From Anchorage to Zebulon: In Search of Missed Connections
Haiku sunrises
Suddenly no trace of you
I’ll wait forever
Missed Connections are filled with good, bad, and waitin’-for-you-haiku. Did you write one? Did you find one? Did you respond to one? No need to hide, simply email the link to Lovelorn Poets. We’ll preserve those house of the rising sun syllables for all eternity.
Queen of Crows 4
Suffer not
Harp played, not well
Offer bread
To mend
Olive’s branch in twain
Sever the clever
Orchestration my downfall
Where could I be
Inside or out
Bled dry of tears
Held through the years
Fed only
Foot in mouth
Believe in better
Wilt not thy splendor
Curbed under
Silent downspout
As this blog shows, there’s no shortage of poetry to be found on missed connections. However, for every piece of writing archived, there are dozens more that fade away every 7 to 45 days. The poems “left behind” are often replete with torrid despair – simply too raw or personal for sharing. Regret and heartache can be powerful muses, but the energy they provide needs tempering if a creation is to be held by others.
101 Ways to Humiliate a Man by Saul Gray-Hildenbrand
i’m conforming to escapism and sticking to the gray flannel suit
my dreams are many and my reality is few
and the heat of 200 degrees radiates my pulse
as sweat falls upon the desert floor
and forms puddles of diligence
that kidnap malpractice toads and amputated flamingoes
and i’m left reminding myself that Jiffy Pop ain’t for everybody
then i look down at my palms and see that those kernels have melted
and now i’m stuck with a mountain of sodium in hand and a hill to climb
up with vibrations in arm
but i’ll invent my recovery
in time might repent my discovery
and in foresight my hindsight will smother me
and i’ll be left carrying my future on broken backs
attached to firmly fastened sacks of custom fitted rope
that although comfortable, can not sail or saturate the sea
but never mind that cause i’m stuck on the land dying intravenously
my heart beats to convulsions induced by overdoses of rosebuds
with nothing but a touch of evil to keep me hanging on
so now i grasp whispers close fisted, open minded, far fetched but too
close for comfort
and my screams beckon echoes to break imitation
reminding them that an empty park bench is the highest form of flattery
now i flatline and wonder where have i left my stretch marks
and the sheep are counting backwards, oh how sad when winter runs out
of wool
will they realize i’m gone? i never realized i was there
but now i’m here, wishing to know the way her bosom bellowed out my
pain
and broke the chaos with a simple “hello”
never living to hear a last goodbye
never built the bones to fall in domino theory
but the fate fits just the same, slowly crumbling
decomposing ashes to smolder residual checks written out for soap
a lonely, dirty man means nothing to the world
and so he looks for escape and soon the world means nothing
and he’s left detached, lifeless, full of despair, mute
body lowered to the coffin, sticking to that gray flannel suit
“The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.” ― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
Queen of Crows III
Love captive exacts
It’s terrible revenge
All thoughts a kindness
All records a wrong
Our hearts in twine
Blood’s river Rhine
One step
To brink and back again
To curse a friend
With Neverwhen
Oblivious to shared sorrow
Millstones begat
Unnerving and flat
What hope will lift tomorrow
Bound cage of air
Twirled ’round and spared
The stones of outraged fellows
Marvel at the sign
Held up by mine
‘Tween dark and restless hollows
I’ve been obsessing on the words, “Bound cage of air | Twirled ’round and spared.” One typically sees a cage as a restraint, with air being the substance that moves freely. But what of those times when it’s the air itself (or our perception of it) that has the power to contain or release us? A cage can be more than a physical structure.
Queen of Crows II
Time held
My heart helpless
Between love and serpentine thought
Come undone
Dreams were given
Tasted in mind’s light
To lose the way
Seems tawdry and strange
What’s feared cannot be hidden, forms fleeting ‘neath the ice
Truth be gold
Tongue shapes a plea
Drives down within cold night
Burn bright
My gentle soul
Your ocean’s clear as glass
And above
Fire’s light aglow
Skies twist, but all is right
Here’s another in the Queen of Crows series that recently appeared on the Eugene, OR feed. I’m finding the artwork that accompanies the poems to be particularly fascinating – and this one, about the crow and a beet, especially. Trying to locate the original source of images is even more difficult than written words (at least Google can help there), so unless otherwise indicated, I try to believe they’re personal creations of the writer.