Slumber comes for us all
and dreams accompany
with portents to perturb
or pleasures to unfurl
and enthrall
Desires beg to be consumed
just as fears wish to ruin
the world inside, convincing us
our contentment is a mere
illusion.
A wrinkle of doubt forms a
shackle.
Guilt a weight to drag us deep deep into the ocean
But this ain't no cruise
Cuz we're paddling always paddling
As we scramble for the cork
To plug that leak.
while the sun shines shines and
the storms creep creep.
by Philip Wardlow March 22nd, 2023
They say parents shouldn’t outlive their kids, but should an older brother outlive their younger?
Much like a parent, the older brother directs, and protects the course of the younger.
Unlike parents, the older brother can also be a partner, a fellow perpetrator of many a fun misdeed gone awry. That is where bonds lie deepest, where intimate secrets are kept and held between a kin closer than that of the mother or father.
Sharing of sins, and the punishment of those sins, sharing in the joys and adventures that is youth in its whole.
You share a core with that little brother that none may know. It’s unspoken but known to the bone between you two.
To the Bone.
It’s honored, it’s delicate. It’s something that always dwells.
So when you see your little brother, dismal and seemingly damned, fallen and fragile, raging against an unknown foe and miles from the place in him from where he was once was, you know.
Where in the core that you share, now only dwells despair, you weep, and you weep, and you weep in the silence where no sees, because a man doesn’t cry, they simply don’t.
You know you won’t cry as he lies in a casket, all dressed and prettied up. You know you won’t cry when other’s speak of him in passing or come up to you with a hug, and “I am sorry for your loss”
You know you won’t cry simply because you have already cried so much as bit by bit of your little brother was pulled from you, excised with a sharp knife, and put into a blender and pureed to mush.
Sometimes its tacos and salt rimmed tequilas,
movies and lonely couches,
cold beds and cats, tongue twister
and tying up,
a plethora of pleasures in the grab bag
of life
followed by a deluge
of desiccated numb bodies
dumped on your front lawn.
Sometimes its a magical arc of light
swinging in the breeze
by a delicate hand on a dark path
It’s sweet sugar on your lips
tongue licking,
as you slowly, reluctantly
back away from the most
wonderful kiss.
It’s a flurry of heavy punches
to the gut
tickling, because you have been there
before, and you can take it.
Can you not?
So you emit a raucous laugh
at the absurdity
that the day has wrought.
Jaded in your green dreams
you wake to breathe
in new air
to expel the stale.
Grab a Bagel and go out the
door
as you think of the
sweet sugar
that still lingers
on your lips
from the night
before.
I have to feel light over you
Do I have any other choice?
No
The HEAVY would be a killer
so I go light
Like a breeze at night
flitting through the trees
Kissing
me
ever
so.
Ain't no rest for the Wicked - Philip Wardlow - The real and the sensual sides to life in all its facets.. 