24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
Hush fog! You afternoon haze
Descending that far mountain shelf.
You hide fir trees from my sight!
Damn sweating sun!
Shall thee come near, oh night,
With moonbeam in the darkest phase?
I’d make some coffee for myself,
Caffeine canteen of sweet delight,
But that’s no fun
On a moonless Saturday night!
So, hush fog! We’ve stars to gaze.
Me and my sweet concrete elf,
He and his companion sprite,
Believe your pall is overdone.
We dock here for the starlight.
(Original poem) The Gift, by Ed Ringer, from Mature Living/June 2019:
The ocean has a job to do,
Pushing toward its goal.
It moves at God’s direction
To wash my mind and soul.
The sand that sweeps between my toes,
The roaring in my ears–
The simple message from my God
That erases all my fears.
Each wave that rolls upon the shore
Rolls out with parts of me.
It slowly cleanses to my core
All of life’s impurity.
Foolish man, O foolish man,
I seldom heed the call
To just give up my problems
To the One who solves them all.
I must come back; I must come back
Each day to walk its shore
To take advantage of this gift
To love the Giver more.
My Erasures of “The Gift” by Ed Ringer from Mature Living/June 2019:
The green tree has a job to do,
Important for our health.
It was taught by God above
To fix our air as wealth.
The breeze that flows upon my brow
Full of oxygen I need,
Is given off from his green trees
For breath, for life, indeed.
And just as we are partners
In this game of life,
We also help the trees
Exhaling wasted blight.
The trees need carbon dioxide
To keep their system strong,
So God devised the plan
To work together, long.
Foolish man, O foolish man,
Could never have devised
A plan so unbelievable
In God’s thoughts, very wise.
I must take care; I must take care
Of earth, and all He made,
For He made everything with care
And care by me, he bade.
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“Era Sure” by Mandy Austin Cook
Reconstruct confidence.
Don’t be afraid
to take the drawing board and keep drawing.
it doesn’t matter how many times
you may have to use the eraser.
The magic is in the repetition
Don’t give up!
Doodle if you must but draw into this Era
the Sureness of what you want
and be flexible in the learning,
for every growing minute
is a constant re-creation of who you are.
It’s meant to be that way
Because if you stop with the scribbling
the background waxes stale with chalk
and dust accumulates into rigidity.
before you know it, the brilliant that could be
fades into the dull of what might have been
all because you were afraid to try.
Keep going.
Never stop scribbling
your brainstorming bubbles.
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There is a curve
Through which I know I must pass
There is no straight line ahead of me
And I am lost without an absolute.
I am so inauthentic
Claiming to embrace chaos and the unknown
That’s just one more lie
On top of all the others.
Fingers tap on my keyboard like electric shocks
Because if I am untrue then my words are untrue
And for that there are consequences.
Write what you know
Yet when that is fragile
Truth atop a razor blade
Impaled before finally toppling off its edge
Whose life ends up on this page?
Not mine.
I can erase the past and create the future
With these strokes
But the present turns too sharply
And remains unwritten.
You are older now a lot of time has passed, months years maybe even weeks and or seconds, since you last read this.
12 what a time what a year the first love, first loss, first death and suicidal thoughts, first fight, first lie, first chance to be yourself.12
Lost in the crowd impressing everyone you meet trying not to meet anyone empressions are too meak.12
Run the streets, literally all over town. I seen you. It was fun, then you wanted to be seen.12
Lost and found, you found wisdom lost; back to self you survive. Okay now lets make it simple.
You grew up fast, then they grew old, you wonder why but you know. You don’t have to work but you have to make some thing happen. If you don’t then nothing happens. You have to move. Make your own. 12.
You had money and will continue to make the coins turn dollars; investing in thoughts. Change starts with talking. 12.
You are a shadow cast by nothing,
a lost god to a crumbling shrine,
a forgotten law no one abides,
the dying breath of a senile king.
You are there in each poem I write,
a ticking metronome no one hears,
a constant reminder of the passing years,
a distant melody I still can’t find.
Your absence, father, is oft’ passed through
by men who have children of their own.
They hold me and say I’m not alone
and then leave me again, just like you.
But other men are easier to miss
than remembering you, writing this.
Alive dreams are
blooming
in my eyes
becoming a glory.
Intoxicated
clouds gather,
Chain sawing
my heart.
My innocent heart
fears losing,
Losing itself!
How to face
these complexities
Where is that
innocence
Gone?
The wind is playing
the strings of my
mind/heart.
These colors of life
doesn’t please me
Anymore..
Which is my
destination?
I am not a dream
nor a secret
I am awake
I am asleep
I am lost
What craziness!
Strange story
it is
Where it started and
where it ended
What premordial
Love it is
Unbearable fire
It cannot be started
on a whim, and
cannot be extinguished
Filling my heart
This flame
Fires my breath
This subtle pain
Now understand
It’s purpose
I bow and
Make my
Prayers
I’m on an adventure
Diving into my heart
Where I will find the treasure
But first I must find
The map, my inspiration
Perhaps I could look to my love
For it brings me elation
Teaching me the new trends
There is also my family
Who is always encouraging me
But they can make things chaotic
And my love can be quite quixotic
So I look to the sky
And to the trees around
Everything in nature I spy
where my passion is found
I can soar past all the stress
and just delve in the beauty of the outdoors
Although, even better is the sound
And the music that opens doors
Through which under indeas I am drowned
These unlikely pleasures awaken my heart
and give my inward journey a kickstart
Finally,
Hope and creativity
Peace and guidance
I find.
And that is where my heart belongs
Right in the middle of Nature and Sound
The sun of that same day going down,
Dusk was saluted by an instantaneous sparkle of electric lights.
Dinner and bedtime were always difficult to kill,
The night after the dance further tarnished by the peevishness of dissipation
There were no letters for either of the two young men.
As every other person, practically, had received two or three plump letters from England,
Which they were now engaged in reading.
The animals had been fed. Their silence reminded him of the silence in the lion-house,
When each beast holds a lump of raw meant its paws
Some, hippopotamuses
Some, canary birds
Some, swine
Some, parrots
And some, loathsome reptiles curled round the half-decayed bodies of sheep
The intermittent sounds—now a cough, horrible wheezing or throat clearing were just, he declared,
What you hear if you stand in the lion-house when the bones are being mauled
He fixed his attention more closely upon his fellow-creatures.
He was too far from them, however, to hear what they were saying,
But it pleased him to construct little theories about them from their gestures and appearance.
I can smell if you are from Louisiana
Something in your blood
Calls out to mine
Something in your eye shine
And gentle face
And the color of your skin
No matter the shade
Something always tells me
I am yours
You are mine
We are lovers
We are family
We are far from home
We always carry home with us
Where two or more of us are
That is Louisiana