Author Archives: sam

Painting In The Park

What a beautiful day to paint in the park. Sitting here with my two friends painting and listening to music. I paint a campfire and serpent under a starry sky. I feel the cool air and the grass under my fingers, canvas under my brush. Dandelions dot the shaggy fields of green clovers, shining up and into me like stars shine down on particularly clear night. The purple padding of an open guitar case starkly contrasts these greens and yellows, an idiosyncrasy in a field of found flowers. I can’t believe I woke up hungover.

Hangover

My head’s hurt

So brief and so curt

Hard to put together

Birds of a feather

I can’t think

Fearing now that i should sink

Lost forever, deep in the drink

Missing against a backdrop sewn from mink

Protagonist

Antagonist

Both atop the list

Either way you’ve got the gist

Ein Geist

A spirit or a ghost

Caught in a vice

How gracious a host

Birds scream and sing outside the window

As grass in the wind winnows

A cold day today

There through the window, Sunshine, A ray!

Probably 6:45?

Busy, busy, busy. So much to do, so little time. Yanked in every direction by the passing threads and hands of everything and everyone who’d simply like to reach out. Many thoughts and many feelings fly about in my head, rushing one way or another, always making sure their near misses are just close enough to give me a heart attack. I do hope you enjoy the poem today. What a wonderful day it is.

Sinisterium

How the bell tolls

Sounding at the hour

Not to mark the time

But something much more dour

That taste in your mouth

Errant vicissitude

Turn from sweet to sour

Ashes then and ashes now

Ring around the Rosie

And we all fall down

A cacophony of sirens

Binding men in liar’s irons

See there so hidden in the fog

There the pyres, there the pylons

Sinister in their construction

Obscure in their function

Can you hear them shrieking?

Can you hear their desperation?

Mark the date

For your infernal consultation

I set the scene

You play the part

Watch right there

Shadows in the dark

Which Poem, This Poem?

I look around at all these people and surely they notice me. Surely I am not invisible. Surely too they have their thoughts and feelings and opinions of me, but I… I move unabated, unfettered, and unmolested through the streets and forests as if I’d been noticed by no one. Surrounded by people and not alone, but… I’m not sure. There always seems to be a but, whether it’s a joke or an “I love you”. I take solace in myself, in my writing. Still I yearn for more. How could I help but to want all that I have seen in my dreams? So vivid and so real yet so far away and I remain inhibited by Byzantine bureaucracy and the constraints of having not been born into a trust fund. Easier said than done, I suppose. Let’s get a drum roll going because I have for you something that I hope will make you think. A daily exercise of mind that may help keep you from taking a certain grippy sock vacation. Without further ado:

See Bird

Yes, I just ate

Something to so sate

That hunger, that desire

Something new I hope to sire

There’s a fire

Burning

Hope to never tire

The pages again, turning

Something new I’ve been learning

Where are those wild things

The ones I thought I’d find

I read the book and saw the movie

Feel as though I’ve been out-swined

To lie to a boy

Different than a lie to a man

The man will know, the man will change

The boy?

It is all he knows

And so it comes to pass

These lies are all he sows

How deafening are the calls of crows

Vociferous Cawing

Hear their gnawing

Bones creak and crack

Like so many planks of an old sea-worn carrack

Do you answer the call of the one who knows?

All those shiny pearls now burned to black.

Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall In Love

Consider it, my friends. To be in Paris in the 1920s, to escape and find that magic! To take it and bring it back to the present to find yourself and everything you’ve ever dreamed of. Take that magic and that majesty you found in the past and apply it to the world at large. Oh, to be in a wonderful world of wizards and sorcerers, casting their magics on pages and canvases and the keys of pianos. What a wonderful world it will be, filled with art and song.

Carnival Comes to Paris

There’s flying and there’s dying

Both ending on the ground

Hearing that one final sound

Make refuge there, in burial mound

A man in a three-piece suit

Playing the piano

Can’t help but fall in love

Fly away, little dove

All affairs fair at the fair, long as you can pay the fare

Car broke down

Grab the spare

It’s a long way back to town

One day soon we’ll be back home

One day soon I’ll read that tome

Evil little lexicon

Stare me down, thereupon

Sitting on the shelf

Bore your holes

Whack those moles

Cross the bridge and pay the tolls

Find yourself and find our souls

Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall?

Who is the fairest of them all? The strongest? The smartest? The goodest? I ask again, O’ Mirror, reflection of all, Who is the rarest of them all? A man apart from the rest. A man and not a boy. Can you see the writing on the wall? Read the lines, not between. See the stars in your eyes and tell me what they’re made of.

Man in the Mirror

A pockmarked face

Marred by decision and derision

Marked by contention

I don’t look like such a young man anymore

Staring straight into those eyes

Meet a man who tells no lies

Not to me

Not to you

He wears his wares upon his chin

As tears they wear upon his cheeks

And smile lines race against his pursing lips

A face so seldom understood,

Worn by pages made from wood

In the mirror, seeing leather

What is a man, but a bird without feather?

I want to fly

So high in the sky

And with my little eye

A thousand things I’d spy

Not the least of which is you, me

The one I cannot help but be

That one inside the mirror I see