FOREVER IMPERFECT AND UNCONDITIONAL

Traversing life, a path long and twisting.
Pitfalls and elevations filled with elation
and sorrow; each tomorrow unfulfilled
has not yet been given to bear.

It is there that the seed is planted. Sometimes
greed and selfishness become the power
that drives hearts and imparts the anguish
that becomes inevitable. A banquet table gone to waste

with nary a taste of life’s finest treasures.
Pleasures come with their share of pain
that burrows deeply, furrowing brows
and disavowing all promises once declared.

Forever becomes ‘right now’ and futures
are only nurtured in the last breath that is drawn.
Love is imperfection, a static direction
that does not follow dictates. It exasperates

and deflates, infiltrates this lighter-than-air existence.
It offers resistance to the natural order
of how it is thought to be. Never manipulated;
it can not be stipulated by demand

nor by expectation. Love is as love was meant to be.
Not possessed; only it can embrace.
It will not be molded; for it will just be…
forever imperfect and unconditional.

(C) Walter J. Wojtanik

Poetic Asides – Prompt #392: Forever

BROKEN MAN

Here he stands, a broken man,
a victim of his failure.
The surface presents a deep well,
a font of love and emotion.
But a broken man is a fissure,
 eventually exposing his
inadequacies and incompetence,
in any circumstance he enters.
A heart renter, not a giving soul,
(don’t tell a living soul he has flaws)
Where others stand in awe,
one hides in the shadow
of his mangled and miserable life.
She, a friend, who offered all,
a lover who gave all,
a holder of secrets kept
to the breakage of all hearts.
It starts with a seductive word,
it ends in despair with the truth
being heard and hurting, skirting
the root cause of his flaws.
Her beauty not-withstanding,
no glue can fix a broken man.

© Walter J Wojtanik – 2016

Poetic Asides November Chapbook Challenge – Day 20: Popular Saying

DEAD END AND BEYOND

Body worn and torn between birth and the end of the line. It would be fine if we nodded off to sleep keeping memories of our time here behind to remind the world of our stain. But we remain to carry on, still worn and torn, born to exhaust all the possibilities that we possess! Feeling depressed and without vigor, finger on the trigger
and muzzle pressed to chest. But you know, your best is yet to transpire, and still you feel so tired and if you expired tomorrow
would your sleep be met with great sorrow? Sit and rest, lay head to bed and slumber, and arise to lumber through anew. There’s still so much more left for you to do!

do we really end,
or move to life’s new station
without cessation?

 

(C) Walter J. Wojtanik – 2016

POETIC ASIDES April Poem-A-Day Challenge – Day #30: “Dead End”

PHYSICIAN HEAL THYSELF

I’ve been given a wonderful gift,
I have been presented with an extraordinary
opportunity. And in the unity of a writing
community, I am bolstered to holster
all fears and trepidation and feed on the
elation of this moment. I am a poet.
A writer who’s gift had been left in it’s
plasticine covering for fear it gets ruined
like grandma’s divan in the room
only used for important company.
Or wakes. It takes the support of like
cohorts and believers to stave off deceivers,
purveyors of doubt and negativity of sort
as you cavort through blank pages to pen
that which, again and again haunts you.
Now the chance to flaunt your talent
and you word skills that will make or break you.
It’s taken you forty years to become
the overnight success you’ve dreamed of being
and now you’re seeing the forest AND the trees.
But she’s determined to break you, to take you
from what you love and shove it up your ass.
Her style and class were checked at the threshold.
She’s sold you on the idea that your worth
is worthless in your pursuit. But you refute it.
You know one fact to be true. A writer writes.
All the battles and fights waylaid and splayed
in spatters across your life has prepared you
for nothing but this: The only way to fix it, is fix it.
There are people who believe in you and won’t
leave you hanging to gain nothing. Friends love
your work and you. You’re through with
being kept down. That perpetual frown needs
an upturn; you live and learn. No more left
on dusty shelves. Writer, Heal Thyself!

