Once upon a time

There wasn't a day more satisfactory than today,
The eyes of the mirror were not a victim's eyes.
And a smile could catapult over every jagged ridge.

Stars given a name didn't squander the night,
Steep mountain roads called for flying feet,
and lifted arms celebrated both sun and rain.

The alarm clock was more salutary than dull sleep,
A shaka brah heart surfed the e...

Read and leave comments (4)

I wasn't born into a designer family. Entered life
as another unwanted mouth to feed. Birthed into strife
on rundown W. 33rd on Cleveland's near west side
where rowdy drunks roar and tawdry pimps hole up.

The product of greaser backseat adolescents
in the mid-fifties, who got it on
without getting diplomas,
and when baby daddy went to sow more oats,
mom stripped at a local biker's c...

Read and leave comments (3)

Under weathered daisies
allegedly buried, but mindfully present
an old-timer - well past his prime,
beneath a cold etched granite marker
in the gut-wrenching hope,
that she might willingly return
to  recall the pleasant times at his soil,
as he oft did at hers
   his unanswered love,
   his perpetual embrace
He would caress her with his stone
hands, devoutly wishing for the white heat
...

Read and leave comments (1)

The celeb from the other side of the pond
with a bug motif imagined
that his mop-headed crew were more
in than the man whose visitation
split history into two eras. The
insect fellow enjoyed
wearing the red uniform of cultural demolition
and historic revisionism called revolution.
Though his late diminutive voice may still
charm gray-haired fans, the chap he alleged
to dwarf continues un...

Read and leave comments (0)

The haves and the have nots
constitute the whole human societal world.
We can't be sure of the  membership
for each grouping on this side of the border;
the invisible boundary of a life's span.
There is a registry, an accounting
for whoever belongs where. We can inspect
fruit and infer, but all the evidence is not yet in.
Those who have, have. Those who don't-- do not.
It's cut and d...

Read and leave comments (0)

Two accounts collide and oppose.
The powers decide their next move.
Possibilities begin to close.
Only one has something to prove.

The ghost of this world is a poseur--
professing to play a good game.
In league with the swarms of Hades--
Electrified with the tone of its name.

Reality cries from the soil--
The truth shouts from the trees.
This narrative no one can foil;
the anci...

Read and leave comments (0)

Ambrosia, Pink Lady, and Honey Crisp
flaunt ruby as harvest apples appear.

Stacked ears of corn on the cob
await shucking, boiling, salt & butter,
then the chattering-smile of front teeth.
Cleaning the cob a row at a time
will probably need a toothpick
or a fingernail.

When the tooth fairy got my front
teeth at the age of six, my mom
would cut the corn from the cob
with a ...

Read and leave comments (0)

An angelic child looks on with chubby cheeks
cupped in its hands. A picture on a stationary box
fished out of the trash. They're everywhere.
The stained glass seraph hovers above the window too.
It doesn't say much. A wish was directed to it once
but denied. At least, that's what it seemed. One October,
two writers united under its pearly wings, but their flow
was halted. It was protec...

Read and leave comments (0)

It runs amok inside of my head.
It arrogantly prances as if I were dead.
It thumbs its nose whenever I try
to quell its intelligence-insulting lie.

It bleeds the eyes with the morning news.
It voids in me with its monstrous views.
It winds me up as a talking head,
then perturbs me at night when I go to bed.

Sliding along, biding our time,
or still soaking up the trumpeted slime,
...

Read and leave comments (0)

I feel, thus I am.

Rationalizing is only scar tissue
hardening like a sarcophagus
written with excuses.

I perceive without apology
my ownership of the basswood leaves--
their crunch, chlorophyll sliding
down my throat. The maple leaves of the northeast
jelling when chewed, speaking of the sun's
health-giving properties.

Began the morning with the thrill
of 2 tsp of apple cide...

Read and leave comments (0)

Death happens from obstructions to essential pathways.
Elimination is, therefore, more critical than assimilation.

Toxic collections can clog & crowd
out sun, oxygen-rich air, and pure water.

Xylem root tissues conduct water
in plants --like circulating conduits transporting hemoglobin
for animation of all animals, including humans.

Your existence depends upon open channels.

Read and leave comments (0)

It is what it is - I'm affirming right now
I am who I am - none can disallow.
The audience is fickle - I don't seek their praise.
It's not worth a nickel. I'll live my own days.

It is what it is - though never the same,
I am who I am - I  make my own game.
Moments are changing, perpetually new.
Thoughts rearranging - artistically view.

