EQUAL TIME FOR HAPPINESS

EQUAL TIME FOR HAPPINESS

Sometimes I am a gloomy guss, my eyes have seen the glory,
Of many a tear-stained afternoon, and many a downcast story.
And I long to see the other side, the apex of the rainbow,
The mint where coins of joy are spent, the flip side of my sorrow.

Whatever happened to the wondrous days of the two-sided radio hit?
The record companies thought it was just one song,
The listeners thought the better of it.
The radio played both sides of the wondrous forty-five,
Don McLean had Vincent with his Castles in the Air,
For Carole King it was too late, and she felt the whole earth move and shake,
Equal time for both sides, life was just a tad more fair.
There was violence in the ‘60s, but we wore flowers in our hair.

All I am saying is give a smile a chance,
To blossom in the evening sun with its kissing cousin romance.
Equal time for happiness, equal time for joy,
The poor unhappy drudge of a scholar,
But also the wide-eyed jubilant boy.
The wild crescendo of a laugh that spirals through the afternoon,
The heartbreak of a life so stranded and marooned.
For though we ache with the pain of age and the certainty of death,
There is too the hope of rescue, and another day of precious breath.

Just like Gilligan and the Skipper, the professor and Mary Ann,
Our hopes rise and fall as only hopes can.
And even if we never see the cusp or the comfort of dry land,
Equal time to savor the favor of our fellow man.
Equal time for mercy, for the benefit of the doubt,
Equal time for a respite, before all hope runs out.

Sometimes I am a tireless drudge, in a Shirley Jackson tome,
And yet I have a fairy tale lover and a castle for my home,
And sometimes I turn a blind eye to my fortune and my friends,
And a deaf ear to the happy music that God the DJ spins.
Sometimes I forget the joy, this welcome sixth sense,
I’ve done my share of kissing frogs, but I also found my prince.

And when I die, it will be my time, but for now until I go,
I’ll sit back and close my eyes and revel in the show.
For after all, we can choose our mood most days more or less,
Equal time for the muse of the blues, but equal time for happiness.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2012
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

DISCOVERY

DISCOVERY

Discovery is illusive, like a phantom in the night,
Invisible ink on an empty page,
Nothing there when held to the light.
Oblivious to the challenge of youth and age,
Hiding somewhere in the shadows out of sight.

How I long to be discovered, like an actress in a smoky room,
Marilyn or some other starlet, long since gone and in the tomb.
But discovery is random, fickle and unkind,
And a run down poet with Parkinson’s
Is surely not what he had in mind.

I just want to know that in some cosmic sense,
There’s a rhyme and reason to this life,
That it’s just not all coincidence.
That at least a single soul finds comfort in my words.
That there’s something magical about only me
That sets me apart from the stampeding herd.

That there’s a meaning in my being here,
That I’m not just stealing space,
I want to be discovered,
By some victory of grace.

I have lived and loved, and written well,
I tell myself that that’s enough.
And it’s plain to see I write for me,
Forget the esoteric stuff.
The stuff of which my dreams are made,
It lies abandoned in the shade,
Gone but not forgotten,
Like a heart’s crumpled shards,
The dreams I had are crumbling,
To the finish line are stumbling,
But my hopes are stubborn and my dreams die hard.

Discovery is illusive, like a school child longs for snow days.
And my best snow days they are gone,
Like a fool I venture out, like an idiot I travel forth,
Work to be done I tell myself, a hunter with his bow,
I skate against august advice, cracking through the ancient ice,
Bargaining with the future, and tempting tomorrow.

And I long to be discovered, like Columbus did America,
Like Ponce de Leon did the Fountain of Youth,
Like da Vinci he found beauty and Michelangelo his truth.
But discovery is a blind man who turns his eyes from me,
And I am lost to the waves that toss and will be for eternity.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2012
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

FOR MY PART

FOR MY PART

(FOR KYLE, FOR VALENTINE’S)

For my part I can only say,
My love for you is constant,
Like a lighthouse on the bay.

For my part I can only sigh,
When I see you standing there,
Kind and oh so patient in my mind’s eye.

I was never much the looker,
The player or the king,
I should not have been the one you chose,
But you chose me for your everything.

You are the ace of spades,
My shining diamond, king of hearts,
What you saw in me I could never see,
But I saw your beauty from the start.
Like the shade of a sheltering tree.
And I still see it even now,
Sometimes hard to articulate,
A handsome man in handsome clothes,
The too cool captain of my fate.

Standing there, naïve and fair,
Not dreaming what was in the air,
The Parkinson’s, the impotence,
The muted echoes of despair.
The poverty, the aborted trips,
The sleepless nights, the sinking ships.
The financial burdens and the woes,
You’ve loved me true through all of those.

You bravely took the drop with me,
Into these frigid lonesome seas,
Never a prophet or a seer,
Or a fortune teller could you be.

But magically you have stayed the course,
Like some jouster perched high upon his horse,
And oh how you’ve parried and sallied forth for me,
Doing mortal combat with this crippling disease.

And after all is said and done,
It is you who should stand proud,
For you were faithful to the end and I sing your praises loud.

And I gave nothing in return
But lasting love that brightly burns
I hope to heaven that that was enough,
The poetry and the flowers, the paltry pretty stuff.
In the end I gave you all I owned,
My tired and desperate bleeding heart.
It was all I had to offer you, for my part.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2012
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED