Umbriate Press Poetry

Let’s see where this glint of dull throb leads us perhaps into or out of the monotony of memory like trinkets fading tarnished and languishing ‘round the slightly perfect neck of wrinkled and lazy age, a Sunday of yesteryear in the afternoon of pitching pennies on bended knees against a chinked wall of prayer now grown to shame and joyful regret lest happiness or happenstance squirrel its dubious self under a nominal thought less worthy than parallel to that other universe of wilting motive adjudicating the woes of malicious intent bent on forgetfully fostering a belly-worming slime of wisdom gimping slowly on rickety beatitude’s best left unspoken and nestled between the folds of a misaligned malapropism causing trembling head to crook its neck below an anomaly infused with doubt; moreover normalcy inclined to pester a better mind of grayer matter than that housed perpetually in the skin dome of mediocrity (here we weep and moan, slump-shouldered over the face of inconsequential pain) known to the weak as idea or even a long-faced “What?” dancing around circumstance itself wrapped encircling hoards of the dishonorably determined to cogitate on the facts of strife whence come folks’ buzzing noises fueling ears too open enough for a disquieting recollection to bugger a delightful souvenir of once upon a time when my mother knew my name instead of fear as when she declares insects in her food putting down her fork in Buddhist delight or when doors close themselves in and out of the many seasons dementia provides the uncertain who linger still in breath of soul but not in consciousness still of love replete never fading as long as this son laments…

                                    and remembers…

                                                                                    to reason not…

but to think that which was…

                                                            and cannot ever be

a shared gesture with a woman who was.