Oh, Glory

As a preface Lumi, this is for you http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBEomCtCujw. I think you can appreciate my intention fully once you've read this post.

HA, Lumi we like to poke at each other, eh? But that's not a relationship. And it's not how I feel.
I want to reach into a vat of innards and half eaten vegetables and rotting things and pull out what makes you write Lumi. I'll wander through manure and muck and grime covered in pus if we can uncover that; BUT I can't. It would be a fool's errand and completely ridiculous. That's up to you. At best the people around you in life can light a torch at some moment to just give you physical light. And you do what...write? Hm. Why did Rock and Roll come about Lumi?

Make that rhetorical. I really love this song by the way. Too bad folk isn't appreciated more. Paul came out with a new album by the way, or at least, one is coming out soon. Looking forward to it.

So I've read your poetry Lumi and I have an idea of what's following in this. This will either be amazing or fail.

It's echoed out on the streets
"Here I am"
over and over between encounters
we have as we get older and older
but the funniest thing is
you look as young as yesterday

and why do I hold onto my past like a song
I'm never going to sing,
is it because all of the love I had you took for good
as you packed up your boxes, said
"we'll never last, my love is misunderstood"

and here I am getting older each day with a bottle
of gin slouched by my father's guitar
and damn my old friend you're still as young as back then
I don't think I can ever get over being left alone again

Lumi my man, did you think this was a song,
no it's the feelings I get in the poems you write, they always
embody the past in what you carry today, tell us Lumi
where did this baggage come from?

Lumi, hombre, something's burning in you
and you've gotta gotta get that getting going, cause
things like this in writing don't come often my friend
or are you scared that writing about it means it must end?

Whatever you do Lumi, be honest with the words and the songs you sing
because every single day should be lived like it's every person's last, and everyone you meet
should be given your fullest, and every emotion even in defeat, should be honest at your feet,
let me be honest Lumi, I've come last a million times before and I've lost so many times I could tile a roof

Lumi what's eating at you? Are you here now?

Hope this helps. There you go Lumi. A little something or rather to pep you up and do something. Useful? I don't know, but it's something.

The Fifteenth.

lady sings freedom

I used to watch her hobble about through the streets.
I would sit on the curbside with my Martin
and pick a new strand of fate every time she veered
to the left. And she would hold her little plastic cup,
alms-alms-alms in hand, and hunch over like Orion
chewing a bottle of Asprin because the pain is too much,
it's always too much.

It didn't matter if the summer sun was glaring
onto her skin, frying the liver spots like greased sausages
in a Georgia kitchen, or if the wind was harsh and unfeeling
like a poor guy sitting alone at a bar, waiting for hours.

I used to think she was searching for something between
sidewalks, like a prime investigator on a hot trail.
But with time, I realized that she wasn't watching the cracks
in the road, but rather she wanted to see the lines
between the road and her skin wear thin, and eventually
vanish.

I'd pluck down six strings, fingers squished raw against
A and D to get the minor just right, and the woman on the road,
she'd hum along like she sang an old spiritual,
free at last, free at last, thank God almighty.

Spoiler

Not so much a clever poem about being free from anchorage, but rather a glorified story about how I played guitar on a sidewalk one day back in High School and saw this homeless woman just walking the crosswalk back and forth. I like to think her name was Irene.

The Twenty-Second

voids

I am nothing:
comparatively
tiny embers struck against a chalkboard,
the burning, mashed remains of
unnamed cadaver seventy-two.

My nothingness is a poison
just like yours, just like God's.

But no, he doesn't mean that,
not when he's so faulty, and
not when he walks with a gimp--
no, we're just all made differently,
tiny precious snowflakes,
individual, unique nothings
geared for war, suited for insults
and conditioned for tears.

And we say what we don't want to hear
because it makes us strong,
makes us brave little voids.

Spoiler

I don't like this one.