Morning on Three Sides and Other Poems

MORNING ON THREE SIDES

Mornings. Like heaven.

It’s morning on three sides now
Windows all around

I love my old quilt
Wrapped around me as I wake
To morning again

Wrapped around my head

Out of my slumber

Slowly but surely
Almost ready to start things

Make the coffee and

Turn on the news of the day
Take a shower too

Maybe

It’s on three sides now
Not behind my pillow though
It’s a blank wall there

And I’m in my quilt
Morning is embracing me
Coming through the windows.

 

SHACKLES

Of you I am curious
With restrained fascination

I am utterly enchanted
You’re unorthodox and peculiar

And idiosyncratic
Neither logic or reason

Could explain how you tick
Or account for your ways

You’re off-color, atypical
And a breath of fresh air

In a world where it stinks
And it’s stale, hard to breathe

My fire is kindled
And my senses are muddled

“I am humbled,” I mumbled
And bumbled for sure

I am helplessly imprisoned
I am caught and ensnared

For this I am flummoxed
In shackles I am chained

Your enticing eccentricities
And uncompromised singularities

Leave me only beholden
For you simply amaze.

 

PROPHETS AND SAGES

You speak in euphemisms and delicacies and fabrications.  With such bombastries and pomposities and grandiloquences. What’s with this false front and the put-on high-handedness? And the whispering down the alley and talking in innuendos and riddles and smoke and mirrors and this gosh-darned twisting up in tangles?

I wouldn’t know.

Smug yes I am I’ve no doubt that it’s true. And of my own volition and choice and free will- to do what I want, when I want and how I want.

Is that freedom?

A manifesto with gusto and musto that’s meaty, with substance not trifling or lightweight like a feather. Nor inconsequential as one could stake one’s life on it. Nor flimsy and frothy as one could state it breathlessly.

Or not.

No need. If not for these immodest theatricalities and overwrought rhetoricalities and never-ending trivialities and trumperies and strumpets, and the brow-beaters and the drum-beating, getting beaten up and beaten down and eaten up alive.

Have you noticed the run on chill pills?

Oh for the philosophers and prophets and sages. All hail the self-appointed gurus and seers. Bow down to the wolf-criers and pot-stirrers and snake-oilers. Relent to the rabble-rousers and concubines and show boaters.

 

ANY GIVEN SUNDAY

on any given sunday
you may see me ’round the town
late morning more than likely
could be early afternoon
if you do it’d be by chance
with how things often go
cause nowadays the world’s a blur
we’re busy
harried
life’s a race
and tired
hardly get a rest
and are so lax
at touching base

but any given sunday
that’s when everything slows down
it’s then you may just find me
as i’m out making my rounds
sunday of all days is best
for us to get caught up
we’ll spend some time
a meal to share
and take a walk
without a care
i can’t wait for the weekend
please remember that it’s true
most any given sunday
that’s when i’m thinking of you.

 

THIS MOSAIC

Fragile and delicate
With a rough exterior
That betrays the gloominess
And apathy inside
That persists

Scared and vulnerable
With a clouded and jaded view
Of how things are
And how they could be
For you

Your pain is too much
I know that it’s real
The tears and the anguish
And nightmares reveal

This mosaic

Beat up and depleted
With a gruff demeanor
That defies the confusion
And sadness inside
That persists
For you

It hurts me
Believe me
To know how you suffer
And live with such strife
Everyday
All the time

The weight is too much
Please know that I’m here
Reach out if you want to
Anytime I’ll appear

This mosaic.

 

RAINSTORMS

Nature soothes my loneliness

I know I’m not alone

Mornings fill my emptiness

Like nothing that I’ve known

Sunlight warms the bitter cold

That’s frozen up my heart

Rainstorms wash away the dirt

That’s been here from the start.

 

JOHN DOE

there’s no such thing
as the common man
there’s no such thing
as the average joe
or boilerplate
there’s no such thing
as ordinary
no such thing

conventional
me thinks a myth
there’s no such thing
as Jones or Smith
or John Q Public
everyman
there’s really no such thing

they said that you are “typical
and regular, the usual and
wholly undistinguishable”
it hurt and made you sting

but there’s no ho-hum
or dull or dim
and no so-so
or proper prim
there is no john doe
here you know
there’s really no such thing.

“The Essence of You” by Scott Dill

THE ESSENCE OF YOU

at the foggy center of my mind

i have a fuzzy picture of you

it’s been so long you’d expect it be clear?

i remember the outline of you

and certainly the essence of you

like when you walked into the room

or when you were speaking

the sound of your voice

the inflection and urgency

and emotion behind it

 

that i remember

 

much more than the actual details

or particulars of what you look like

it’s not that i forgot

do you think that I could?

it’s not that i don’t care

i care more than you ever could know

and it’s not that i think you don’t look good

that’s so far from reality as to be laughable

believe me

 

and happens to not be the point here

 

and not what had the most impact

or what left the sharpest impression

that was the very essence of you

like when the foggy center of my mind

sees that fuzzy picture of you

and my eyes squint to see better

where i block out the present

and make everything stand still

that’s when i have no problem

feeling exactly the way that you felt.

 

GO

how will you go?
will it be out in a blaze of glory?
quickly and with no warning?
quietly and casually and
behind only questions and wonder?

or will you go slowly?
enduring a long period of pain?
with your body and mind shutting down
and you stomping your feet and refusing
to let go with all your might?

for some reason

will you go begrudgingly?
looking back with regret?
and questioning the significance
of coming in the first place?

or will you go enthusiastically?
knowing you did your best
to make life what you could
and became exactly the person
you were meant to be?

 

THAT DAY THAT NEVER ENDS

That’s what I want

That day that never ends
Not because I’m too busy or harried
Not because “there aren’t enough hours in the day”

As people say

Just because
Some days are better than others
You know they are memories as you live them
You watch yourself like a fly on the wall
And know you’ll never forget

Things knitting up

Dots connecting

Storm clouds blowing away

Life coming full circle

Do you think I can get that?
That day that never ends?

The years go by people come and they go
Things change in so many ways
The sun comes up and your hair goes gray
You’ll remember that day

And you’ll bask and you’ll revel and you’ll think to yourself
There’s nothing you wouldn’t do
You’d do anything you could
For that day that never ends.

—

Pete Armetta is a writer of Flash Fiction, Poetry, Short Stories and Essays. With a style that’s been called accessible and broad, unpredictable and matter-of-fact, Pete is a genuine, self-taught outsider. His stories and poetry fend off conventionality and he’s never easy to pigeonhole. Pete is a native New Yorker living in Charlottesville, Virginia, via too many other places to count. Pete’s work has appeared or is upcoming in Zest Literary Magazine, Gadfly Online, The River Journal, Expats Poetry, Subtle Fiction, Best New Poems, Cynic Magazine, The Blue Lake Review, Stone Path Review and Inclement Poetry Magazine. He is a regular contributor of fiction to The Piker Press and has been his writing has been included in numerous anthologies. Pete’s first poetry chapbook, New Future, was published in 2012.