Red Rivulets, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

Blades, knives
Razors slice
Redcoats race
From tear ducts
Stitches must
But they don’t
Precipice dangles
Expressions strangled
They walk away
The skies become gray
Love has died
And gone away.
(end)

Iris’s Dilated, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

Loss of thought
In dandelion dreams
Sunflower fields
Breathless wind
Bowing the mightiest of oak
Contact of gaze
Paralyzing sting
Honey dance of bees
Palpitations weaken
Your knees

When people ask me, what are you doing on……. At my age I answer, “Hopefully still breathing”

When people as me what I am going to be on Halloween I respond, “A day closer to death.”

When people ask me what I am doing for thanksgiving I respond, ” Asking why the native Americans should be thankful”

When people ask me what I am doing for Christmas I respond, “Buying coffee in cups with no decorations on them”.

When people ask me what I am doing for New Years I say, ” Playing one ABBA song in particular.”

When people ask me what I am doing for Valentine’s Day I say, ” If I told you I had a date with Rosy …. and her 5….. you’d come back with “TMI”

If you asked me what I was doing for Easter, telling lots of jokes, or laying eggs, you tell me. My jokes are like laying eggs.

If you asked me what I am doing for Memorial Day I’d say, ” 3 more stupid months without football”

If you asked me what I was doing for the forth of July, I’d respond, “Certainly not standing at the capital shouting “Hang Kamala”. Yea I know it was January 6th.

If you asked me what I am doing on my birthday, I’d say, “Hopefully breathing still”.

If you aske me why I typed this my response would be, “Your shoe is untied,”

Why I Hold Out, By Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

Time is a rope
You cling to
Can let go of
Too

It burns your palms
As it slips away
It teases you
With another day

It is indifferent
To all
It cares not
If you rise or fall

I don’t think of it
As pleasure or pain
I think of time
As something I live in

I don’t judge
Those who give in
But I still would be
Suggesting

That if I had embraced
The abysses
Way back then
This beautiful dark poem

Your labor’s written,
Today I would not be reading
I often feel sorry for Plath
Mental illness , of her did grasp

I have been on
That same path,
But all the weights
And ropes and chains

And bamboo shives
Under my fingernails
It all pales to me,
If I had never read

Her dreams and nightmares
As the same I read
Such similar nakedness
Here

I wish I could have
Stopped her
And told her
I need her

She is gone
And she
Will never know
How many she has inspired

Yes I deal
With many of the same
Horrors and anxiety
That would make Everest

Seem smaller than
An electron
But once you are gone
And the deed is done

Your pen dies with you
I have no kids
No one to carry my name
But I still want to live

My poetry my baby
And that I live for
That I would crawl
Over hot coals

And shards of glass
To write some more
To my last breath
I’m not done yet.
(edit)

This poem was inspired by a fellow poet Ellie Thomson, and recently several of them. She has a wonderfully dark tone that is sad, sometimes horrifying, and at the same time cathartic.

I watched a recent crash course video on reading Sylvia Plath and the guy said something about suicide I 100% agree with, something like “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem”.

I have been suicidal several times in my life. I remember once being 18 stories up on a condo balcony, leaning over the edge, thinking “what if”. I have also especially had those thoughts taking care of my elderly mother, feeling like I had failed her when she ended up in the hospital. And I had a very deep crash depression after she died. It was like being in a blender but it wasn’t just blades as blades, but brass knuckles, barb wire, rubber hoses, drowning in a mixture of sulfuric acid and salt and vinegar and mace.

But then I read others poems and their pain, and not just Ellie, but others as well, and I want them to know, it is cathartic to me to read their work as well. It is not just a bandage, it is a purge, it doesn’t cure, nothing gets cured, but it is what helps me wake up and face the day. And it inspires me to write about my own life and my own ups and downs.

Ellie, and to others, nobody can tell you what the thoughts in your head should be, or how you should live your life. I can only speak for myself in saying that if I had gone over that railing 18 stories up back in the early 90s, you would not be reading the poem you inspired in me that you are reading right now.

You are entitled to feel whatever you feel and no one should ever dare try to take that from you. Feelings, while they can be shared, the are still isolated ultimately in the individual. But the things conveyed in expression of such are not only a help to you, they will help others, even far more others whom you may never know read your work.

I greatly appreciate all the readers following me, and if you want to spread THE LINK, only, not my e-mail, just my link, I am fine with that. I am following several of you. But all the pages are different and I am sometimes having a hard time finding where to click to comment. Do not think I am indifferent or not reading your works. I am, it is just that with diverse looking pages, sometimes navigation is hard for me.

