DO NOT LEAVE ME NOW

DO NOT LEAVE ME NOW

The water caresses the peaceful shore,
As summer begins its long slow fade.
Harp strings vibrate with the balmy wind of evening
Before night falls in its mad tirade.

Life is hard for everyone so how can I complain?
What care have I of this mortal coil and all of this earthly pain?
Sometimes you lose and misfortune it wins,
But the hardships they are just as punishing now as they were then.
Trials come and they go, it's too late to ask why,
There is no peace yet in the residue of all my days gone by.

The dog in my lap looks up eagerly,
Laps up the wine I've spilt on the porch cushion.
As through my mind the past and all its pain comes pushing.
His inquisitive brown eyes melt my loneliness into the sunset,
Try to banish my burgeoning tears and silence my regret.
Later on, he will run by the seashore, chase apparitions, bark at the moon.
Welcome music to these ears, as time so dear slips away so soon.
It's a long road I've traveled for this final fling.
So I try to enjoy, just sit sipping wine and remembering.

My love he watches from the door,
He is worried and I can tell.
The pain of the flesh is bad enough,
But recrimination is hell.
I can remember every bad misstep, every secret sin.
I cannot yet forgive myself the places that I've been.
It's a fight we all must fight alone, a duel to the death,
To prove this life was more than just a stale parade of wasted breath.
I used to be a conjurer, I used to have the spell,
But my powers are deserting me and my thirst it will not quell.
There was once a method in my madness, once a road map home.
Now there's only sadness, and we all must die alone.

Long ago when I was young,
My life a song still half unsung.
When there was still time to remake the past,
To fortify old dreams.
To build a fortress that would last,
I could outrun the pain, go twice as fast,
Now it has me in its grip,
Into the gap and the chasm I slip.

Long ago before disease set its claws upon me
I could summon quiet into my nights like an ocean fog,
Breathe it through my pores.
A resilience that buoyed me through sunshine and through downpours.
Sweet comfort reigned and sang me lullabies,
Brought cool water to my feverish brow,
Halted my pain and stifled my cries, 
I pray those lullabies do not leave me now.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2013
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

THERE MAY WELL BE

THERE MAY WELL BE

There may well be a reason to linger,
On the precipice of a waking dream.
It may well be that Death's shriveled finger,
Is not yet beckoning for a reckoning with me.

There may well be a verdant space on earth,
Where I can chart a future and plan my own rebirth.
I cannot see God's wisdom nor his vaunted master plan,
I shrink and pale before his presence,
There are things I don't yet understand.

There may well be a golden age,
Where I can write my own last page.
A place for someone strange like me,
To step and strutter on the stage.
A cool bright land of psychedelia,
To soak up all my melancholia,
There very well may be, though the chance is slim and slight,
A way to tunnel underneath the fog of this my darkest night.
To swim in the river of forgetfulness, to fortify my castle,
To graduate at a faster rate, to earn my cap and tassel.

There may well be a hiding place, where i can find a saving grace.
A solving of the mystery, an island home for you and me.
Where we can dance a merry jig, call the friends and roast a pig,
We still have time for the wedding, still have time for a honeymoon,
Although the world falls down around us and Fate pops our balloon.

There may well be a reason for this disease and for this fight,
For the breath of angels to feather over me, caress me in the night.
I know not the Father's wisdom, nor that of his Son.
I only know that Death waits at the end for everyone.
There may well be a reason for him to look the other way,
To lay down his hood and sickle and come back some other day.
There may well be a reason to expect a sunny clime,
Before the snow it comes to fall and lift me out of time.

But all I know is the certainty of the moment, the sacredness of now,
I'm standing in the stern of the boat or perhaps it is the prow.
So hard to chart the course I sail, so I hold on fierce and fast,
To the love you've always shown me, a love I know will last.
There may well be a tragedy in the face of our tomorrow,
There may well be a river of respite or a raging tide of sorrow,
Our fortune could swing either way, it is only for the gods to say.
We may as well release them, surrender to their kismet,
And dance a loving minuet into the fading sunset.

I know not how to flee Death's shrewd and shriveled finger,
So in the passway here I wait and fondly still I linger.
Wondering if there's anything to heal me or to set me free,
And I am loath to give up hope, for in truth there may well be.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2013
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

POOLS OF MYSTERY

POOLS OF MYSTERY

Pools of mystery, they reach out from the deep,
Enter my silent portals of sleep.
Water comes rushing, it gushes and pours,
I drown in the current, swiftly and sure.

Pools of mystery, they know my sad history,
Tears on my pillow, the remnants of woes,
Unfathomable how I made it through those,
They tug at my life boat, they send me slowly reeling,
Like the vertigo that spins the bed beneath the ceiling.
Like a flowering plant, an overgrown wisteria,
It climbs the trellis, this nameless fear, this brutal, cold hysteria.

Pools of vaunted mystery, in puddles at my feet,
Cold and frigid, the glacier, the ice, heralding defeat,
A fatal, final splash,  a most resounding crash,
The cops they come with night sticks and shut down my mirthful bash.
Never one to take a chance, nor with the devil to flirt or dance.
I only party in my dreams, the nightmares into which I dive.
Headfirst like a kamikaze, they make me feel alive,
And sometimes sorrow, sometimes glory, they lurk and stay behind,
Pools of mystery, stone cold history, messing with my mind.

Where are your days of glory, my son,
See what all your sad hubris has wrought.
All in your youth that you worked and you slaved for,
What little peace of mind your currency has bought.
The questions they rise and they torment a brain,
You wonder if you're going insane,
What led you to this stifled life, where once you raised your voice,
To leave you such a wretched soul, lost without a choice.
Was it just a sad, blind game of unrelenting chance.
An overdose of pesticides, that stopped your youthful dance.
Was it some sin from out your past, that left you sinking sure and fast?
Was it predestined in the womb, was there never any wiggle room?

You gaze up at the tall trees, pleading for answers,
While the cells in your substantial nigra perish like a cancer.
Metastatic, evil, the brain death it goes spreading,
Swift as an assassin, intent on your beheading.
I want a scapegoat, want revenge, I want someone to blame,
I'm standing with my notepad, quietly taking names,
In handwriting that I cannot read, sick of playing useless games,
That hold no promise of fruition, nothing but voodoo and intuition,
And lofty calls for my surrender, haughty calls from the depths of my soul.
Emptiness that hearkens and hastily eats me whole.

I fall from off the mountain steep, into the precipice mighty and deep.
Drowning and floundering in the rushing sea of the helpless tears I weep.
Most times sorrow, sometimes glory, they lurk and stay behind,
Pools of mystery, stone cold history, messing with my mind.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2013
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED