Chopin Prelude Number 13

The pretext to context—
I’m not supposed to be here:
That’s what my father told me.
But here i am, dropping a tear.
Now, quit my next job,
As brother suffers the same.
How do i talk with you
To get out of this game?
i had a true love;
i failed her so bad;
Now i have a daughter—
Damn, how can I do ‘Dad?’
Pallbeared in Marble Falls,
A family ripped apart,
I can’t do this any more
With this ignorant heart.
Brother, thankfully, didn’t die,
Though anger rules his house.
I’d love to be of help,
But he only sees another louse.
So i put down these lines
To see where can I go—
Can we really ever help?
No? Yeah, I suppose I should know.
But here i am, dropping a tear.

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A Better Way Out

I want to write something sweet,
I want to write tumbly around fun,
Regale through a truism,
And flourish the end in a pun.
But far I’m too angry
And hurt down to my core:
Kayla Jean Mueller is dead—
How can we bear any more?
ISIL rages in the Levant,
Slums flourish in Mumbai,
All that wasted energy,
And the Rage burning through the why:
“Love thy neighbor.”
“You don’t know my pain.”
The loss, the hurt, the Empty:
Unfulfilled, again and again and again.
Kayla Jean had a slant,
A take on a better way out,
But her candle has found the wind;
And we, now diminished and in doubt,
Try to tamp down lusting revenge;
Praying to grasp a higher view:
What did Kayla know?
What are we going to do?

Unpoetic Junctions, Unrequited Love

Unpoetic junctions, unrequited love
Broken clouds cascading past a thumbnail moon above
Insufficient walnuts lurking in a blueberry pie
Never a satisfactory answer for the ignorant Ferguson why
Blasted half-truths triggering sniggering comments from the crew
The panda ponders at the bamboo and I wonder why you won’t let me be in love with you
Emerald-eyed pan wrens perched on Grandma’s storm fence
More burials for the Middle East and Peace is strictly future tense
The moral of this off-story is there’s so much we cannot know
Without admitting tartly there’s more than a little bit farther we all have to go
Together

In this photo shot by freelance photographer Johnny Nguyen, Sgt. Bret Barnum (left) hugs 12-year-old Devonte Hart during the Ferguson rally in Portland on Nov. 25, 2014. (Johnny Nguyen/Special to The Oregonian)