Transformation

Bitter words fall daily through my skin
Absorbed, they tempt me
Threaten to cloud clearer thoughts
Inciting anger, distaste, irritation

Laboriously, I wash them
In a sea of fond memories
of Love, Happiness and Tender Moments
Until they dissolve to nothingness

One Art

This poem is not mine, but it is perfect. Elizabeth Bishop's One Art:

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

questions of a modern day x

sex and make love what is the difference in the end

how many rose petals can i eat before i throw up

how many thorns can i step on before i bleed enough to stop

when will I learn

how can I learn

does love make you blind

or the need to be loved

is love the giving of attention

or the basking in it

how many times can you love or be loved before despair takes root

how can I tell

when it really hurts

or when I’m only lonely

when I’m needing you

or just needing any body

Someone tell me

Please

Indifferent Human

I guard my little patch of life.
My friend, my lover, my siblings
My parents.
My home, my business, my cheque-book
Me.

Days filled with the superficial,
Petty loves, petty lies, petty losses,
Petty life.
Infinite minutiae imperfectly saturates
Time.

Am I
Relative, subjective, indefinable,
Goodness.
Or only
I Am

Light Drops

Clear daylight

Through an open window,

Fresh Breeze

In newly awake lungs

Waking optimism,

Insurmountable problems

Shrink overnight

Into laughably minor molehills

Breakfast with loved ones

Gleaming, robust life

Sparkles invitingly,

Teeming cells of innocent energy

Then, the late train

Jostling, angry, indifferent commuters

Diesel fumes and stale air

Uncomfortable doubt

Empty office coffeepots

Server down, staplers stolen

And suddenly, the Light

Drops.

Maybe

In every life there are roads un-taken
Wastelands of Maybe lives
Detritus left scattered in desolate landscapes
Ghosts of bonds snapped in half
Spirits of ideas, half formed, abandoned
Forgotten promises, blowing in wistful winds.

The path followed not always smooth
Travelers often turn to search behind
Remembering happiness carelessly discarded
Some try to return whence they came
But wagons, newly acquired, irrevocably attached
Makes the u-turn un-wieldy.

Regrets, when asked, are none
Only to the deepest self, in darkest hour
Are confessions of things wished un-done or done
Friends better kept, lovers better lost
Secrets never made, values never forgotten
Time spent, not wasted

And yet, still, today is made
The wastelands of tomorrow