Poetry
Photo by Ryan Parker on Unsplash
The Soft Apocalypse
Don’t go stalking my spirit
when I pass.
Let me fly so you can go on.
The end is the end, but it isn’t, too.
When you’ve
crossed my arms
and
shut my eyes,
go on home
and grieve,
if you must.
But wake again, anew.
Be Mr. Ramsay,
be the widower you can’t help
but be.
Take up your paints,
have your vision.
Buy that bass, learn to cuss.
Tie your boots in double knots.
You’ll have lost me,
but not us.
Oh, the soft apocalypse.
Alluding Perusing
– with thanks to Alexander Pope.
Almost anything or
anywhere
will do for
so-called evildoing.
Even reading.
A half-seen presence
lurking in a novel,
saying something
that warps
a frame of mind
set in childhood.
Not even trying to sway.
But the human intellect
will grasp,
given half a chance,
at ideas
that elevate
the curated experience
called life.
That elevation
becomes Blake’s Experience
and the blooming of your mind
outweighs the loss of the Innocence.
“A little learning is a dangerous thing.”
So don’t just learn a little.
But know it will lead
To
Joy
and
mourning.
Outré
You can’t capture outré because its nature is
a mosquito in combat boots,
wearing a patchwork quilt boa,
sporting diamond earrings, real ones,
and pearls on a half shell as a brooch.
She’s not different just to be.
That would not be outré.
That would be rebellion’s influence,
not outré itself.
She just is, even when it’s lonely.
A child wears pink;
a child wears brown.
No, she doesn’t.
What child would willingly
don nature’s darkness?
Outré is what was really lost
When we were booted out
Of Eden.
She snuck it out in her pocket,
And now she eats it
By the handful.
Oh, I think I’m saying things
the world is not ready to hear.
Rebellion is just another name
for “you’re not the boss of me,”
and just as reactionary, loves.
Bet I’m not getting a fruit bouquet
for saying that.
Then again, I don’t need one.