Dear Maxine, Don't Forget Your Rock

[Lightning Rod]

How am I doing? Glad you asked.
I'm a lantern swinging in the wind
my body hurts me like the world hurts god
I've decided to only speak to you in poetry
it's the only sufficient language
you argue with my prose
and your nose gets out of joint
I wonder what's the point?

once I rhymed 'terse' with 'verse'
and I was more ashamed
than if I had been caught masturbating
it was such a cheap rhyme and not worthy of me
but you asked how I was doing.

I don't know how I do it, I really don't
I wait each day for the mailman
I don't know why
only bad news goes through the mail
but it's one of those futile places I look
for the secret meaning of poetry

and I think of you, there, I admit it
and the taste of salt on your shoulder
still warm from the sun, flower-dirt on your toes.
I kiss you under the ear and you complain.

otherwise I fight with my dreams at night
and my memories during the day
minor altercations with reality occur
bills arrive, get paid or ignored
the food ain't bad

I've given up
on trying to make the world safe for poetry
why should it be? It's not safe for love.
my well-deserved obscurity
and rampant insecurity
smolder like charcoal wrapped in rags
the only contest is which will go first
the mind or the body?

for now the body is ahead
it was once a trampoline
a magic carpet
now a soggy Persian rug
weighted down under the decadence
of it's designs scrolled and moldy

my rock sustains me
I sleep under it in the day time where it's cool
and at night it warms me by remembering the sun
I learned this as a child from a wise lizard
Never go anywhere without your rock
The lizard was fast as an eyelash and green
you can't catch this kind of lizard but
when the weather is just right they will talk to you
and this one said,
Never go anywhere without your rock.

I leave you, my dear
with these fond thoughts
before we go with oughts and naughts
and they nationalize our piggy banks
and what we've spent and what we've bought
is Shiva playing silly pranks, the laughing idol melts
and what is left
is love.

Never go anywhere without your rock.

[brian madden]

Really enjoyed reading this, some amazing images

the ones quoted below stood out the most for me....

"I'm a lantern swinging in the wind
my body hurts me like the world hurts god"

"otherwise I fight with my dreams at night
and my memories during the day
minor altercations with reality occur"

"for now the body is ahead
it was once a trampoline
a magic carpet
now a soggy Persian rug
weighted down under the decadence"

[Stinkyfinger]

I agree, man; never go anywhere without your rock. Just throw it down a bit, if ya' gotta catch lizards, or other spirit guides, who're as fast as eyelashes, or who outsage the Buddha.
Very nice.

[Artguy]

The lizard king new this well...In a safe world - dead world...romance and the moon quarrels with the sun..........

[mnaz]

Lightning Rod writing about the rock. that is poetry. thanks for this.

[Sue Littleton]

... that is difficult, painful and next to impossible is that one writes such SPLENDID poetry as a result of trying to get through to the individual breaking little pieces off your heart day by day.