COMES THE END OF FEBRUARY
Comes the end of February,
I pray its death be mild.
Knocking on the door of March
As timid as a child.
A child that has been battered
By its cruel relentless cold.
An oaf ignored by Father Time,
A school child who would sell his soul,
For just one tender valentine.
Comes the end of February,
I wish its death be swift.
Like the frail old lady who can no longer walk
And must now ride the chair lift.
Huffing and puffing and breathing her last,
May Cupid throw his rusty arrow,
And kill off February fast.
Before it can foster another fall,
On the dreaded sidewalk ice,
A clean, clear break from winter,
Let that God forsaken sheen just splinter.
A painless death is always nice.
Comes the end of February,
I am not sad to see it go,
I used to love the velvet touch
Of a cool and frosty snow.
But now my steps are heavier,
My breathing.starts to labor,
I clutch these blossoms to my bosom,
Both talisman and saber.
Truth be told of life I'm weary,
Eyes are sleepy, vision bleary,
Like a college senior who prays to pass his final test.
Bury me in the flowers of April,
And lay me lovingly to rest.
Let March come in like a blissful lamb,
Let Easter flowers bloom,
Let the irises come early,
To anoint me with their sweet perfume.
Comes the end of February,
The longest short month ever,
Knocking on the door of March,
Begging for sweet sanctuary,
From its harsh and bitter weather.
Like some hapless, harmless oaf.
Who longs like me to lie down and loaf,
In the folds of springtime heather.
-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2013
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Saturday, February 16, 2013
MINISTRATIONS
MINISTRATIONS
(FOR KYLE, FOR VALENTINE'S)
Oh, the myriad kindnesses i can count on from your lips,
The affectionate ministrations that shower from each kiss.
The gentle hand that ushers forth that beckons me to you,
The glance that says come hither, that I eagerly pursue.
The sweet explosion of the fireworks, in dazzling ramparts fall,
The ministrations of the wise that pour forth from your eyes.
Those crystal blue clarion orbs that softly, sweetly call.
Begging me to answer, stretching forth across my hard times,
With heart-shaped fervor you've become a human valentine,
A sword, a shield, a sacrament, my saber in the snow,
My holy sweet togetherness, my romance of the soul.
When alas, my time is through, I know that I will call to you,
For one last helping of your quiet grace.
Kneel before me stoically while I memorize your face.
Minister unto me one last time, while the moon shines in the sky,
Press your lips so tender to me, say a fond goodbye.
After all these many years, the sorrow and the sin,
Your love where my life started is where it all shall end.
Oh, the many confidences that have passed from me to you,
You held me blameless for them all, an Adam before the tainted Fall.
Forgiven by his sovereign lord, restored to claim the throne,
Each sin unglued, at last imbued with love that rolled away the stone.
Each day of illness weathered, each careless spill, each hapless stumble,
Vacuumed up, forgotten, you would not let me crumble,
Did more than was asked for and more than was deserved,
I always could depend upon the promise of your word.
My every prayer God answered and my supplication heard.
When alas, the world it ends in either fire or freezing cold,
I hope to ride your shoulders to a place of calm repose,
To place within your graceful hands a bright and fragrant rose.
On this special day for lovers, you are somehow more,
The key that fit the jagged lock of my heart's forsaken door.
After years of ragged hunger and paralyzing thirst,
You've been with me through better times and seen me through the worst.
Your heart it still astounds me, with tenderness surrounds me,
With all the myriad kindnesses that I count in every kiss,
Those golden ministrations that dangle from your lips.
-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2013
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
(FOR KYLE, FOR VALENTINE'S)
Oh, the myriad kindnesses i can count on from your lips,
The affectionate ministrations that shower from each kiss.
The gentle hand that ushers forth that beckons me to you,
The glance that says come hither, that I eagerly pursue.
The sweet explosion of the fireworks, in dazzling ramparts fall,
The ministrations of the wise that pour forth from your eyes.
Those crystal blue clarion orbs that softly, sweetly call.