I am who I am - according to me.
It is what it is...

Read and leave comments (0)

Our meet-cute was just poetry
you followed mine - and I, yours
we swapped numbers on MySpace
you texted me with an attachment,
a video of you in a black dress creating
to Dido's "White Flag,"
your winsome playfulness
captivated mine
Though you left this shuttle in 2016
but I am forever encountering you.

Read and leave comments (2)

we should not allow,
or so *they* say
because an infernal law
prevents difference

and yet to rebel
with a screeching yell
is just the same
it's not a recent game

do we peculiarly fit(?)
the used mold awaits
unquestioning agreement
but what if we refuse
to falsely say the same rhyme
that *they* recite in line?

reject us they must
because the format is
foreign
our feather...

Read and leave comments (1)

A poem of draining life
was Dickinson's delight.
She once wrote,
A poem is a poem if
hearing it
makes all strength to leave;
& puts our nature in a freeze,
like removing the cranial cap
with an emotional thunderclap.

One day I heard such a poem,
like nothing heard before,
chilling my blood and bone.
Sliced to the very core.

Silenced to a statue,
I had to pull off the road,
it su...

Read and leave comments (0)

She is a crone,
a flowing vapor,
an invisible river--
Too fast? Too slow?
What she is? I don't know.

...but I'm caught in her tow
and must go with the change
perpetually to grow in age
sands through a glass
either gold dust or waste

A tree of possibility
her leaves transform seasonally
to fertilize the hope of summer dreams

A personal providence?
Or a bad joke of chance?
...

Read and leave comments (0)

My ass is getting dirty with the black soil I'm now seated on, and I don't care because I found the portal to the path that I discovered last night. I had to see if it would have the identical enchantment in the morning as it did when I danced under the moonbeams and became one with the evening shadows--

About 9:30AM, I set out and readily found the path – it's an old Amish buggy path, a series...

Read and leave comments (0)

Will you ever love the one behind your eye?
Promote your own voice?
Decide to restrain imitation?

Write the drops of the day,
Recall your trashed diaries.

Drifting in every direction
we flower, the ranges call-- permit the beach,
the earth, the islands.

Find the nature of sunshine,
not its reverberation--
for we evaporate like the morning

While dreaming the faraway road.
D...

Read and leave comments (2)

The lust for war
is skin-tight & as hemoglobin to bone--
turning poets into preaching prophets
politicians into potion preachers
children into cheapened chattel
soldiers into senseless slogs
intellectuals into inflated idiots
conservatives to corny connivers
liberals into leaky liars &
the right into the wrong.

simply because war is a blood poison
and war is psychotic chaos,
a f...

Read and leave comments (2)

The ancient establishment of squirrels now pretends
to be in step with the interests
of the next generation of kittens,
but only has its own nutty preservation
as its motive. 
It exists to perpetuate the same
nutcase squirrel philosophy of nut hiding. 
Many gestations ago, older squirrel politicians
fluffed up their tails up and munched on hallucinogenic seeds
pretending to still be ...

Read and leave comments (0)

Miniature lilac tea-candles

in the bathroom, on the john

are symbols of the teardrops

from the bathtub, they burned on.

And that spray of ivy hanging

from the candelabra on the wall

with pictures of dark-brown oak leaves-

reflect you, & to me call.

Our Christmas tree is stripped now

without the tinsel and the balls--

lies naked by the hall door;

mist...

Read and leave comments (3)

I've broken the bolt from the fence's gate.

For we were the first on this vast land,
though your insatiable selfishness would prevent us.

I've removed the latch with my crowbar.

You pretended you'd share the open vistas as far as the sun-painted mountains,

where my people roamed the sierras
for millennia honoring the land, buffalo, sky, and sun;

But now, I name you robber and...

Read and leave comments (0)

About 9PM, a walk began filled with restlessness. Claustrophobia pushed every step with the urge to escape.

Off of Johnson Street, a block behind the house, there's a dirt road with a placard saying: "No motorized vehicles allowed." Seeing this, adventure presented itself, and the toes turned into it.

Picking up the pace, the town passed slowly out of sight, opening up to another world ...

Read and leave comments (2)

One hot summer night beneath a rabbit-eared moon,
they walked hand in hand.  
They were engaged in candid thoughts,
dreams and visions of life adjusted
to the highest good of each.

They sat on a River Run park bench
head to head, attuned to the speechless earth-songs
harmonizing in balance.
Can anything be better than this?
You seek me as I am unknown to even myself.
I have seen m...