I am simple black and white here with only two options because it really is only one page. I have A.D.D. so this kind of simplicity for me helps me keep better track of things on my end.

To Never Try , By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

To never try
Is worse to die
Pain is the refrain
Of trying and failing
Fluttering and flailing
Mourning and wailing
Wilted petals aging
Withering, decaying
Dismay fills the morning
Cup, the sunlight
Wakes you up
And you don’t want to.

Tattered
Is plaid
And Paisley
Salvador Dali
Melting clock
Jackson Pollack
The broken heart
Shattered vase
Blistered blooms
Earthquake dooms
The lover’s gloom
Destine to
The cliffs you choose

Wood Chipper, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet On FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)


She once wrote
She ate them like air
The same could be said
Of me, to be fair

I think of the fair
I longed for, dreamed of
Entangled in embrace
They’d all have shredded me

Put me in my place
Jaclyn I’d meet at a bar
She’d look at me
I’d not get that far

Bacall, would roll her eyes
Or say, “Well thank you
You seem like a nice guy
But”

Tanya and her red hair
Streetwise Julie
Killer view, she knew
A wood chipper

She’d put me through
Plath would read
My poetry too
“Brian, Brian

What did you do?”
If I ran into them
In my youth
In my twenties

I’d be confetti
Dead brush, sawed off
Limbs, buzzsaw, sawdust
With soft lips

A wisp soft blow
Into the wind
I would float
On the ocean

Adrift, not noticed
Nowhere to go
Mulch in the garden
Blooming with “no”.
(end)

I am not putting myself down, but just being honest, I was not a good looking teen, or in my twenties. I was very intimidated by attractive women. I suffered lots of rejection in high school and in my 20s.

But the good thing about getting old is that you outgrow those things. I wasn’t always rejected, I did have 4 girlfriends at different times for different lengths before meeting my now x wife. I haven’t dated in 22 years. I look back at all that now, and I really was not being put through a “wood chipper”

It simply amounted to you cant help whom you are initially attracted to and you cant force someone to be attracted to you.

But when I did see someone I was attracted to, I really felt scared in approaching them. That was not them, that was me, that was my insecurity. The fact that I finally did date and get married means that being rejected isn’t the worst thing in the world, and it does not make them a bad person for turning you down.

I can say however. Even if got to just say hi to Jacklyn Smith or Tanya Roberts, I would still get tongue tied. Just like I did when I met Christopher Hitchens. In this case now, it would not be sexual attraction, just admiration of their work. Same with Plath and Sexton.

This poem is more satire than anything now. It more reflects looking back at how cruel my own insecurities caused me self inflicted pain, but I had no way of knowing what I know now.

“A wisp, soft blow”

Is like when you get some sort of dust on your hands and blow it away off your hands. The quick rejection of “no thanks” felt like being that dust or baking flower in the palm of her hands just blowing me off politely. Not mean just, being gentle. It would still feel like a wood chipper to me though.

The Cheerleader, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

I was sitting behind her
In the very next row
But I might as well have
Been in another stadium
In another country
Quiet fear, looking
At her perfect symmetry
And jet black hair
But I did not dare
Speak a word
Though my silent screams
Were louder than thunder
I couldn’t ask her

Final Cut, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

Clouds of heat

Followed by winter

The inventions of

Conceits

Humans self defeat

Unnatural clouds

Silence crowds

Vaporized black stains

Burn sidewalks

We become

Hiroshima, Nagasaki

Can unfortunately

Happen globally.

Dear Kelly, By Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

I know
You were
Just a character

But I needed you
When I was much younger
I was hiding under

Anything I could
On the playground
Hoping you would

Rescue me
Like you did
The boy

At the amusement
Park, or save me
From my abusive

Dad, Kelly
Kelly, Kelly
Help me, help me

Kelly, you were
The hero I needed
The angel I’d believe in

Kelly
I watched you
On TV

Back in the 70s
Desperately
Wanting you

To jump through
The TV screen
And rescue me

Kelly
I could only dream
Wished you’d hear

My screams
Help me, help me
Kelly!

Kelly
I’m an old
Man now

It’s ok Kelly
I survived
I’m still alive

Kelly
You’ll always be
My hero.
(end)

This is an ode poem to Jacklyn Smith as Kelly Garrett. There are two specific episodes even today, when I watch them, I cry. The one where she saves the kid at the amusement park. And then the other episode where she confronts an abusive father who is a cop.

I was bullied as a kid. But I would escape into Charlie’s Angels and wish Kelly could jump through the TV screen and rescue me.