24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
The traveller urges his horse on
with wolves at his back.
Suddenly over the howls comes
the merriment of music.
The wolves retreat to find a safer hunt,
the traveller begs for a shelter.
He gets it, and more,
food and wine and the promise of safe passage in the morning.
But with one stipulation.
So the traveller sings away the rest of the night.
In the morning, he is found in the ditch.
Silver blue sky, spread with rosy clouds, overlooks the city in the canyon. Deep between the rising red spires of rock, the azure river flows calmly past after a million years of wearing down the stone. The sun descends behind the horizon, leaving the sky stained a pale violet. As dusk descends, golden halos of light illuminate the crags between the reddened towers. A breeze passes, whistling a song in its journey between the cliffs, and urges the butterflies from their nests.
Golden wings flutter-
A flurry of butterflies
Released by the wind.
Melt in your mouth and hands alright!
Such a creamy delight
In its dark, milky, or ivory goodness
I love chocolate
When it’s hot and cozy
When it’s cold and frosty
When it nutty or on a cake
When it’s the skin on his face
I love the scent and the texture
When crispy rice bits make crunchy pleasure
The tasty candy rules the world
When it’s plain, ice cream, or swirled
Shout your love and admiration
For the best candy in all of the nations
Sweet, delectable, and an artist’s dream
This ode to chocolate is a universal theme
jj2017
Say what you will, there’s an honor in persistence.
Just because one does not succeed,
have their tries become inert?
Like King Sisyphus forever cursed to roll a boulder
only for it to roll down at the end,
I care not what comes for the final result.
As any writer worth their salt can tell you,
It’s the journey that makes the trip, not the destination.
Take me to New Hampshire
Where I left it on the water
dreams floating
on the mountain bay
Where the stars held my attention
Star North gave direction
I was in a moment
With nothing in my way
Take me back there
Follow signs to Echo
Find myself
the place I want to stay
Take me to New Hampshire
With stone lined pockets
Walk me to the water
When the stars consume the sky
Let the water take me
Last breath in that moment
Hold me close to everything
That has slipped away
All but the moments
All but the memories
All but that smile, she wears upon her face
I will let go now
Leave me in New Hampshire
Leave me on the water
Where dreams rest
Leave me on the mountain bay
Hoist me a pint of ale in the old boat house;
Seek shelter from gust and gale in the old boat house.
Wield me a poem, you bardic Procol Harum:
Turn a whiter shade of pale in the old boat house!
Breezes of Laugharne, perpetually fresh!
Nothing ever goes stale in the old boat house!
Jonah me, Moby me, humpbacked and blubbered:
Spend three days in the whale of the old boat house!
Come to the confines of your monastic keep:
Lock yourself in the jail of the old boat house!
Message me in a bottle, lyric lord of Wales:
I’ll send my fan mail to the old boat house.
Let druids rise up from their moss-grown graves
And bless each rusty nail of the old boat house!
Heron and cormorant, he-gull and she-gull
Soar and wade and sail past the old boat house.
I praise your psalm-shed, beer-brawny word-worker:
Hosanna, hurrah, and hail to the old boat house!
I cannot dance,
I run around,
swing my feet,
I cannot dance,
yet her tune never recedes
and I imagine I can dance
while I play the Irish fiddle
hold onto the joyful memory
and dance forever more.
“Last chance to see”
The woman in the scales
come one, come all
to the Mermaid in a stall
The man in the checkered suit
waves his gloved hands at the tent
last chance to see
a bit of remaining wonder
a con that only the guileless believed
but we went anyway,
spending our meager cents
for a moment with a woman
who all pretended to be
more than a woman
we needed to believe in something
more than the cars on the road,
the orbs of light on the streets,
and the skyscrapers growing into the sky
we needed a moment that recalled
when humanity lived in fear of the dark,
and knocked wood to keep the fairies away.
Electricity exposed the outlines of our magic
We still need the dark.
Halfway there
Like to think the worst is behind us
Or below us
Or under the bed where we cannot see
But this is just that drop off point
Where the sleepy give up
And the die hards keep going
Our brains have been mutated now
The regular day to day
Has been replaced by poet brain
A strange beast for sure
It rules from here on out
As our eyes being to close
Our shoulders begin to lean
This is where we lose control
We lose our critic
Where we lose common sense
!2 more hours
Halfway point
A milestone has come
A milestone to go
A monument to poetic perseverance
And masochism.
The sunrise tells of
Yet another unknown story
Of days past, though it
Would have to wait for the
Sunset to conclude it.