Begging me to answer, stretching forth across my hard times,
With heart-shaped fervor you've become a human valentine,
A sword, a shield, a sacrament, my saber in the snow,
My holy sweet togetherness, my romance of the soul.
When alas, my time is through, I know that I will call to you,
For one last helping of your quiet grace.
Kneel before me stoically while I memorize your face.
Minister unto me one last time, while the moon shines in the sky,
Press your lips so tender to me, say a fond goodbye.
After all these many years, the sorrow and the sin,
Your love where my life started is where it all shall end.
Oh, the many confidences that have passed from me to you,
You held me blameless for them all, an Adam before the tainted Fall.
Forgiven by his sovereign lord, restored to claim the throne,
Each sin unglued, at last imbued with love that rolled away the stone.
Each day of illness weathered, each careless spill, each hapless stumble,
Vacuumed up, forgotten, you would not let me crumble,
Did more than was asked for and more than was deserved,
I always could depend upon the promise of your word.
My every prayer God answered and my supplication heard.
When alas, the world it ends in either fire or freezing cold,
I hope to ride your shoulders to a place of calm repose,
To place within your graceful hands a bright and fragrant rose.
On this special day for lovers, you are somehow more,
The key that fit the jagged lock of my heart's forsaken door.
After years of ragged hunger and paralyzing thirst,
You've been with me through better times and seen me through the worst.
Your heart it still astounds me, with tenderness surrounds me,
With all the myriad kindnesses that I count in every kiss,
Those golden ministrations that dangle from your lips.
-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2013
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Saturday, February 9, 2013
CHEAP NOT EASY
CHEAP NOT EASY
I may be cheap but I'm not easy,
For life is expensive and seldom breezy.
I have to choose my luxuries, take wine without cheese.
My money invested in fighting disease.
Like a cheap whore in the prostitute store,
I'll rise and I'll primp for you, may even pimp for you,
It only takes a few dollars on the nightstand,
To make me follow on demand.
But don't expect a comfy ride,
We'll have to buck the raging tide.
The Colorado rapids have nothing on me.
I can drown so very easily,
In the river of my sorrow.
Hold on tight for all your might,
Pray like there's no tomorrow.
Pray the nausea from the drugs subsides,
Or my sadness will soon take a dive,
In this life there's only one thing sure,
The disease is not much worse than the cure.
I don't feel like high-fiving, for I'm far too busy writhing,
Like a soft pretzel in the mall, impossible contortions,
And when I raise my voice to speak,
There's only a whimper or distortion.
I have my wisdom and my masculine wiles,
Irresistible temptations of painted on smiles,
But it takes a conneisseur to appreciate,
The delicacy of my condition,
The fickleness of my fate.
Careful or I'll drag you down with me,
Into the maelstrom, into the whirlpool,
Give you a lesson in melancholy,
They never taught in trade school.
It's not that I'm not cunning, it's not I'm undiscerning,
Illness is my finest teacher and I admit that I'm still learning.
I'll take second billing, and I'm more than willing,
To give my love at a discounted rate,
You know not what you're getting into,
The gravity or the weight.
I sell my love cheap, trade in sex for eight hours' sleep,
Sometimes break down, uncontrollably weep.
I need your good strong arms, to hold me like a good luck charm,
I put my lasting faith in loyalty and fidelity.
I do not ask for miracles or cures you can't deliver,
Every now and then just make me quiver,
Like you did in days of yore,
I may be broke but I am not poor,
As long as I have you by my side.
With me on this lonesome ride.
Not to pontificate, not to philosophize,
We may just have to downsize,
Tailor our dreams, take wine without cheese,
Our nest egg invested in fighting disease.
Patience, my dear, toughen up, kid,
It's hard being hitched to an invalid.
Though it's dark before the dawn,
Disease like a leech, it bites down and holds on.
Though the miracle sometimes comes too late,
Though I disappoint and I sink like a dead weight
And though it gets a tad bit queasy,
What God has joined together let no man tear apart,
I may be cheap, but I'm not easy.