Read and leave comments (2)

We are now with what Dickens described;
the best and the worst clash and collide.
Words are being changed, thoughts rearranged,
undermined, re-framed, and reassigned.

The vulture picks a dying culture.

Let's look at a crucial example:
"Tolerance" doesn't mean acceptance.
 
You can dislike something or someone
yet still tolerate them without hate.
No one can compel us to "accept,...

Read and leave comments (0)

The jilted husband made another circuit around River-Run.
He was still wearing their ring --he looked down at the rocks
she sat for pictures with yellow flowers braided in her hair.
One round was about a quarter-mile --he was on his 15th with
each step being a penance; his fuming mind, his priest.

He reclined on a picnic table in the center of the circuit,
exhausted from grief, sorrow...

Read and leave comments (0)

He got his brother's phone call while wiping a cabinet.
His eyes went side to side --like a cartoon character
having a conniption. Even though there was an inkling
of a nose-dive, the mind plays tricks thinking maybe;
a rally could plant the feet on terra firma again.

There was too much to express without ample time.
Junior had rehearsed the denouement until fluent, but
forty miles a...

Read and leave comments (4)

I dreamt of a day
emptied of all beauty
human beings had banned

autonomy --crucified as a criminal
difference --blended as a flat smoothie
risk --quarantined as a leper
the divine --dubbed as a dunce
science --married as the state religion
journalism --spinning on the web

so, humans were screen-reeducated 
to march in lockstep

the same direction, wearing
the same expressions...

Read and leave comments (0)

Today is May 1st, geolocated under the lights
of space and sky with the star filling the green
seen through blue, which comes through
a jigsaw of polygon negatives
cut out through back-yard maple trees

everything is in motion
I can't see the wind but
a billion green palms doing the princess wave
& slender trunks swaying their slow-dance

out of the sliding glass
while I vacuum lo...

Read and leave comments (0)

Guiltily guiltily think
the thoughts are soon what stink
the mind is like
a rusty trike
with pedals out of sync

Victory victory now
there isn't a method how
the present is
the place we live
what's now we must allow

this subtle trickery lie
to think we must comply
the truth is one
the nose will run
a lie we must defy

Read and leave comments (0)

a boy on the shore
traumatized by an evening sight
of the swellings, looming and ugly
--stupified by the scene
of a thousand giants menacing
waving their welcome to the abyss
which rose and dove as hades
with routine desolation

twisted above
in the swirling cloudy height,
a monstrous face
on an approaching night,
its madcap roar
ordered the dark behemoths below,
in sync with t...

Read and leave comments (1)

a shaved head, I grind,
eyes jabbed blind
the unseen, still perceive
so fly to hold the blood-stained tree
for I've no recourse bearing me to cope
because I have been reckoned as already dead
and seek the resurrection bread
of the empty vault, but presently ahead
even if the word doesn't rhyme in time
or in my benighted mind
I cannot continue the same
--for 'son' is in my name
for...

Read and leave comments (0)

did you ever contemplate
heatwaves dancing on a horizon(?)
isn't it tremendous that empty can seem full(?)
a firm capture, but much more
flows through a distracted imagination,
turbulent, but TNT -- here goes---

boom shack-a-lack a - flitter, flutter, fuzz--
to eliminate rubbish and open my reception
for the perception of a maple tree
blends harmony with beauty, gorgeous
ooh-la-la...

Read and leave comments (0)

The mind asked
the hands
--what are you writing?
but the hands simply
kept on typing,

the hands thought to themselves
--if we stop, the screen
merely remains empty,

so the distracted mind
overlooked the hands
as they continued clicking away--

their intention was,
--if we just carry on pressing the keys, even
though the mind shuffles behind,
something may begin to form

t...

Read and leave comments (0)

the days shorten as dark umbra extend,
foretelling the struggle of a bitter end

summer waning wearing away,
Halloween ghouls come out to play

molting trees shedding crimson leaves,
cornstalk scarecrows are perches for thieves

crushed pumpkins cover a killing field,
blood-stained Earth must be healed

fleeing fowl flit their feathered escape
ahead of the north wind's howling ga...

Read and leave comments (2)

coffee & windows rolled down, taking in
the smell of road-apples on steaming asphalt
while the sun declares its freedom to bake
my lobster-red arm
feels fine to flow at 65
over the pitted zigzagging Amish trails
shunning the black buggies from the 18th century-

I think, 'it's all about choices' but
is that true? --I tune the station to seek
the smooth stuff to sway my ducking
& we...

