FRIDAY NIGHT, CORNER TABLE

Friday Night,  Corner Table

Friday night

Corner table

Candlelight,

Wine,

And you.

I'm so nervous

That I'll say something

Do something

Feel something

Wrong.

But 

Your eyes 

Shine over my face

Like sparkles on the ocean

Like a man on a mission.

Cheers, you say

And I nod,

Raise my glass,

Clink and let the champagne

Glide it's way down my thirsty throat.

Are you happy?

I'm caught off guard

And I blink and laugh a small laugh

As the bubbles tickle my nose

And I feel your fingers on my wrist.

The band starts,

The busboy takes the dishes away

All the while smiling

And staring at me in my sequins

And freshly curled hair.

You signal 

For more wine

Unless you want something more potent?

You query and I shake my head

No, thank you, I've had more than enough.

I turn my chair

Towards the stage

But you catch my arm

And turn me back to you

Not yet, you say, not just yet.

And we sit there

Watching one another

Wondering in low light

Swimming in questions

Drowning in song.

After three pieces, fast and slow

The maestro stops 

Holds up his hand and says

We have a special request

From the gentleman at the corner table.

He wants to know

If the girl of his dreams,

The lovely lady with the pretty curls,

The woman that's sitting there tonight,

Will be his wife?

And I gasp

And put my hand to my mouth

As you slip a ring onto my other. Will you?

You ask with your heart in your eyes. Will you be mine? 

But I am speechless.

This was going to be our last date

I had decided. I was tired of waiting.....

Our last date. I had been trying to find the words

But if you never read this poem, I guess

That's something that you'll never know.

©by Voo

Feb 17, 08

4:45 p.m. 

the song they were dancing to....

.

I  See Your Face Before Me  by Johnny Hartman....................

SONG OF THE ANGUISHED

Song of The Anguished




I was dreaming under water
With delusion all around
While the bones of dying blackbirds
Cried their last and hit the ground.

I was thinking of my true love
Whom I've yet to meet and touch
I was running toward a yearning
That my heart still loves so much.

On the hill there stood a gallows
With a noose tied just below
So the hanged man died there quickly
Before he had the time to know.

If the pain of death was hurtful
Or if he died from just his fear
It was quick and it was awful
And it left it's terror here.

Running from my waking nightmare
Running to my future fate
I was thirsty, I was hungry
But my life's an empty plate.

Tantalizing with her fragrance
Seduction was her favorite game
As she wound herself around me
Said I'd never be the same.

And that's true, I was a new man
And it's true, I was reborn
In her passion and her beauty
That soon shredded me with scorn.

The things I've done, I cannot tell you
The things I did, I hate to think
As I followed her to quicksand
As she stood and watched me sink.

Love is like a burning ember
Love is like a dying coal
Fires of joy and Eden's promise
Before the flames burn up your soul.

I have walked the ancient desert
I have climbed the mountain tall
I was young and strong and worthy
Before the stumble and the fall.

There, a hero to my mother
Then, a friend to my best friend
And a brother to my brother
Till the dark and bitter end.

Oh, sweet heaven, rain upon me!
Oh, sad sun, shine on my face!
Hangman of Hell, open this lock now!
Let me leave this cursed place!

I will run the roads forever
Show the blind man how to see
Teach the deaf and dumb and foolish
Not to ever follow me.

If you wake me from this nightmare
If you calm my screaming eyes
If you hush the dying ravens
So I cannot hear their cries.

I will seek out newer pathways
Leave the old ones far behind
If you re-turn my life to me
If you'll give me back my mind.

Yes, I'll sign your bloody papers
Yes, I'll stop my sad refrain
Yes, I'll do what you ask of me
No, no more will I complain.

Ah, much better, so much better
Peaceful now, it is so quiet
I can barely see the gallows
All I see is tinted light.

Breathing now, I take a deep one
But I cannot then exhale
I breathe in such warmth and sweetness
But cold is all I can expel.

Dreaming deep beneath the water
And the nightmare of this place
I make my last deal with the Hangman
For one more glimpse of her face.

©by Voo
Sept 30, 2012
9:45 p.m.

GIVE ME A NAME

start music first

Give Me A Name

It gets dark now at dawn

The old ones say the world has died

But just hasn't laid down to sleep yet

I don't know about that

But I know that everything just feels wrong.

I found me a diamond yesterday

Laying in the midnight sun

Down in the creek bed big as my fist

Fishes swimming all around it

Like they were protecting it for me.

My grandfather started singing a song

But got too choked up to finish

And he handed me his drum

And said "I'm giving you this song

I can't sing it anymore."

So I caught my pony

And we ran over thirty two miles of red dirt 

Dark clouds passing over our heads like birds

Laughing, trying to hold onto childhood

And singing my grandfather's song.

