A New Collar On My Shirt

The soft chair time is over.
Safety videos and handouts are done.
OSHA ten hours has finished and
The PPE assigned.

There will be no swivel chairs on wheels,
No cubicle with ample desk space;
No roomy overhead bins;
No filing cabinet and pinboard walls;
No frequent wanderings for multiple
Bathroom breaks or cups of coffee.

A different color collar makes for a different world:
Hard and dirty; tough and safe;
Instant camaraderie, nicknames flowing as
I’m overwhelmed with the feeling of working –
Really working – a gratifying sense of a void filled
Underlying the happiness of this new experience.

The transition is hard, yes,
But it is good, too.
And I feel like the All-American guy
Sung of by Springsteen or Mellencamp.

An original poem – please seek permission before reproducing in any way.

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A Short Ode To An Enderman

Red, flashy Enderman,
don’t you like the rain?
Red, flashy Enderman,
does it give you pain?

An original poem – please seek permission before reproducing in any way.

….

To enjoy the more of my creative writing, check out the rest of this blog. You can also purchase Morning Meeting and other works (In My Words Vol. 1), and Needing Sleep and other works (In My Words Vol. 2), both available exclusively on Amazon Kindle, for just $0.99 each!

Small Bearing, Black Ink, Heavy Paper And Thoughts

Scratching across the thick paper
my modern implement connects me
to all those before me, using stylus
and wax, chalk and slate, quill and parchment.

Not always scribbling down the mundane
articles of life, sometimes the lines formed
special meaning for the slave or the country
or as a place to escape to, in myth and fantasy.

Carefully crafted, of curves and lines, of dots
and crosses, of punctuation and doodles.
Lines to bring a smile; paragraphs to bring grief;
tomes to bring energy to our lives.

We all can write.
We all are poets,
authors and philosophers.
We all are of worthy thoughts.

This piece of creative writing, and more, can be found in the second volume of my collected works, Needing Sleep and other works (In My Words Vol. 2), which is available for purchase only on Amazon Kindle, for just $1.99!

This is an original piece. Please seek permission before reproducing in any way.

The Meeting Place

Coffee shop observations.

The scratch of a pen.
Notebook leaves flap.
‘Phone ringtones buzz
and sing and ring, starting
one-sided converations.
Friendly chats around the
tables, over cups of steaming
and iced beverages.
Laughter echoes.
Students. Business people.
Unemployed . . .

To enjoy the rest of this piece of creative writing, and more, please purchase Needing Sleep and other works (In My Words Vol. 2), available only on Amazon Kindle, for just $1.99!

This is (part of) an original piece. Please seek permission before reproducing in any way.

He Sat At His Desk . . .

. . . surrounded by stacks of files and listening to the ever jolly holiday tunes on the radio. The files of people’s lives meant nothing to him. He loathed his job. He despised the stupidity and slap-dashedness of colleagues and those who worked in the organizations that were used for other aspects of the process of which he was at the arse-end of.

And added to it all was the fact that today was payday, yet here he sat, looking at the computer monitor in front of him. The bank’s website showed him the truth, though there were occasions where even they would lie to him, drawing him deeper into the smothering feeling of poverty and self-loathing.

“Fifty-eight dollars and change”, he thought.

He clicked the “Log Out” button and hung his head, letting out a short, raspy, life-weary sigh.

His hands lifted and cupped his head. His wearisome, fatigued and stressed head. His throat now felt like someone was gently choking him, the same kind of throttling that he last experienced when his doctor checked his glands. His eyes felt like they were bulging dams, ready to release the salty streamlets of sorrow that his soul, or at least what was left of it, wanted to free for all eternity . . .

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This is (part of) an original piece. Please seek permission before reproducing in any way.

Autism II

Contains some profanity.

You took my son!
You stole our boy!
I hate you, you bastard!
You fucking bitch!

He was beautiful before,
full of smiles and laughter,
but you came and made those
oh so rare, from that point, ever after.

You silent seeker of childhood,
leaving your dopplegangers in their stead . . .

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This is (part of) an original piece. Please seek permission before reproducing in any way.

Autism I

I look and listen as you roar,
so unlike the child you were before,
all full of kisses, hugs and love.
But now your demons have you shove
and scream and kick, your angry show
makes me hate the Hyde in the boy I know.

I doubt myself
and my place in this
family of ours,
so often stretched,
to breaking point . . .

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This is (part of) an original piece. Please seek permission before reproducing in any way.

Grown Up

Where are those days of unbound joy?
Of happiness just for the moment and
living for the shared social whirl
of real ales and board games?
They are in my childish past;
back in the days of youthful abandon . . .

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This is (part of) an original piece. Please seek permission before reproducing in any way.

Poem For An Unremembered Experience

I sit, eyes closed, ears open.

Your ethereal lilts are like ghosts,
haunting the corridors of my
memory and the rooms of
sensory enjoyment in my mind . . .

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This is (part of) an original piece. Please seek permission before reproducing in any way.

Dingo

The first two lines are all I can remember of this poem I wrote when I was about nine years old, during a lesson on acrostics. I’ve always wanted to miraculously find the paper I wrote it on or remember the whole thing. I have often contemplated “rewriting” the last three lines, but for some reason, leaving them blank, but for their initial letter feels more “right” to me.

Dog-like am I,
In the Outback, I live.
N
G
O

An original poem – please seek permission before reproducing in any way.