Friday, October 31, 2014

AFTER THE PIPER, THE FEAST

AFTER THE PIPER, THE FEAST

Sitting on a park bench, all I'm good for nowadays,
Outside the Museo Borghese, on a Roman holiday.
My lover browses, lost in beauty, of sculptures and of treasures fair.
Tapestries upon the ceilings, oil paintings of vintage rare.

While I await him on my bench, a flutist plays his haunting songs,
That whistle through the park serene as tourists stroll along.
The families pedal on their bicycles, smiles upon their faces.
And the flutist plays on like the Pied Piper of Hamelin,
Filling the air with music, filling in the day's empty spaces.

The crows are not amused by his music sweet,
And their caw-caw's nearly drown his song and nearly spoil the treat.
As the music resonates and as the crows make plain their fury,
And as the tourists and the locals go by in a hurry,
From my bench I spy an ancient woman,
Bent over with hunger and a withered spine,
Tin cup in hand and barely upright, clearly running out of time.
And creeping along, almost parallel to the ground,
Help me, help me she pleads, in a low and desperate sound.

The old lady a specter from some Halloween nightmare,
While the people pass oblivious, pretending not to care.
By this time the flutist has finished his tunes,
The pied piper gone with his children and his euros.
The crows replaced by the old woman in black,
With the gnarled outstretched hand, pleading for what she lacks.
The crows they have vanished, tasting blood on their beaks,
For after the piper and the children, the feast.

-Bruce Potts
Revised Copyright 2014
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

THE WINTER IS COMING

THE WINTER IS COMING

All I know is what I know.
Life is precarious,
Love is precious,
And the summer only lasts so long.

So buy yourself a fleece-lined coat.
The winter is coming,
Sailing the icebergs in his private sailboat.

Heading your way,
Despite what you might do or say.

The trees are wearing robes of green,
But soon as in a burlesque show,
They will strip naked, 
Shameless on our front lawns.

The winter chill is coming,
The warmth will soon be gone.

The gold of autumn will blaze and burn quickly.
Those clear blue breathless skies,
Will yield to snow and brittle ice, 
That cover up the sunrise.

Bring your snow shovel out of hiding,
Steel yourself for what's to come.
Time beats a solemn death march,
And the winter is its holy drum.

All I know is what I know,
I lost my parents in the winter.
Both gone in the deep freeze
Of a bitter December.

And a bit of winter stays with me,
No matter where I go.
Sometimes my heart's a Frigidaire,
Winter frost upon my soul.

-Bruce Potts
Revised Copyright 2014
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Friday, October 24, 2014

PEAKS AND VALLEYS

PEAKS AND VALLEYS

How like me, how like us all,
To forget our life before the Fall,
To keep the memory of each mistake,
To mind the dregs and forget the great.

I once held a sleeping bird in my arm,
Fragile and so very sweet,
It trembled lost for just awhile,
And then surrendered to its sleep,

I once rescued a teddy bear,
At least that's what they tell me.
A teddy bear being tossed by bullies,
I did my best to set it free.

Still sometimes I feel so worthless,
Fodder for the cobwebs and the dark black alleys.
How like me, how like us all,
To forget the peaks and mind the valleys. 

I once helped a drunken man to his shuffling feet,
His body crumpled sleeping in the middle of my street.
I gave him a lift to a 7-Eleven, he called his son on the pay phone.
Hopefully he was taken in and found his way back home.
Some darkness falls in every life, with grace its humble midwife,
We remember the sordid brothels, forget the bright boutiques,
How like me, how like us all, to cling to the valleys, forget the peaks.

Now I am lost to Parkinson's and a slave to failing health,
A bully of another sort who operates with a wondrous stealth.
Who creeps around the back alleys here in my mind,
Crippling the body, with methodical decline,
Counting down the days with an arm as rigid as a pipe,
Lucky for the disappearing art of committing words to type.

I have some high school glory days that I vaguely recall,
A college life of some achievement, friends still with me through it all,
A lover who I'll cherish until the day I perish.
Sometimes, though, the good times go by in such a blur,
I remember my sweet mother, I still can treasure her.
Still sometimes i'm so bereft that I can barely stand,
Painful memories weave a web, I am trapped within the strands.
When thoughts are so undisciplined, they compel a soul to kneel,
And conjure up a deep, dark future, gray and funereal.
Like the layers of an onion they begin to slowly peel.

