CHASM

CHASM

There’s a deep hollow chasm between our lives,
Reminiscent of stillborn friendship ties,
The scent of deception, the hint of your lies.

A gaping wound that will never mend,
A person on whom I once could depend,
Let me introduce the elephant in the room.
Her name’s Anita Bryant and she’s risen from the tomb.

You can say what you will, write what you want,
Do as you damn well please.
You can hide behind your scriptures
Your foot in the mouth disease.

You can hide out in your comfy home,
Pretend you are mystified by this poem.
But distance lingers,
Like grains of sand slipping through fingers,
A promise ring slipping down the drain,
And my tears are misting with the rain.

I used to think your friendship mattered,
But to the ground it has splintered and splattered.
Hypocrisy blows like a twister,
Your mock concern is bittersweet,
For I can only hear your words that blister,
Your turning and your fleeing feet.

I know not even where you are,
I don’t know if I care a smidge.
You’re lost in the hills of self-righteousness,
Like a troll in hiding under the bridge.
It will not be me to make the call,
Your absence matters not at all.
I balance vicariously on the railings.
You may as well go finger point,
Elucidate my human failings.

This train is running on labored breaths,
Panting through the mountain pass,
Friendship hideous and hoarse,
Dying its lost and little deaths,
Trampled like an overgrown golf course.
I’m way off par and I miss the tee,
So much for our felicity.

There’s a twinge that’s left of our former glory.
It echoes in my dreams.
It haunts my broken sleep at night.
And it rips at lonesome seams.
But that, alas, is all it is, a quiver and a twinge,
I long to feel Vesuvius, but I lie awake and cringe.

Cringe for the past and its gallant stories,
Weep for the loss of our former glories.
Tear out what’s left of my thinning hair,
While you and your memory vanish into air.

There’s a deep hollow chasm in our lives,
The stench of stillborn friendship ties,
The shallow grave of your deception and lies.
Gone are the hopes, the faith and the trust,
We are watercolors swirling in the deep August dust.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2012
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

SALT OVER SHOULDER

SALT OVER SHOULDER

Many a year, alas and alack,
I avoided stepping on sidewalk cracks
Lest I’d trip and go on the attack,
Recklessly breaking my mother’s back.

Only once I tripped and failed,
Landed in the belly of Jonas’s whale,
And now I have this strange psychosis,
That I caused Mom’s osteoporosis.

If I were smart I’d cradle a frog in my arms,
They say that frogs cure a myriad of harms.
Perhaps though gay, I’ll go straight on the seas,
For they say naked ladies the storms do appease.

And I never sweep my doorway with a broom after dark,
This is tempting fate at best,
For witches use brooms to travel at night,
And sweeping past midnight brings unwelcome guests.

I save my fingernails in an airtight jar
After I clip and prune,
Witches use fingernails in their nasty brew,
Mixed in the light of the moon.

I salute and flatter Mr. Magpie,
Complimenting him on his lovely wife.
If he knew he was still single,
He’d be miserable for life.
And so I do a public service
And tell an eentsy-teentsy lie,
For magpies they are thieving birds,
Not to be trusted alone in the sky.

I’ve never lit three cigarettes with a single match,
I don’t want my third friend cruelly dispatched,
A soldier felled by the hand of fate,
Old wives’ tales hold a lot of weight.

And I always say bless you when someone sneezes,
I don’t want their spirit slipping away,
Felled by a head cold of sniffles and wheezes,
I want my friends safe for another day.

I take pains never to walk under a ladder
Afraid of some dreadfully serious matter,
Like a nasty bout with the demon gout
Or a strange disorder of the bladder.

And yet I am struck with a strange disease,
I tremble, I shuffle, and I freeze.
And sure as I know my middle name,
I swear that Judas I’s to blame.
The reason for my stiff and useless limbs,
Can ultimately be blamed on him.

It is said that Judas spilt salt at the famed last meal,
A Last Supper shared with Jesus
As the Easter bells did peal.
And that one should always throw salt over shoulder,
I’ve ignored this adage alas and alack
From birth until much older.

I know it sounds preposterous,
Even a bit medieval,
But the salt was meant to appease the devil,
And to somehow ward off evil.

Somehow I’d forgotten that wise little pearl.
And how it has wreaked havoc in my sad little world
Somehow I’ve forgotten that plain and simple truth,
And I’ve been struck down like an old man
In the flower of my youth.

Now I guess it serves me right,
All I can say is alas and alack,
The devil’s Mr. Parkinson,
And he’s always on my back.

And so my disease is a mess of my making,
My misery my own damn fault,
A useless remnant of my former self,
Like the wife of Lot, a pillar of salt.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2012
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

STREETS WHERE I DREAM

STREETS WHERE I DREAM

Haunted it seems are the streets where I dream,
The tunnels and the labyrinths through which I scheme,
The dusty, dim lit thoroughfares I walk a wounded misfit,
Not knowing where life ends or where my death begins,
Not knowing, alas, if I care a whit.

Care a whit for the sound of my tires swirling in the muck,
The ground up debris of what used to be me,
Before I gave up on my living and luck.
Cursed they be, the streets where I dream,
Or the streets where I hide in my nightmare.
Where I wake from my dreaming drenched and screaming,
And find alas there is nobody there.
Except the eyes of my lover fair who sees me through it all.
He cannot pacify me, I must go alone,
Tumbling like some reckless stone,
Down the mighty rabbit hole that I nightly fall.

Hushed and hidden away are my deepest fears,
The snake that coils around the neck,
The doctors commenting on the health of my heart,
They listen but can’t find a beat,
At the finish line before I start,
I taste the bitter and long for the remembered sweet.

Cracked and crumbling are the streets where I dream,
A bitter end where REM is laced with fear and danger.
Where at every turn, there’s a hell that burns
And an unforgiving stranger.

The streets where I slave and misbehave,
Destroying all vestige of hope and sleep,
A strange medieval museum slave,
I wake in a web where the mesh is deep.
Tangled like a vampire’s prey, I lie here and I waste away,
A man once so imposing and now so small and slight,
So willing to throw down the rubber gloves,
Surrendering without a fight.

The streets where I dream are grim and paved with hot coals,
The coals of recrimination, the coals of fear and blame,
The streets where I dream are a color scheme
Of viscous dark crimson where my spirit lies slain.
Where the lost coins are tossed in a messy blur,
Into the holy trinity of all that they once were.

Haunted it seems are the streets where I dream,
The dusty dim lit thoroughfares I walk a wounded misfit.
Not knowing where life ends or where my death begins,
Not knowing, alas, if I care a whit.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2012
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED