Tag Archives: goals

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Paper Airplane

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Need to catch that paper airplane
to the next place,
ride the updrafts
of the four winds
where ever they may carry
I just gotta go
don’t you see?

My tickets been punched
my seat is waiting
for me and
it ain’t free
I’ve saved
a lot for this trip
down to the last penny.

So don’t trip
telling me I got to stay
when you’ve already traveled
so far away
from me.

Not much time,
they’re calling my name
through the intercom
Sun’s dipping
down to the horizon
and they don’t
wait for no one.

So let me catch that
paper airplane and be
about my way.
And you may hear
from me one day
or maybe you won’t
That’s never easy
to say.

But I’ve got a flight
to make that’s gonna
take me far,
whether through desolation or
an adventure
its all the same
along as it’s away from here.

I’ve got a destiny
with the sky tonight
and ain’t nobody
taking that from me

By Philip Wardlow 2019

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, Poetry Work

The Me you See

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The me you see, is just a pale umbra of whom I’m supposed to be.
I’ve come to  a wall and I can’t make the jump,
I try and I try and just bounce the hell off.
But what I really don’t know is that I’m just a toad in the road
and it’s just a small curb on a street.
It’s a cliff so sheer and high that it’s a trick to belie the eye.
I tell myself one more jump…kerplunk!
My little toad head hurts like hell from all the bashing
against the wall.
If I can just find that perfect crack to start me on my crawl to wind my way up.
But that would require luck…fuck!
Where the hell am I going to get any of that?
So I’m a toad.
Not a frog a princess can kiss
to relieve me of this predicament.
Sorry, no frog underneath this frog-like veneer miss.
But I will be the prince of toads one day.
Fuck the frog I say!
So I look for that crack in the wall,
no matter how small,
to eventually make my way
up and over.
To that other me
that I don’t yet see,
The Prince of Toads,
in all of his bumpy
brown glory.
by Philip Wardlow 2017

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Still only

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Still only~

Time will eat  at you while you’re still alive  picking your bones clean like a vulture, swallowing you in big gulps but with no droppings to follow later.

Every molecule of you will be forgotten in history…every thought…every nuance to what was you …gone…simply gone.  One day.

Just the ask the dinosaur’s bones that litter the world. What were their names? What great sonnets did they compose? What grand edifices did they erect in honor of their forgotten gods? We are but dinosaurs, waiting for our grand event to expire us.

I say that’s all fine and good, but could we at least grow to be as smart and civil as the dinosaurs that came before us?

Let’s finally leave our caves  once and for all. We discovered fire and the wheel a long time ago but really have made no progress since.

Perhaps a fingernail’s thickness only I imagine. A lot for us I am sure in the short time on this planet…but still only a fingernail.

by Philip Wardlow 2016

Caveman

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Nothing…yet Something

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Milkyway

 

Nothing,

that’s what I feel like sometimes;

Nothing.

Nothing, no where, no how

as

I see a distant sun of vibrant gold

cradled in a bowl of purple and pink

on a horizon I imagine I will never reach,

It reminds me that I’m Nothing

and yet Something to even to be allowed

to see.

A nighttime sky, filled to bursting

with a voluminous marble of a moon

within a black bag of stars I can’t begin to sift through.

Yet I do, and that Something feels cool

on fingertips never finding purchase.

I know Life is a tangled sphere of yarn

wrapped around an onion

spinning and dancing in

an ordered rhythm with other crying onions

as they bump butts.

Nothing and Something,

A single stolen kiss in the dark with a girl,

yet readily given by her, for I am no thief;

soft yet firm, gentle yet wanting.

Nothing exists, not even

me in that moment,

and yet Something.

Clues and misdirection, blind alleys

and closed thoroughfares,

leashed to Nowhere.

Yet Somewhere will be the end when

the journey’s through

Humbled and awed

but at other times

petulant and angry.

I stomp my foot inside my soul.

I am tired of feeling like Nothing

Something sounds good.

 

 

by Philip Wardlow 2016

 

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Mistress of the Pen – A poem by Philip Wardlow

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Mistress of the Pen –

My mistress, she is exacting,

she accepts no excuses,

No whining is allowed,

no knees in the dirt

in supplication

with fingers grasped mightily

looking upwards into her

eyes.

I fear I will fail her.

The thread runs through me,

as a snake crawls through the trees

at night where I cannot

see to kill it.

My mistress will accept

nothing but my pure devotion

shown through my sweat, blood and soul

split open.

I will not fail her.

I am the sun,

I need no warmth,

I need no sustenance from the satellites.

I am brilliant in my own space,

look upon me mistress

See how I shine for you.

I will not burn out.

 

by Philip Wardlow