in. Poetry helps to make the transitions a little less painful, though.

My Eyes Have Left Me

My eyes have left me without a single word,

no remorse or goodbyes. If they had bags to pack,

they did so the night before when I slept away inside

another dream that I won’t remember when I awake.

You’d think after all these years and all those tears 

we’ve shed together that they might at least leave a note 

beneath the gnarled cushions of the couch. But no.

I investigate the mirror see only two black holes.

My eyes lived there once, but no disgrace.

Now running down my swollen face 

blood flows in gentle slivers burning red.

All appears dead to me. That line of trees

along Trout Avenue, the ones that block

The parking lot from my window’s view,

All that’s out there . . . forever dead to me.

All that exists in here . . . a dreadful hollow 

to me, to what is left of me. Below the window

I hear the deaf cry of my blackest crow’s song.
Woodie o6-28-18

redheaded gods November 08, 2018

Well, one of those poems that just happens to work quite well with a picture that I took in Tulsa around 2014 or so. I love when the present art coincides with the art I created in the past.

redheaded gods

If this, all of this is nothing more
than a dream inside some god's
enormous red head, I must,
most certainly, question
his or her creativity, ability
to imagine even the simplest
of creatures . . .  this gray gnat that
terrorizes my coffee cup, what's
its motivation? Or the thousands
of angry raindrops that slam
into the sidewalks of Norman-town
with no thought for their own deaths?

And I won’t even try to understand

what he/she was thinking
when drawing from the muds
the likes of us two legged thingies.
Come on, o' wise and powerful gods
can’t you do better than . . . . this?
Woodie 11-o8-18

A Clawless Cat of a Thought April 30, 2018

Another new poem, a poem about time and memory and ancestors and  . . . a thought poem if you will, which most of my poems seem to be these days. my consciousness is consumed by the ever present vulture that time has become to me and others my age.

A Clawless Cat of a Thought

My head dangles by a thought,

a skinny thread of thought invisible,
a sparrow of a thought that
flutters away into the darker rooms
whenever my mind tries to capture it,
tame it, domesticate it like a clawless cat.

Just a wisp of pure white whiskers brushing

against the dream after dreams stored up,
piled up against thick walls of brittle bone.
Bubble gum memories from some other time,
of some other time, a distant time, a time
that no longer recognizes itself as time,
time in, time out, time to bleed red the ocean,
shampoo the mind’s palette, lick the world clean.
A rain will come along someday and drive
all this thought back into a stone age
of subconsciousness, way back before fire,
when the moon was nothing more than
an imaginary goddess whispering in
the hairy ears of our ancient ancestors.
Woodie o4-3o-18

“Your Poetry Sucks!” November 2018

New words for you. Thanks for reading me . . . if not here . . . at The Daily {W}rite. I'm experimenting a bit with form and structure. I'm working in a more theatrical style these days. Hope it works, but if it doesn't . . . I can learn. P.S. IF the picture is to small for you to read the poem, just "click" on the image and it will enlarge. {smiles} 

“Your Poetry Sucks!”

David snaps his head towards me,
“I didn’t say your poetry sucks!”

“Watch where you’re going!” I yell

a bit too loud but in my defense

he began to drift into opposing traffic.

“I just said, ‘I loved that new poem,

Machine Head—'” cut to:

 Machine Head
The marching machines,

the clacking, metal against metal

that study humdrum of grinding gears. 

They’ve tamed the lion

roaring at our brains;

the blood in our veins

drying up, reduced

to a muddy slosh

thick on our tongues.

We are ending where we began

we are tumbling like the rain that

once fell in democratic abundance

upon the shattered skulls of the dead
And all the while the machines rejoice;

they march and march and march on.

“. . . and I “liked” the other one—” Cut to:

Moon Powers
The best we can do is place the moon

firmly between the index finger and the thumb

Gently though. You don't want to crush the life

out of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. 
Think of the whales and mereswine

and the surfers and shore bunnies,

the tall tales and sea shanties of sailors

and pirates that would cease to exist— Cut to car:

David: You can’t smash the moon with your fingers!

that is NOT realistic!

Woodie: Oh, really? And intelligent machines taking

over the world—?

David: HEY! (whispers) They’re already here.”

Woodie  11-o2-18, o9-16-17

. . . and white guys, statistically

Yeah, been a few since I posted a poem on here. Well . . . I got distracted. Joined a couple of different poetry sites that "claimed" to be poet friendly and good with the feed back . . . that didn't work out for me. It's better for me and my writing that I just . . . write here and maybe concentrate on getting the book of poetry going. Here's my latest piece.

 . . . and white guys, statistically. 

I wonder about hate, why 

we hate so much.

I wonder about guns, why

Americans love guns so much.

During my time in service, back in Vietnam,

back when I was a white guy, I owned a gun.
But I never, shot anyone . . . that I’m aware of.

“Mass shooting is Whitey’s thing,

statistically speaking.” Some faceless
Facebook ghost posted that the other day
in response to the
Pittsburg synagogue shooting.


Statistics . . . hmm.
Statistics . . . come and go

like girls in summer clothes.
Like ice on a summer’s day.
Like flesh and blood

and bloodied fists
and Anthem singers
and hair trigger fingers.

“It’s Made by Mattel 

and it's swell!”

Gleefully our D.I. shouted while

holding a brand-new M-16 rifle
above his jar-headed, head.

And yes, it was lovely! Hard plastic,

black metal body, cold in

the hands, warm in the blood,

hold me close on a monsoon night,

sing to me in clipped chirps and spittle
and I’ll lick your body clean

with a 100% cotton cloth,

washout your O shaped dirty mouth
and rusted throat with Hoppe's No. 9.

For the duration of my war career, my

M-16 hung on a beam inside the mess tent

where I cooked Shit on a Shingle and

grits for grunts, and officers and office
pogues. I never shot it once, not once.
Woodie 11-o1-18