You know, I watch her pass,
Another year gasping, choking,
Swollen and bloated in death.
Eventually, becoming a useless thing,
Her piquant posture lost luster,
Now a bag-lady beggar on the street.
A year, dancing across life’s stage,
High kicks to her coming morbidity,
A has been chorus girl with no tutu.
Resolutely, I ponder her lost youth,
Preparing her fish-net hose lined grave,
I wonder what I ever saw in her.
©2013, Donald Harbour
did you ever know desolation
knowing that there is nothing
but a mind trapped in a loop
the scene playing over and over
no way to turn off its totality
a feeling of vast aching emptiness
a wilderness scream no one hears
no one cares no one ever will
the streets are full of catatonic people
moving objects in cloistered shells
avoiding each others eye contact
no smile no hint of human recognition
they are a wasteland of flesh and bone
bodies clothed in a death shroud
plaintive expressions of indifference
no one cares no one ever will
the thought occurs you are alone
you are the only thinking human left
you feel the species quickened demise
fear has replaced rational reason
in a moment breath is gone collapsing
there is a panic of emotional suffocation
you now know the burden of loneliness
no one cares no one ever will
©2012, Donald Harbour
The interlocutors at We Write Poems blog for this week’s prompt wrote: flip the coin, we’re taking tails not heads! Our exercise is both simple and physical. We invite you to write using your “other” (non-primary) hand (right-handed folks, use your left, and likewise reversed if you’re left-handed please).
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When the left hand conspires with the right brain, cryptic notes follow the meeting.
Right-handed; I am not ambidextrous,
Left-brained for written articulation,
The off hand an unaccomplished wanderer.
Left hand writing is unfamiliar water.
I imagine it is as a jelly fish swims,
The left hand lacks structure,
There is no discernible backbone,
The corpus of thought is weak,
Anxiety replaces the flow of poetic reason.
The writer thus cast upon barren shores,
An exercise in tongue chewing consternation.
The mind becomes a Pope’s inquisitioner,
Verbs, adverbs, nouns a torture rack.
Obviously my right-brain is untutored,
Lacking left-hand to right-brain intellect
I am done with this exercise.
There is preference for left-brain normality,
This then begs a double-entente question,
When confronted with the right-handed left-brain,
And its superior sociability politic of thought,
Of what use is the left hand unlateralized right side?
©2011, Donald Harbour
Donald Harbour Poetry 