Poetic Asides November Chapbook Challenge – Day 13 – Self-Help

THE OUTSKIRTS

“Gas” by Edward Hopper

No one’s been by for years
and one of his biggest fears
was that he would die out here
alone, and no one would know.
The point of no return
sits a mile down the road
and the occasional lost traveler
would goad his excitement,
but leave him in a cloud of dust.
He must close down the station
and rejoin civilization.
His routine never changes.
He dusts off the pumps
encrusted with years of isolation
and failure. The readings are recorded
in a never ending string of naught.
A rumble in the distance arouses,
leaving him shaking in his trousers
only to be disappointed again.
The pumps stand sentinel,
grave markers for a dying breed.
He needs human contact
but all he attracts is dirt.
Lost in the outskirts.

© Copyright Walter J. Wojtanik – 2013

Response to MIZ QUICKLY’S IMPROMPTU POETRY – Day 10 (Alone, or at a Party) Ekphrastic Poem

IN SPACE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU DREAM

The void is deep and expansive,
and I sit in a pensive mood.
No good can come out of
wild fantasy and schisms,
mystic midnight visions
that play with my psyche.
It might be that when I drift,
floating by my tin can, I am
Major Tom. Slightly clueless:
a mess with little control
of my faculties, or my course.
I cry out, but no one hears,
and my fears of irrelevance
though unfounded, are drowned out
by the silence of the heavens;
a cosmos that deafens.

Written to fit the POETIC ASIDES “vacuum” prompt and WE WRITE POEMS #104 – “Loneliness” prompt!

IT SUCKS

In the void of existence,
life drifts aimlessly,
drawing every last breath
from a chestful of dreams.
It leaves one seemingly
weightless and restless.
And the guess is that
each of us has it in us
to rescusitate ourselves.
But we are against the clock
and it isn’t a shock that
life ends before we really
begin to live. It’s a given,
and it sucks.

NOT FADE AWAY

Incessant memories pervade
as I wade through this life
searching for an identity
I can claim as my own. Sown
and nurtured are my poetic seeds,
and yet I get no satisfaction from
their lack of flourishing;
not nourishing my heart like
I was used to having.
But all these thoughts must be written
I have been bitten by the bug,
a hearty shrug and a hope
that a smitten poet can regain his passion.
The heart is willing; the wile is weak.

ZEN AND NOW

At last I am leaving:
I pass as all things do
over withered fields.
Listen to the voices
of pines and cedars
when no wind stirs,
life is but melting snow;
in rainless skies, a cool moon…
I have said enough about moonlight,
ask no more.
Since time began, sixty-six times
these eyes beheld the changing scene of autumn.
On a journey, ill: dew on the grass.
Pure is my heart. My dream goes wandering.
The dead alone know peace.
Farewell…

Lines taken from: Ryonen, Senseki, Banzan, Basho and Nandai

YOUR TWO CENT(O)S

I’m just stuck wanting to say something.

I wonder why I lived so long in dimming light,
the earth is in shambles;
life was a bumpy road filled with potholes.
We’ve been through such dubious times before,
what is the last thing that goes?

I heard a voice, perhaps my own…
left me sounding like a cooing dove.
Decisions must be made; the end is in sight.
Is this fire consuming?
Billows of smoke amidst the staccato drone of distant sirens,     
it seems the only way out.
And you take one last good look around.

I’ve been here for decades,
leave behind unbridled ache.
He has managed to find someplace safe to stay,
on a dead-end street with railroad tracks; hardly budging, hardly moving.
Nothing to do now, but placidly stand alone in sodden ash.

POETIC ASIDES poets lines used (somewhat in order): Brewer, Walraven, foodpoet, Hed, Niedt, Kreider, Posey, Mystical-Poet, Windham, Braedenholm, Brewer (again, it’s his toy box!), Wojtanik, Jackson, Moskowitz, posmic, Good, Harker, Clark, Sarett, Prilik.