24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
Mitch Brown
Hr 10
The longest, darkest night on earth
It speaks to us of lights rebirth
Dark broken with fire and ice
The day is served with food and drink
And gives us cause to pause and think
Dark broken with fire and ice
The years have changed the tone and cause
Usurped by those with selfish clause
Dark broken with fire and ice
Yet still the names are sung with love
None have replaced what’s seen above
Dark broken with fire and ice.
stop there
you’ve ruined it
I can’t find myself here
cabinets locked to keep ants out, too
you win
(this is the worst writer’s block I’ve ever had during a marathon)
so deceptive that
soft fire that burns
in the hearth, warm
between clutches of herbs
flowers and spices
when let out
beyond your boundaries
what damage she does
to those unsuspecting
(Hour 8)
This time of mourning because you left
Mother it is hard everyone seems so weak
Your voice in the morning when you try to wake us up
Won’t be heard anymore and the way that you laugh
Your absence dear mother is a thing we can’t bear
Your absence oh mother is something we all share
Because you’re one of a kind oh so patient
Missing you so dearly is an understatement
This too shall pass yes we hope so we do
But this is you oh mother I am sure it ain’t true
Of all the pain that we had this is the most
And for sure this will last and will always haunt
This too shall pass this we hope till the end
Time will heal all our hearts in no time it will
If we won’t get through this, if we won’t heal
Our pain, our loss we will all just conceal
Ejected through concrete conveyer belt future
that collapses what I imagined
identical capsules swarming like trained tadpoles
I once believed was observed from above
I am not worried.
I am not stressed.
I live in a place of peace and expectation.
It does not matter what comes my way
This is how I live my life.
Day in and day out.
I’ve been through a mess of stuff.
But my countenance does not change
Because my life is not dictated by or premeditated by circumstance.
I am the way that I am
Because
God
Is
In
Control.
The world must have started
in a land like Illinois
where the land is flat and modest
without obtrusions of outrageous color
or geographical interruptions of
the Greats like Vesuvius
(Hour 7)
“Tell ‘em all to stand up! Tell ‘em! Tell ‘em!”
As if it will do any good.
Let someone else stand up.
Someone else, surely, will take a stand
against the ills of this world.
I am too busy being an artist,
too busy being a worker bee
in the institutions of finance
making money to be an artist.
Too busy making money to just be.
Too busy to take a stand.
“Sit down!” they might say to me
when I insist upon justice.
“Sit down!” they’ll shout, when I point
my truth, like an arrow through
the nothing of their wicked souls.
“Sit down!” their press will write, when I speak
of their debauchery and sin. These flagrant
men whose black vision rules our world.
And then, they laugh, these men whose
withered dicks once saw a child’s uterus
in the darkness of her tiny body.
They laugh. “She’s just…
getting it out of her system.”
“Yes, who believes the matron?”
“Haha! Who believes the witch
walking between the light and the dark?”
“Tell ‘em to stand up!” shout the dead, “Tell ‘em!
Tell ‘em!” in time eternal.
I already did.
But truth is not a Goebbels theme… I’m sorry…
“Ah, yes,” they chime. “Goebbels.”
“We gobbled him up yesterday”
“In Nazi pie, with sherry wine.”
“We shat him into brine today”
“He grows again and again,”
“To our dismay.”
Again and again,
a bored dessert he became,
for goblins and trolls.
“Maybe they’ll stand up tomorrow.”
Credit: the first line is from the one-act play “Bury the Dead” by Irwin Shaw
January Birthday
With a birthday in early January
He has to accept the nearness to Christmas,
Joint presents and second thoughts
For wishing him a happy birthday
When surely Christmas and New Year
Were not even finished with?
To add to the ill-timed nature of his celebrations
He has to share his birthday with his brother,
The exact same day, six years apart –
Couldn’t be planned if they tried.
And although he’s the younger
It’s very much clear
That he’s late to this party,
As his brother laments
The lack of a shiny new bike
And the appearance of a sibling instead!