by

noir intense

moon2

struggle with the night
  sleep deprived
  i surmise i will survive
  but can't jump off this ride

hour one past midnight!
  darkness has turned fake bright
  second-hand sunlight
  reflecting institution white
  flicker-less heavenly neon light

  leaves play melody
  trees sway in ecstasy
  roots feed from soil’s elegy
  a breeze cools summer's energy

  life rehearsing in full parody
  head brimming with rhapsody 
  a jumblesale of mind things
  confusion brings 
  fresh dew drops offering therapy

hour two begs for clemency
  now imprisoned helplessly
  by thoughts in hostile territory
  and sarcastic answers by the enemy

the third hour serves a penalty
  street light loneliness irrupts
  delusional hopefulness wakes up
  escape routes barred firmly shut 
  
hour four resigns
  a condition called the borderline
  insanity: the sanctity of tragedy
  drowsed but not fine
  
  resurrection by the fifth!
  appearing in strict order:
  you, coffee, sunlight
  end-of-torture

what was I struggling with?

by

uncentered

Cloudman why are you waving at me?

Is there something I don’t see?

cloudman

I am nothing

I am clueless

I am lost

 

No cheque in the post

Fruitless attempts to summit my life, oh yes

Contempt with insanity’s grin

 

Decades have rolled on

Overgrown now the paths I once ventured

Blinded and stuck on some, —  far too long

Sometimes it really feels that I’m done

 

Now, time is called the ‘aftermath’

That little left should be made to last

Create the antecedent of tomorrow

Leave out today’s horror,

relegate that to the past

 

Nothing: is all that matters

Clueless: the more the better

Lost: is the prize not the cost

 

by

died it 

He believed, then doubted, then died it

 
Creativity was his door to become more

Poetry and prose were the tears that he cried,

  and he toiled with the question:

What was it all for?

 

Doubt was the dust

  infiltrating even his purest intention

Now he lies spent like rain in the grass,

  tears on a tissue, lipstick on a glass

Not even the universe affords him attention

 

He always believed too much,

  and proof was never important as such

If he liked it, he deemed it to be true,

  even if experts were cleverer and knew

 

His world, perhaps, was slightly askew

 

Belief was like a train:

Up front the idea, creditability and fame

…so far so good

Followed by wagons of responsibilities,

  too many to name

…that was the drudge

Suddenly a yardstick emerged

  with which he was judged (his ideas)

 

Yes, he believed a lot

But, certainly didn’t want to be put on the spot

  for that which he called ‘the smoke from his pot’

It wasn’t religion or philosophy or such,

  they were ideas,

  life’s attempts at art with a smudge

 

Believing was more like following a trail

Not weighing each thought or step on a scale

T'was an indication of an approximate direction,

  and was prone to frequent correction

 

Believing and doubting were forever composing,

One minute blissfully flying over harmonies crest,

  euphorically losing control in the zest

and then,

  crashing into the trough of Wagner’s gloomiest best

He was cog and engine in a perpetually opposing quest

 

Shattered belief, triumphant doubt,

  sometimes one or the other acted out

A farmer of conflict, a dreamer of hope,

  ever the next wave of life should puzzle it out

 

Liberally sown by doubt the seeds of conflict abound

That’s why believing in dreams is so very allowed

But,
 
  dreams are also the food 

  which conflict gobbles to sprout

  and once it has grown

  it smothers the dreams

  so they lose the belief in their own

 

If life was nurtured by believing in dreams,

  no matter how irrational they seemed

and doubt destroys them with such might

  undoubdetly, he thought, he had just died