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

All the swivel stools empty
Except for three, two together
One man separately

The short order cook bent over
Maybe he needs an ashtray
What is that she is holding?

Looks like a book of matches
Looks like the lady with red hair
In her red dress, is contemplating

In some weekday off hour
After midnight a few hours later
Dim streetlights illuminate

Asphalt, sidewalks, storefronts
Competing with the lights inside
No interest in their faces

Merely going through the paces
She won’t make bed with him
The fedora knows, he’s alone

And the silver cylinders
Dispensing stale java
Loyal penguins

As hot as fire
But at this 3 am hour
The city streets still

Lost is desire
It seems all involved
Want the night over.
(end)

This poem is about the painting “Nighthawks” at the “Phillies” diner.
(EDIT
I wrote this poem based on a thumb picture that I expanded as big as I could. I flip flopped as to if the lady was holding a book of matches or some sort of pastry/biscuit. I went to a few websites and finally stumbled on a website giving the actual detail history and it was a book of matches. Which is what I suspected.

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.