Stranger Flowers Yet

The madman is common in my dreams.

He is a crazy man,
walking down silver streets
with bug-eyed boy wonder,
crying “Hey, hey! Lookie here!”
He stumbles and gropes and
we flee his terrible wrath,
the madness of a soul that has
burned too brightly for too long.
“Stop, goddamnit! Ain’t nothing
in the East! Head west, head west!”
He is a mountain of a man,
all bulge and gut like heaven saw
fit to stuff more life in this husk
than was ever wise or intended.
“Hello gents, could you spare a
dollar, I’m looking for God
but the streets are too cluttered.”

We walk on.

 

Reviews

[Dawn Jones]

It is the reality that you create with your words that makes this piece good. Your words are simple with little alternate meaning but they resonate because they reveal images we have all seen a million times. And too many of us ignore the things we see.

[H.]

I just now caught that you are narrating from the company of "we," and not writing this in solitude. That makes ALL the difference! Would you have stopped to engage the madman, say, if you were alone? Or did hte pressure of your company compel you to walk on?

I somehow interpret this poem as being the tension between your public and private selves. Everything you are in public--the one who shuns the "bright soul" and the one amongst friends who clearly shun such a person. In the end, you are that public person, and cannot be that madman. Besides--you are too thin to have an overstuffed husk! ;)

[Jess: ~The Sidekick~]

You know, you're a wonderful writer.. And I don't know why your writing touches me so. But it does. Perhaps it's the way you are with imagery or how philosophical you are.