A Place Called Home
By Steven P. Arthur
There is a place
where life walks with a profound
limp around the asphalt hamster wheel
Fearless, facial facades
Born from cement wombs,
through steel blue doors
Azure skies crossed with contrails, trails
unreachable
The air wrong, stale, filtered
through razor wire, absence
Novelty incarcerated
elsewhere
Concrete trees
in yards that grow only rocks
Quarter mile asphalt hamster wheel
Round, and round, and round
we go
False white suns illuminate with
artificial rays
Lead rain promises
Bang, click
Metallic door locks behind
I cannot leave
Windows do not
open
I cannot breathe
Closed doors, open doors
Heavy keys
I cannot go back
Azure skies open up
I breathe
All these years
crossing a lifeless yard
with concrete trees
that bare only rocks
ruminating of an artificial life that fades
bleached, aged in the desert sun
All these years
changing, maturing and preparing
All these years
behind me
All these years
crossing a yard with concrete trees
that grow only rocks
All these years
dreaming of a life that never existed
All these years
changing, maturing and preparing
All these years
Behind me
Prison is my jacket, freedom my shoes
Eyes show the divide of free and not
Audacity to Live
By Steven P. Arthur
I touched the extremes
of what it means to be
human
I’ve given life; taken it, and
most things in between
I’ve witnessed from a distance
the mammal that we are
and stepped closer
than most ever will
Seemingly innocuous teeth
There is nothing to redeem
I’m sorry doesn’t excuse
Nobody worries about the good
few remember it
Irredeemable is a trap door
with hinges that swing one way
Words dismissed like the ravings of the mad
It can’t be true
otherwise the line of
justification is unjust
Sentimental Nothings
By Steven P. Arthur
You’ve been gone forever
so it seems
A life lived
None of the one and a half billion living humans here
can ever be you
so it seems
I miss your face, your laugh, your bad advice
so it seems
I’m like you dad, unlucky in much, sorry too
so it seems
Leave so I can miss you. You left. I miss you.
so it seems
I’ve heard the news, not good not bad, I’ll see you
soon so it seems.
Spaces Between
By Steven P. Arthur
Here I stand
resilience incarnate
fractured laws broke my back
paralyzed by weight of law
accusers can’t carry
resilient to monochromatic places
where I live to breathe
a breath just a wheeze whispering
the spaces in between
where I can’t afford to pass
the buck
because it’s not worth one
resilience to dogmatic elitism
where the value of a life
is never adjusted with inflation
where wrong and right
truth or blight
are determined by the hand
that holds the pen-itentiary
an arthritic scribble reading
the spaces in between
The places in between
where thoughts and dreams exhaust
vented like unattainable steam
evaporated tears carry up
to an ashamed father in heaven
or pelt a dying mother on earth
surrounded by pointless drama
move against the machine
that I helped build
neither nice nor nefarious
I am a man
in the spaces between
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