Read and leave comments (0)

the sparkle of the sun on the water's surface
the hazy spot in the distance is a ship
fat seagulls ha-ha-ha and scream patrolling the shore
there is a faint fishy scent on the intermittent breezes

scavengers aren't scared of me strolling down the beach
they approach skittishly, eying me for a handout
I carry nothing to give them
yet happily abundant

Read and leave comments (0)

alone, walking by
ants gnawing a scorpion
heart of the desert

Read and leave comments (0)

raven hair flips airily across
a face with gray-green eyes
they tell a story of hardship & loss,
aged early from tearful cries

your beauty calls me with your pain
I ache for your touch to share
your every feature, a mystic chain
with a hidden longing, stare

even Eros can not report your image,
he would consume the world in flame
beyond a merely physical appearance,
you put vulg...

Read and leave comments (0)

tired jeans crumpled on the floor
simple in thread-bare wrinkles
fading blue an old man's mind
washed-up rebel forgot the cause
the rut of a conformed statement
cloned working-class uniform,
but just culture to put on
bagged fit, absorb the whole body
soften the pretentious air,
or relaxed fakes out the fat
or tight to bulb the bubbles
or straight to band the boots
or belled to fa...

Read and leave comments (0)

reason vaporizes
like a spring frost,
and we must find accounts
within,

but if we do a deliberate search
for the dense Forget-me-not,
its purple presence
shows us

see ten-thousand suns staring up
from verdant grass-
hazard a gatherer's angry buzz,

--pick one
its scent powders your nose
with stardust
sharp as a lion's tooth

the bouquet of our beginnings
cracks us up wit...

Read and leave comments (0)

    rambling through
        took a walk
         surprised by the sight
         of ancient mossy forests tangled
          with hotly-contested questions
          as to where the path began
           or ended, or diverged, or
           whether there was a path,
          and if it has a gender, or
          if gender was merely
         a social construct without
         any ...

Read and leave comments (3)

Spring fluffs fall like snow
"all is lost; our end is mud"
but wake up a tree

Read and leave comments (0)

Partied like a rock star,
and became a rolling stone--
wandering a dusty road
my mouth dry as a bone
Jose Cuervo at Lake Havesu
catch a frisbee after hitting the bong,
but nowhere to go, is this freedom?
neck strain, sleeping in the back seat,
must stretch the food stamps
so, fill up and run at a gas station
look for the next party
give plasma for a dime bag
suck the beer keg empt...

Read and leave comments (0)

spoke out-loud my longing;
please let me see--
then sharpened my eyes to observe
below the cloaked surface,

a thing so undervalued captured my attention
take, for instance, the average forest tree
stretching up of many, uncounted - able to touch
the blue sky, taken for granted by familiar eyes,
but I saw it there in its rooted place,
unique-- that one,

it's true, just one of man...

Read and leave comments (0)

love for life
on seas of strife
lighthouse of the soul

walk today
minding the light
as our daily goal

the light shines
through grateful minds
entering made whole

its presence
from us to see
lighthouse of the soul

Read and leave comments (0)

no wintry night beats
and rattles my windowpane
like Marley's ghost

the freezing gusts, too, are a farce,
so is the unlawful snow

the Spring is just concealed
a bit short of here;
I know
buds begin swelling
though carpeted with ice
to delay

© Brian Hodgkinson Jr. (aka) Limericist 2021

Read and leave comments (0)

Winter weeping must now let go
its bitter grip of ice and snow;
frost-bitten trees burst out in leaf,
and soon forget their latest grief.
The sun breaks through to heat the earth,
gives mass-explosion of green birth,
the land throws off its captive's hold,
so earth perfumes can now grow bold.

Let go of all the former things;
a bumblebee twice never stings
and change is sure, as certain...

Read and leave comments (2)

hourglass years erode our dust whirling into rottenness
when spirits learn to trust, they're armored whole with righteousness
attend the suffering hearts, seeking, we are not alone
childlike, our simplicity, until our hearts turned to stone
drifted by our wastefulness, a reason for us to mourn
the heart is remade by trust, yet still, so much needs reborn
true, the angel conflict won that cer...

Read and leave comments (0)

Waked, stumbling to step on stone feet -lame
setting down my somewhat rotund frame
with a madcap mind-state -unready
Espresso frothing- wells up steady

Yet, my office is crypt-like, dour --so ...
switching on the room light, then oh no
*Flash-pop* --then it's dark again, ack &$%#
Run to the shed, forage, jogging back
a new bulb, screw out the flop, creaking
fingers fumble, turn -scrapin...

Read and leave comments (0)