Hush
Can you see that choked scream growing?
It’s matured and almost ready
To claw its way out of my throat.
It’s rebelling and teaching my tongue
That swallowed words settle like lead in my stomach,
Like forgotten wishes on coins at the bottom of a well.
I’ve lived years in this silence,
But I’m teaching myself to speak again
Beyond suppressed emotions and strangled breaths.
You will find me climbing to rooftops
And taking up residence between shingles and metal.
You will find me gripping steel in soft hands
And hoping to absorb the strength through sweating palms.
You will find that scream still coiled and ready
To tear itself from my brimming lungs.
And when I see that glittering steel reflected behind my eyes
And hear my voice reverberate on the wind,
I want you to know that I’ve won.
I’ve escaped that strangling choke hold and found my voice again.
#poetry #freeverse #hush
Little Man In The Boat
As we shared a whiskey flask
My love took me to task
To mount an expedition
Beyond my wildest hope
A mission fraught with danger-
To save a man in a boat
She said I'd know his oilskins
By now quite slick and wet
And the shiny Sou'Wester rain hat
That sloped to protect his neck
She said that in the tempest
His hat might tend toward red...
I grabbed my oars and hunkered down
For nothing more be said
Against the tide as one we rowed
Tossed by growing swells
Faced with death, our sense grew sharp
With heightened taste and smell
As violent ocean ebbed and flowed,
With skill its hills we rode
"Put yer back in it,"
At one point, I heard the sailor cry
As the ocean roiled and tossed amid
Our frantic groans and sighs
We worked our aching bodies
Beyond what one should ask
Fighting 'gainst the rising storm
The mighty waves did crash
Till ocean calm returned once more
For me and my paramour-
Spent by the adventure
That we two had braved
A time of chase and glory
Forever we would note
The tale of how
That night I saved
A little man in a boat...
-DeRicki
Cost
I drink a cocktail of moonlight
It makes my gut feel tight
Loathe to rage or fuck or fight
I surrender to the night
In a quiet clearing
Lit by Luna's light
I build a meager fire
To lessen Dark's cold bite
I stare upon the heavens
And contemplate my life
All the people I have known
The ones I've loved and lost
The truths that I've held dear
And tossed
The battles I have fought
For reasons now exiguous
So frivolous in thought
That's when it occurs to me
That to live
Comes at a cost...
-DeRicki
The Color of the Leaves
When did you start giving a fuck about the color of the leaves?
The cut of the bark or the height of the trees?
When did you begin to believe you had a chance to be normal? When did it slip? When did writing start to stick?
When did your mind go, which way are you gonna go?
Do you have an inkling of why you exist, as though you could believe you were here on purpose.
We all know that we have no purpose,
We create our own through suffering and forgiveness
What’s Real Poetry?
What's real poetry?
Real pretty words all in a line, sporting a rhyme sung to soft metal tines?
Or the mutterings from lips loose and cracked; mind to mouth madness under thought of ecstasy in truth of perception?
Scrawled letters lost in meaning adopt yours; be cautious of your house, but keep the door unlocked
without you
It was the spit in my eye
As you walked away
You're cigarette still
Burning
Lying idle in the ashtray.
Streams of smoke
Dancing in streamers through
The air
Dust particles settling in the
Dying light of the Summer
Rays
Reaching their tentacled hands
Through the back teased valves
and roadways of veins.
I cut a line and shake my head.
There's a tap out stripper at my door
Holding rock gut whiskey and smoke
Chemically refreshing in the humid
Southern heat.
The bump brings the mind back
To Earth.
It's the survival of the fittest now
Tomorrow I'll wake up and she'll be shuffled out the door.
and ill brace myself to face the day
Without you