And you will always have my heart.
-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2013
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
I may be cheap but I'm not easy,
For life is expensive and seldom breezy.
I have to choose my luxuries, take wine without cheese.
My money invested in fighting disease.
Like a cheap whore in the prostitute store,
I'll rise and I'll primp for you, may even pimp for you,
It only takes a few dollars on the nightstand,
To make me follow on demand.
But don't expect a comfy ride,
We'll have to buck the raging tide.
The Colorado rapids have nothing on me.
I can drown so very easily,
In the river of my sorrow.
Hold on tight for all your might,
Pray like there's no tomorrow.
Pray the nausea from the drugs subsides,
Or my sadness will soon take a dive,
In this life there's only one thing sure,
The disease is not much worse than the cure.
I don't feel like high-fiving, for I'm far too busy writhing,
Like a soft pretzel in the mall, impossible contortions,
And when I raise my voice to speak,
There's only a whimper or distortion.
I have my wisdom and my masculine wiles,
Irresistible temptations of painted on smiles,
But it takes a conneisseur to appreciate,
The delicacy of my condition,
The fickleness of my fate.
Careful or I'll drag you down with me,
Into the maelstrom, into the whirlpool,
Give you a lesson in melancholy,
They never taught in trade school.
It's not that I'm not cunning, it's not I'm undiscerning,
Illness is my finest teacher and I admit that I'm still learning.
I'll take second billing, and I'm more than willing,
To give my love at a discounted rate,
You know not what you're getting into,
The gravity or the weight.
I sell my love cheap, trade in sex for eight hours' sleep,
Sometimes break down, uncontrollably weep.
I need your good strong arms, to hold me like a good luck charm,
I put my lasting faith in loyalty and fidelity.
I do not ask for miracles or cures you can't deliver,
Every now and then just make me quiver,
Like you did in days of yore,
I may be broke but I am not poor,
As long as I have you by my side.
With me on this lonesome ride.
Not to pontificate, not to philosophize,
We may just have to downsize,
Tailor our dreams, take wine without cheese,
Our nest egg invested in fighting disease.
Patience, my dear, toughen up, kid,
It's hard being hitched to an invalid.
Though it's dark before the dawn,
Disease like a leech, it bites down and holds on.
Though the miracle sometimes comes too late,
Though I disappoint and I sink like a dead weight
And though it gets a tad bit queasy,
What God has joined together let no man tear apart,
I may be cheap, but I'm not easy.
And you will always have my heart.
-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2013
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Saturday, February 2, 2013
DO NOT CALL IT LIFE
DO NOT CALL IT LIFE
Spend your precious time on the run
From the sound of your inner voices.
Stay trapped in the box, you know the one,
Where you've locked away your choices.
Dance in your sad, sinister, self-defeating ruts.
Do not stop to be yourself, to be yourself takes guts.
Do not stop to think you might be lying through your teeth,
As you chomp at the bit of unbridled strife.
Hang on your door a green and crimson wreath.
Dance, but do not call it life.
The whirlwind will catch you someday,
Pathetic little liar,
Careful lest your pants catch fire.
The whirlwind will come and catch you off guard,
The hiding and deception are hard.
You join the ranks of other lost souls,
Who have prayed for redemption but been swallowed whole,
By the weight of their guilt and their basic desires,
That flame and die on the funeral pyres.
Run from yourself in your desperate shoes
When you can't let the real truth come shining through.
Like some pusher armed with mind numbing pills,
That are good to cure a myriad of ills.
To titillate the bloodstream, to dull those fleshly dreams.
If all else fails you can go in hock,
Try your hand at electric shock.
There's no way you can go too far,
To avoid being the man you are.
Spend your precious time on the run,
Find an unsuspecting woman to marry,
You are running out of time to tarry.
Then close your eyes and fantasize,
When it's time to consummate the marriage,
Of the tall dark men with the stars in their eyes.
And not the vows and the baby carriage.
You can lie to me and lie to your friends,
You can lie to your wife and try to make amends.
But you can never lie to yourself, though your future's a blur.
Such a shame the word gay was always bandied about as a slur,
Such a shame you learned to despise the thing you were.
Such a shame you heard their words and took them so to heart.
Those words they killed your spirit, right from the very start.
The gilded closet its promises dangles,
But soon like an albatross it cripples and strangles.
Such a shame your parents would hurl you from their home,
If they found it was another guy on the other end of the phone.
Such a shame they hate you for spilling precious seed,
That on your fondest hopes and dreams they only piss and feed.
Such a shame it has to be, but someday soon you know it's true,
There comes a day of reckoning when you're going to have to live for you.
Spend your precious time on the run,
Like a race horse startled by the fire of a gun.
You can still dance if you want to, in self-defeating circles,
All across this damn twinkling city.
But do not ask for pity, and do not call it life.
-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2013
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
A poem originally simply called "Life" that I wrote in my college days as sort of an open letter to myself. I knew I was gay in my heart but had come out to no one at that point and had already unwittingly misled two women. This poem was sort of a cautionary letter I wrote to myself. I came out as a gay man shortly afterwards. I did a rewrite for 2013. The line about parents hurling you from their home does NOT apply to my very loving parents, but it does, sadly, apply to many gay men and women, even in this "enlightened" age.
Spend your precious time on the run
From the sound of your inner voices.
Stay trapped in the box, you know the one,
Where you've locked away your choices.
Dance in your sad, sinister, self-defeating ruts.
Do not stop to be yourself, to be yourself takes guts.
Do not stop to think you might be lying through your teeth,
As you chomp at the bit of unbridled strife.
Hang on your door a green and crimson wreath.
Dance, but do not call it life.
The whirlwind will catch you someday,
Pathetic little liar,
Careful lest your pants catch fire.
The whirlwind will come and catch you off guard,
The hiding and deception are hard.
You join the ranks of other lost souls,
Who have prayed for redemption but been swallowed whole,
By the weight of their guilt and their basic desires,
That flame and die on the funeral pyres.
Run from yourself in your desperate shoes
When you can't let the real truth come shining through.
Like some pusher armed with mind numbing pills,
That are good to cure a myriad of ills.
To titillate the bloodstream, to dull those fleshly dreams.
If all else fails you can go in hock,
Try your hand at electric shock.
There's no way you can go too far,
To avoid being the man you are.
Spend your precious time on the run,
Find an unsuspecting woman to marry,
You are running out of time to tarry.
Then close your eyes and fantasize,
When it's time to consummate the marriage,
Of the tall dark men with the stars in their eyes.
And not the vows and the baby carriage.
You can lie to me and lie to your friends,
You can lie to your wife and try to make amends.
But you can never lie to yourself, though your future's a blur.
Such a shame the word gay was always bandied about as a slur,
Such a shame you learned to despise the thing you were.
Such a shame you heard their words and took them so to heart.
Those words they killed your spirit, right from the very start.
The gilded closet its promises dangles,
But soon like an albatross it cripples and strangles.
Such a shame your parents would hurl you from their home,
If they found it was another guy on the other end of the phone.
Such a shame they hate you for spilling precious seed,
That on your fondest hopes and dreams they only piss and feed.
Such a shame it has to be, but someday soon you know it's true,
There comes a day of reckoning when you're going to have to live for you.
Spend your precious time on the run,
Like a race horse startled by the fire of a gun.
You can still dance if you want to, in self-defeating circles,
All across this damn twinkling city.
But do not ask for pity, and do not call it life.
-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2013
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
A poem originally simply called "Life" that I wrote in my college days as sort of an open letter to myself. I knew I was gay in my heart but had come out to no one at that point and had already unwittingly misled two women. This poem was sort of a cautionary letter I wrote to myself. I came out as a gay man shortly afterwards. I did a rewrite for 2013. The line about parents hurling you from their home does NOT apply to my very loving parents, but it does, sadly, apply to many gay men and women, even in this "enlightened" age.
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