How like me, how like us all, to strike ourselves upon the head,
To weep as in a deep, dark sleep, to wish that we were dead.
To remember every lost ideal and every second wind forget,
To always ponder all the things that we have not done yet.

I once held a sleeping bird in my arms,
Fragile and so very sweet,
It shook with a mighty tremor,
Then sighed and fell asleep.
When it awoke, it flew away,
High into the clouds of a brand new day.

Why then do I still feel worthless,
Fodder for the cobwebs and the dark black alleys.
How like me, how like us all,
To forget the peaks and mind the valleys.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2014
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

HUNKER IN THE BUNKER

HUNKER IN THE BUNKER

Hunker your soul down in the bunker,
Watch to whom you talk,
For life is real and earnest,
And love is not a cakewalk.
And life can throw you curve balls,
That you always fail to see.
Hunker your soul down in the bunker,
You've lots of company.

This life is a bunker, 
No comforts of home,
You had better get used to walking alone.
The sun bubbles over like some babbling child,
The bunker can burn you,
It is lonesome and wild.

Hunker yourself down in the bunker,
It's a sphere of mystery where we all hide,
It's hell here on earth, so welcome inside.
There's plenty for all to weep and to grieve,
It's where we all labor and plant our proud seeds.
Then the wind comes along 
And scatters them where it will.
Hunker yourself down in the bunker,
Loneliness can kill.

Hunker down in the bunker,
Make your marks on the wall,
Of every last betrayal and every umpire's call,
That turned out to be spurious,
That turned out untrue.
Hunker yourself down in the bunker,
In memory of those who loved you.

Hunker down in the bunker,
Be careful who you trust,
Fellow soldiers flesh and blood,
Their foot-steps turn to rust.
And lips have lied and tongues are tied,
It will ever be that way,
In these days of strange intrigue,
We are hurled into the fray,

What I am trying to say is this,
A serpent's nature is to bite and hiss,
There is evil lurking in the world,
Asses bare that must be kissed.
Hunker your soul down in the bunker,
Save a space for me,
For we are comrades tried and true,
Fighting in this army.

-Bruce Potts
Revised Copyright 2014
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Friday, October 17, 2014

WE WILL MARRY

WE WILL MARRY

We will marry, we will marry,
No reason left to tarry.
No longer will we be sold short,
By our state or by the courts.

We will marry, we will marry,
Raise a glass of wine or sherry,
In a farmhouse or a stable,
In the house of the seven gables.

To you my long betrothed,
I will hand a single rose.
And I will crown you king,
On your finger place a ring.

We will marry, we will marry,
On the courthouse stairs,
We will speak our vows in earnest,
To the crowd assembled there.
In a barn replete with horses.
Or the finest of golf courses,
On the sand or in the shales,
With the dolphins or the whales.
On a prairie buttressed by the winds,
Amidst a chorus of violins.

We will marry, we will marry,
Here in the land of the free,
Love will join our fates forever,
From now until the twelfth of never,
In your heart I'll be.

Forever will our stars align,
Never brokenhearted,
The heavens issue forth a sign,
The clouds have all but parted,
It may have taken fourteen years,
But we'll finish what we started.

We will marry, we will marry,
The choir will sing a tune,
Be it in broad daylight,
Or beneath the August moon.
To any and all detractors,
This I have to say,
Virginia is for all the lovers,
Both the straight and gay.

We will marry, we will marry,
Our lives will intertwine,
For always I will carry,
This love of yours and mine.
My heart it overflows with pride,
This life's become a happy ride.
And we will raise a gleesome toast,
To our friends and all we love the most.
To all of you we raise a glass,
And start our lives as married chaps.

We will marry, we will marry,
On Christmas Eve or a day in June,
We do not know for certain when,
But it will be someday soon.
We will marry, we will marry, 
No reason left to tarry,
No longer will we be sold short,
By our state or by the courts..

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2014
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Monday, October 13, 2014

QUAINT REMAINS OF YESTERDAY

QUAINT REMAINS OF YESTERDAY

Cobblestones and colonnades, colonial formalities,
Horse drawn buggies in the streets
And billowed sailboats on the sea.

Soldiers in their blue and gray,
Courtiers in their powdered wigs,
Shakespearean actors in the round,
And sailors sentenced to the brig.

The remnants of another time,
Reverberating through my dreams.

