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)