May 1989 - page 1

1.

an end to a long day

reflecting carefully

on what was not done,

getting further behind

feeling guilty...

empowered with the skills

to do anything...

but nothing gets accomplished,

just a little but

hardly more than that...

on the curb of the back porch

I see the world

in front of me

and can imagine nothing else

except what my eyes see

and my fingers feel

or is it the opposite?

it ends and then begins again

and we try each day

to complete our plans

and are foiled...

reflecting and wondering

drifting and dreaming

always making an attempt.

2.

music from next door

providing a current of beats,

upstream syncopation,

thundering harmony,

bass vibrations pounding

from one channel and

voices from the other,

a though provoking madness

of mindless discord...

and I look for some kind

of social significance...

music from next door

calls me through a sort of

rock and roll telepathy,

a foot tapping morse code

ageless as the words are

meaningless but that's the

point...  never was and 

never should have been,

it's music pur and simple

that gives is its reasoning.

3.

a cool night and a

gentle breeze cools the

first sunburn of the summer,

an initiation with the

rites of spring or manhood,

seemingly a tan body

will hide one's baldness,

a night all I see is the

morning that will come

too soon, beginning again

what should have stopped

years ago... a lesson 

repeated is one never

learned...  not this time,

a cool night of apprehension

regulating my time and my

life and the rites that

make us feel what cannot

be changed too greatly

too overwhelmingly

to bear the pain of it

all and suffer any longer.

4.
bear one's soul

and remove

yesterday's fears

from one's 

vocabulary or

a solitary life 

will be your

future prison.

5.

captured in undressed silence

bound and left there to be

looked upon and admired and

touched and remain behind

for those who come next

to find wantonness and in need

of somethiong more than just

a silemnt night or first day,

more like fatherly reassurance.

6.

it was a process much

like other systems...

how to measure education

the learning process

or not learned skills

and at what point-in-time

do educators step into view?

questioning their peers?

it was measured and

could be analyzed and

somewhat predicted.

7.

she was in class

paying attention

to what he said

wondering what

was going to

happen to him

after class in a

sexual connotation.

8.

she was too young to

experience the uncertainties

that were usually

reserved for adults,

nevertheless, she was confronted

with her own mortality

and it scared her terribly.

9.

I was tired and slow to see

that she was using my

weaknesses to support her

ever reassuring loneliness.

10.

clouds formed overhead

lightening raced horizontally

across the sky...  rain fell

quickly, filling buckets

dampening our prospects

and lethargic souls.