Tag Archives: change

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Adrift

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Where waves once gently lapped
now they churn
and pound
relentless.

Once anchored,
now moorings torn
dragged out to sea
all now adrift.

Rising phasing fickled moon
taunts like a schoolyard bully
cold and biting
as it sinks away with the
promised sun,
and its burdensome
loathing gonging heat.

Just an insignificant bobber
afloat,
Eyes staring at the nothing and inward
universe, wondering at the why
of it all, and the wanderings
we seek when the world calls.

Fish nibble at toes,
Tasting,
Sharks circle,
Waiting
For the final death throws,
for most like an easy
meal under an early
morning light.

Delirium
brings a dark, dark,
silhouette
against a lit azure sky.
Pulling…tugging
…breathing life…commanding a body and mind
long past dead to
to snap back to resolution.

Blackness enfolds,
Awake,
softness holding
in a quiet room abiding
of the whitest white
With distant shore finally reached.
As a gentle lapping at the shore
comes to finally an open ear
ready to finally hear.

A new way of life.

by Philip Wardlow 2018

Inquiring Minds

Changes and Letting go

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When younger, my life seemed in constant change and turmoil at times; parents fighting, my mom running. Always never knowing what was to come next around the corner. Where I might live. What school I might be attending. What friends I might have. What was right, what was wrong. My dad dying. My brothers fighting with me. Stealing from me.

Seeing my family change from happy to bitter and mean and depressed. Seeing them all slowly falling into this pit of darkness and destruction in their own personal lives by all their endless trippings of mistakes they were making and I could do nothing but watch them. I loved them all and I had no guidance myself for what it meant to be a man. My dad died when I was about twelve but my mom had separated and took us from him years before, but I held to him though. The memory of what I knew of my Dad. His caring eyes, his patience, his slow almost reluctance rise to anger. His calm knowledge and assurance of all things that he did teach me before he died.

I pulled him forward with me through time from my terrible junior high days of almost homelessness and trying to maintain decent grades at a school that expected your best at all times. I kept my head up and my smile even through my failings knowing my time would come and I would eventually win through.

I made friends… some good for me, some not so good but they all helped me learn who I was and who I wasn’t and who I wanted to aspire to be as a man all the while my father echoed in my mind.

Girls and Women showed me my failings growing up as the stupid teenager and man later in life that I was. I failed them all in certain ways which caused them to fail me. A collective comedy of errors on all our parts with no blame or disparages to throw.

I found we are all human. All failures big or small.

I have changed. I have grown. I have failed and will probably fail again. But I have learned, I am wiser, I stand taller. I do not look down or am ashamed. Because the past is not me. I am me right now.

Ever moving forward to bigger things.

by Philip Wardlow 2018

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

The Needle lifts up

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Round and round and round and round and round
the needle gliding effortlessly
dragging over the unseen bumps
in a well worn groove
where it can’t climb out.

Of its own accord,
the needle lifts,
and shifts
back to the start and begins again
its shitty little song.
You might think robotic seeming in its prescribed nature,
but there is oh
so much less thought behind it’s action
For it’s been simply
fit together with
molded parts long ago
just so
to enable this
action over and over.

This spinning piece of compressed black vinyl
on edge, dips and wobbles
to mine eye.
Warped beyond belief.
Perhaps once laid out in the sun
or caught in the hot backseat
I never did take good care of them.

So as the needle lifts up yet again,
I remove the old record from its place
Hold it delicately in hand
Then gripping tightly
Swiftly bring it down to
meet the wooden corner edge.

I pick up the broken bits,
deposit every last piece
in the trash.
Then remove the plastic wrap
from a newly minted song
never heard
and carefully put it down
to spin.

Lifting the needle up
off its cradle
I kiss it softly to the
disc.

To hear something fresh.

by Philip Wardlow 2017

Inquiring Minds

The one eyed man is king…

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I keep hearing we are giving one person like Trump  way too much importance.  And that it’s only four more years until we have to get rid of him anyways and he’s not the only one making the decisions and blah blah…then why do we have a President if you place so little value on him or her.  Answer me that.

One person means nothing, can do nothing, affects nothing….really…so why am I alive?

What do I matter then?

Seeing Trump do a 180 degree turn from how he carried himself in the election  will never happen…

He may be a consoling  energy to those who voted him but you MUST understand he is the exact opposite to many others..

Where you hated  a Clinton Presidency , they absolutely FEAR a Trump Presidency For their family and their friends.  Most of his platform was based on keeping those people down and out of our country.

I’m sorry you don’t understand their fears…and legitimate concerns for their day to day lives…but you should start trying to.

This country has been set back…whether you see it now  or not. Trumps Presidency will affect you in the negative.

But if you wish to go about your day…saying Ho hum…just don’t complain when he brings agendas to the table that are divisive and dangerous and gets people killed, persecuted, ignored, down beaten mentally, or ashamed,

Pick your poison.

Trump will not disappoint you in that…but he’s only one man, how much trouble can he cause…

I’m sure everything will be just fine.

I am sure he has all your best interests in mind and will do all he can to make your wildest dreams come true.

 Trump is seventy years old after all.  I am sure his last 50yrs of his adult life was just a ruse and he really is a smart, articulated, caring and wise person for all the people of America…

Yeah, what was I thinking. Its obvious he has been planning this  since he was twenty ( palm to the forehead) of course…wow…he’s a genius..

cyclops

Inquiring Minds, Stories and Story Excerpts

Letting Go – A Very Short Story

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building

 

 

Letting Go~

“I’m gonna let go, but I don’t know where I’m gonna fall to?” asked the dirty faced little boy who hung limply from a clothesline in the pitch blackness over a deserted alley some four stories high.

“That’s right Michael,” said the other much older boy who hung out the window with one hand in a tight knuckled grip on the window sill and the other on the clothesline from which Michael hung.

“You gotta drop straight down and let us see what you’re made of.  We’ve all had to do it, you won’t be the first,” the boy said, in a matter fact tone.

Michael looked up from where he hung at the older boy who had spoken to him, his face and body were hidden in the myriad of shadows the surrounding buildings cast upon him. It seemed to Michael that the shadows spoke to him, the voice didn’t belong to anyone at all just a disembodied entity wanting him to fall to his doom. Michael looked up higher to the stars overhead, his only source of light. He gazed at the nighttime sky, the dancing twinkling night.  He had never noticed the stars twinkle as much as he did this night. It made him ponder, it made him think. It made him come to a decision.

He took one last look, time to see what he was made of he thought. He gave the shadowy boy a nod and let go. Just like that.

He fell for an eternity. His long hair was pulled upward as he heard the rush of air flow past his ears.  The beat of his heart was the only other intrusion upon his senses as he fell. The stars above were lost in a deep blackness that couldn’t be pierced, like falling down a well at night.

Thump!

He had landed and he was alive. Somehow he was alive.  Michael got up and stood amidst the cheering, hooting and hollering of the other boys that had waited down below. Then he simply turned from them and walked away and never looked back. He did look up though at the twinkling stars.

The End

 

 

by Philip Wardlow 2015

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Click of a Switch – A Poem

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turn-off-light-switch
Click of  Switch ~
I am turning off that switch,
you know the one,
the one that makes
me hesitate.
indecisive
unsure
filtered.
uncourageous (is that a real word)
too cautious
It’s what’s needed
to get down to the
nitty gritty of it all
I WILL stumble
I WILL fall
That undeniably will happen
I WILL hurt
I WILL hurt others
But I do anyway,
Ever forward as they say
with a click of  a switch.
CLICK
by Philip Wardlow 2015