Dancing Naked on a Bedroom Wall

 —Poetry by Richard LeDue, Norway House,
Manitoba, Canada
—Photos Courtesy of Public Domain

 

 

THE FOLLY OF WINGS

Time crashes more than it flies

with credit card bills,
online videos about saturated fats,
an overgrown lawn,
potholes the size of small graves,
grocery store bouquets
50% off because it's the day after Valentine's,
and prepaid funerals
proving how much you love someone,

only for a sensible eight hours of sleep
to give a sermon most sleep through,

and another dying bird finds god
inside a cat's mouth.

 

 

 

 

 

More and more

I am an old doll:
untouched for years,
except for the dust,
who greys my hair
as part of its game
with rules I only guess.

I am a deflated ball:
abandoned to tall grass
and glory left for dead
in a brain-sized past
lost to the whisky-
coloured present.

 

 

 

 
 

IN THE AWKWARD PAUSES

The more I say nothing,
the more I learn
the importance of silence,
sitting on a tongue like a snowflake,
and that there's no words to cure cancer
or to fix the potholes in the road
we call capitalism, and that even

as the shadows dance naked
on a bedroom wall,
we're taught how clumsy words can be
afterwards, when loneliness whispers
in the awkward pauses
between promises that sound right
because they're lies. 

 

 

 

 

 

NEVER AGAIN (UNTIL NEXT TIME)

My head pounding for another drink,
almost like there's an angry drunk
living inside my brain,
banging on the wrong door
again, while I read some back issues
of an indie poetry magazine,
trying to figure out what a poem is,
trying to ignore the noise thinking
has become, while the sound of flipping
pages sound like sharp whispers
saying something viscous
about me,
which most people would only share
with someone they love.

 

 

 

 

A LEGIBLE X

When the only decision you support
is getting blackout drunk,
it makes forgetting to vote easier
because a ballot will never be a hangover
reminding you how love songs
aren't about you,

especially in a country that believes
in right and left more than loneliness,
who lives in the corner of your eye,
just to move whenever you're sure
you see something,

leaving a light bulb
to seem more like a dark corner
inside a mind talking to itself at 6 AM,
rather than any idea
about revolution and democracy.

 

 

 

 

AS THE EDUCATED ARGUE
ABOUT THE PAST

People peopling history,
only to turn names into chapters
inside textbooks, channelling the spirit
of phone books no one cares about anymore,
while students pretend to read
and memorize all the important dates,
only to learn without knowing it
that the living usually find the dead boring,
unless there's something morbid
to feed one's morbid curiosity,
or to be more literary:
the moss on a gravestone is a class
we all have to take,
and the worms don't care
if we pass or fail.

 

 

 

 

SECONDHAND

Reading an inscription in messy cursive,
thanking someone I never met
for something I never saw,
only to realize it sparked my imagination
more than the book itself
with its lack of hearsay
or plainness that can't be
misinterpreted, and even the dollar it cost
seemed a just verdict
for another failed attempt at immortality,
which I am also guilty of.

__________________

Today’s LittleNip:

There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you'd better learn the sound of it. Otherwise you'll never understand what it's saying.

―Sarah Dessen, Just Listen

__________________

Welcome back to the Kitchen, Richard! Richard LeDue has a new chapbook on Amazon, Mourning the Petals (https://www.amazon.com/Mourning-Petals-Poems-Richard-LeDue-ebook/dp/B0DNN5WL7P/). Congratulations on your new project, Richard!

__________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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