If I grow up, I want to be...I want to be a human

A being made of ground

And breath breathed by the Creator

Not one of the clay people who walk around

With hollow eyes and empty souls.

My brother's like that

He was human before he went away to war

But he came back hollow and soul-less

With broken eyes and no sound to his laughter

I don't think he's in there anymore.

My father hasn't spoken in thirteen years

Not since the day I was born

Not once has he smiled at me or touched my hair

My mother said he wanted a boy to replace my brother

But I came into the world in a feminine form.

I hear the old ones sometimes

They whisper to me in the woods

And down by the river when I'm fishing

Sometimes we sing together in the native tongue

And they make me forget that I'm a nameless child.

There are no children here, only me

And what I know, I've taught myself

We live so far away from civilization

I'm not sure what country we are in

Or what planet we live on.

When my grandmother lay dying

She gave me her beads and her wedding dress

Made of fine, soft skins made by her mother

And she said, "Daughter, don't let yourself die."

And I promised I wouldn't but I'm not sure, I'm not sure.

I wish I lived in the days of the warriors

And tee pees and buffaloes and sharp arrowheads

Not this faded gray world and this tar papered shack

On this plot of dead earth

Where hope no longer grows.

If I grow up....if I become a woman

I think I might try to run away from here

I'll take my pony, for I can see the longing, too, in his eyes

And we'll walk until we can see the sun still shining in the morning

There among the humans.... if we find any.

 And I'll give my diamond

To the man who will give me a name.

                    

HOME WIND 
 native american flute song that inspired this poem
Adds so much to the reading............

  ©By Voo

Nov 10, 07

     6:45 p.m.

NIGHTMARE

nightmare

rats crawled underneath my eyes last night

I held my breath and listened to their rapid little rodent

feet scurrying around inside my head

they whispered

but I could not tell what it was they said to one another.

a song began to play on a scratched up old record

somewhere in my ear, not the right, just the left

and it played until I loathed the song and screamed

for the non existent deejay to turn it off but he would not

then the strangest thing: I saw the Night.

it became an entity to me, not a dark passage of time

and moon but a being, tall and opaque and endless

I asked it what it wanted and it just observed me quietly

it's ancient eyes, not shining, not glowing, not alive

but staring, cold, in it's horrible fearsome form

and feeling me with snake like fingers and hungry hands.

I tried to run but I couldn't move. I lay there like the residents

of graveyards, molding in perpetual decay and dying ever

deeper, yet so aware. yet so aware of human feet walking

over them, rushing to their picnics and Sunday School lessons

and circuses.

in desperation, I brought my hand up to my mouth and touched

my face to see if I was there but it went right through me

and disappeared into a maze of beasts and chains and undead things

taunting me like evil school children on a playground down in Hell

I could not get out or away. I could only watch as they shredded

me to ribbons and ate my soul with ghoulish lust and joy.

I died and died a thousand times. I fell to ashes and rose up like

the Phoenix flying over bombed out landscapes and burning cities

full of screams and unheard cries and motherless babies everywhere

the desolation was complete and unimaginable but real, so real

the realest thing I'd ever seen and ever felt and ever, ever, never

wanted to see.

I found a haven on a corner and crawled

beneath a crumbled shanty's remnants, huddling in the mud and

growing darkness, clutching my ragged clothes to me with

broken hands and despair laying on my heart like bricks of

cathedrals blown to bits and mingled with the wings of saints.

and there I lay and there I stayed without light. without hope

without friend in God or man or beast or thing. friendless

and just when I thought I could endure 

and find peace there in the silence

the rats came back and crawled underneath my eyes.

©by Voo

July 29, 2005

midnight

BEGGARS

Beggars

You married me for a little while

And then you had to go

I thought our love to death would last

But I didn't know.

That death was there within the bud

Of the new love that would bloom

And cold winds waited at the gate

Of the garden warmth of June.

But oh, the passion of your kiss!

The heat of your embrace!

The sweetness of your sultry smile,

The love there on your face!

I saw the things I longed to see

That weren't really there

And all I gave so freely of

You had no will to share.

And I, so wedded, always remained

While your heart rambled free

And gave your love to other fools

And never thought of me.

Until the day, of all that love

You found yourself deprived

And you came back to your first love

Where my joy had arrived.

And oh, the horror on your face!

To find that love had gone

And no one waited in that garden

And you felt so alone.

For I had waited a thousand years

That only came to three

And I had strained to hear your footsteps

Running back to me.

And in the madness that true love brings

When true love is denied

Sweet death embraced me in it's arms

When all my hope had died.

There in the garden of first love found

You heard the singing crows

No trace of me for your eyes to see

Just a single, solemn rose.

How sad that marriage seldom proves

The bonding of two souls

When one heart is full and one is empty

Like the beggars and their bowls.

©by Voo

Aug 19, 2016

11:31 p.m.