A time enshrined by poets fine,
Of valor and of weighty themes.

Cobblestones and colonnades,
And maidens in their gowns so long,

Young men in their coats and tails,
And minstrels with their epic songs.

Times that will not come again,
But fill the well of history,

The gilded sword of yesteryear,
In all its fabled mystery.

The cannons booming in the distance,
Heralding the dawn of war,
The elegance of Lincoln's words,
The passion on the statehouse floor.

Times that shine with a burnished glaze
Across the textbooks of my youth,
The scoundrels and their wicked lies,
The men in white who spoke the truth.

Cobblestones and colonnades, colonial formalities,
The formal speech, the gesture grand,
The noble bow, the curtsy.

The ladies in their flowing skirts
Who filled the night with romance,
And deeds that shaped our modern age
By grand design or happenstance.

Horse drawn buggies in the streets,
Billowing sailboats on the sea.
The quaint remains of yesterday.
That thrill and spark my memory.

-Bruce Potts
Revised Copyright 2014
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

TEARS IN MY REAR VIEW MIRROR

TEARS IN MY REAR VIEW MIRROR

I can still hear the hint of a scream,
From a nightmare or a troubled dream.
I wear the years like a suit of tin,
Like the stiffness I'm encased in.
How can I state the obvious or put it any clearer?
I feel the icy breath of death, the tears in my rear view mirror.

My legs are stuck like stubborn mud,
It's either DNA or blood,
Of which I'm never certain.
A wiser man than me knows a thousand things,
The man behind the curtain.
Either God or the Wizard of Oz,
The ego or the id,
Perhaps one or the other 
Or some fearless sort of hybrid.
He knows these things,
As he pulls the strings,
And the ropes in utter consternation,
Choke the hapless circulation.

Still I go on merrily, the Grim Reaper none the nearer,
A piece of work I see him smirk,
Through the tears in my rear view mirror.
I know the pain of sadness well,
Depression I have felt its stain,
It bores its evil eyes right through me.
It penetrates like acid rain.

And the canopy that covers me,
Is riddled with the swill,
Of things I've never done in life
And things I never will;
Doing time that doesn't fit the crime,
Of wanting you ever nearer.
You come and in my heart your drum
Echoes ever clearer.

Always the safest driver,
I never struck you down, 
Though my conscience is an evil jester,
A strange demented clown.
I skate alone on this borderless rink,
Without the cloud of drug or drink,
In a maze of smoke and terrors.
Forever mindful of the past
And all its bittersweet errors.

Beware the strange enchanted fears,
That make you hostage to the years.
The broken down homely hag of a horse,
Who carries you forward on legs of remorse.
A regretful waterfall of ugly rhyme,
That strains to work its overtime.

I can still hear the hint of an accusation,
From the depths of an overworked heart,
So bitter and revolting I know not where to start.
I wear the years like the suit of tin,
That I've become encased in.
A metaphor for years I've lost,
Mindful of the early frost.
How can I state the obvious or make it any clearer,
i feel the icy breath of death, the tears in my rear view mirror.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2014
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Note: I guess I was delusional to cut back on my depression meds. But I do like the poems that come like gifts from my depressive episodes!

Friday, October 3, 2014

TIRED OF RISING WITH THE MOON

TIRED OF RISING WITH THE MOON

They are always lovely, these late night skies,
And as I walk with sleep in my eyes,
I feel my faith in God arise.

Sleep so often fails me,
And though I swoon to the black night's tune,

My body grows wearier by the day,
Tired of rising with the moon.

Though the velvet night is mysterious and dear,
Daylight and its myriad charms will in hours reappear.
A resurrection grand to see, equal to the night in majesty.

Yet I am looking backward, through the telescope,
Charting the course of Jupiter and Neptune,
Blinking through my bloodshot eyes,
Tired of rising with the moon.

My friends are lost to daylight, and I am twilight's son,
Who knows if they will still be with me when all is said and done?

I am growing skeptical that sleep will grace my door,
I fear I'll be a midnight traveler, now and evermore.

I feel the time go flying by, my chariot is coming soon,
To beam me to that place of beauty far beyond the moon.

-Bruce Potts
Revised Copyright 2014
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

SERENADE OF TWILIGHT

SERENADE OF TWILIGHT

SERENADE OF TWILIGHT The stars in your eyes, love, I tried them on for size. They shone as bright as diamonds, how they mesmerized. And when...