November 22nd Poems

Picking up Pieces

 

Picking up pieces in the morning

That were left hurriedly the night

Before doesn’t ring the same

Expected tune.

 

Tell me about the times

Such things happen to you.

I’m looking for a universal

Validation to make me normal–

The sun warms without staining

Nor straining the eyes.

 

Picking up pieces of yesterday

Left behind, on the side of a forlorn

Road long forgotten like a driftwood

On a strange shore looks for a common

Thread—How I got here that continues

To haunt today and tomorrow.

 

I pick up the skeletal driftwood

Memories, bleached, broken morphed

Into whatever the life demands to do

Or to be, but it still has its own dreams,

Even though it doesn’t look

Like it has much to say.

 

Ask me about the time

When the bitterness buried

Itself on the grave of dreams.

 

There are no words to parse,

Let the silence speak.

 

Yenna Yi

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SHEDDING SNAKESKIN

 

When young                                                 Now too old

Wild child                                                      Pot bellied,no longer bold

Tattooed twenty then                              I  Ride astride

Riding Wild                                                   Three wheel Trike

Pseudo Zen                                                      Scanning wrinkled wrist tattooed GPS

Straddle fast roaring motorcycles           On weekend Senior bike hike

On less traveled roads                                Peace Pagoda pit stop

Along hairpin curves of                             To spin the wheel of life

Bandanned leathered women                Curious :will I be or not

to sing aloud:                                             Be a butterfly or moth .

Then see on the tatted wrist

Of the Sleeping Buddha:

“Don’t you wanna                                       “Do you really wanna

Find somebody to love?”                             Reach Nirvana ?”

 

Frightened by the terms of Enlightenment:

“Renounce Greed, Hate and Ignorance”

In dread, I fled, sped, spun out

Of the Circle of Everlasting Love

Three tires spinning in the mire

Of ambition, flesh, blood and desire

Caught in my childhood Catholic fear of eternal

fire

Steeped in being only and always a self-

centered “I AM “

I ran.

 

Geo Cernada