a poetry

It’s not like I know why I do it.
Are you afraid of clowns? Do they make you laugh?
It’s about that time, I can see the clock ticking. It sounds like a faint heartbeat
Spitting on the sidewalk, I can see an ant carrying another
Can they swim? I’m drowning. My mind’s too big, I’m in too deep
Slither of a moustache, sweat beads, salty lips
It’s too hot. Too hot to breathe. Struggling, harsh gasps.
7 minutes it had taken. 7 minutes, tick tock.
Sometimes I stare in the mirror and pull expressions.
It’s so easy for you. Normality.
Is it ADHD? Asperger’s? Learning Difficulties?
Prick and poke and make you bleed. I remember the blue plasters.
I’m not a good boy. Flesh is so soft. Red and soft.
The bus is here.

Last night when I left them, tired and bleary eyed
as I was, it was late, and they were still going at it,
tensions were high, guns blazing, the action was
spiraling, ascending, just reaching a point when
I felt a long break was needed, so I was off to bed,
and they froze in place, punches half thrown, bullets
pausing just short of their targets, everything half
realized, suspended, waiting; now here they are,
just where I left them, a hundred pages deep, ready
to start off where we left off, conflict heading for
a conclusion, their motives, behavior, and destinies
set, I’m sure that if I stopped and mapped them all out
I would find the pattern of things, the structure set,
these people were never meant to be alone, authors,
even this one whose name I would have to check on
the title page, set their inevitable end, and I play my
part, pick their book up and put it down whenever
I choose, their lives controlled by folks they will
never meet, and never get to question or understand,
and they are over their waiting again, while I, master
of the moment, stops to say something about them.

I clambered
up your
heart
into your
affections
the way a worm
crawls on the
vine

it was slow
progress
my muscles
really hurt

but happy
to report
here I am.

If I could wish the cat well, life
beside my father’s grave,
then as October nears
and the worms go underground,
I could bathe in my favourite season,
happy as I’ll every get,
change the rusty orange of my essence
and shed the density of summer.
If I could wish my children healed of their afflictions,
my husband, complete in his calling
and our empty cooking pot finally appeased,
then I could fall without shifting
the position of my bones,
I could be with a warm coat on, walking briskly
in a purifying seasonal breeze.

I remember the stats
that ran astray, forming
the fence around the old
woodshed on lands
that weren’t mine.
I didn’t know about
property then, barely
learning about the boundaries
of myself. I remember
walking there in the tall
grasses, unafraid. Not worried
about storms in the sky.
Drafting comic books in my
mind, the only planks I knew
setting up panels
for heroic fantasy.

More at https://jddehartfeaturepoems.blogspot.com.