What Happened To Us (day 1355)

“What happened to us?” we used to say.
Now we just roll our eyes at passing strangers
Doing strange things.

Now we just wave our flag and sip lemonade
While we wait for our favorite 6PM
Radio show to keep at our time.
What happened is we became victims willingly,
We accepted our lonely road
With righteousness.
We held our heads high and believed in a constitution
That was created and sworn upon in vain, in contempt, in disbelief,
Yet all of these cowardly apparitions
And beautiful speakers continued to wow our humble thoughts into thinking
It was all peachy.
It was ordinary.
We fought the ordinary and they learned to tell us it was remarkable.
We fought the remarkable
And they told us it was right.
So we changed channels but drank the same milk –
We never did find that girl,
But we did learn to cool the voice of reason
With fireworks and birthday parties
Because we deserved them.
We were hard workers and deserved our fruits.
We were hard workers and we accepted our lonely road,
But fought it believing what we’d been sold.

Sometimes I gaze into her eyes at night. She whispers words I’ve never heard before,
And we count backwards from our chairs
Until we reach a new paragraph in our romance novels,
And soon it’s time for tea.

From My Heart and Throat (day 1302)

Some days I don’t want to exist anymore.
Some days I don’t want truth to be hovering
Around the center vortex of my cranium.
And it’s not even a weight,
It’s a lifting feeling that attaches itself
And continually pulls my gaze
..and hands
To face collecting clouds with nothing but
Questions rolling from heart and throat and
Rain drops that keep falling down my face.

From My Heart and Throat by Ned Tobin

My Mountain in the Rain (day 1280)

My mountain has been falling down,
Leaving holes the size of crowns.
I look to learn the makers name,
But eyes, unblinking, stare through the rain.

Could this new path design the way,
A thousand years been left unpaved.
I cry with every brick to fall,
Towards my future, the Grand Ball.

In my distance I feel no pain,
I shudder lost on through the rain
Amidst clear guidelines and diplomats;
Hidden secrets swept under mat.

Up and up and up my gaze
Fights through the foggy haze,
For as my mountain falls apart
Answers dart from end to start.

Clearly, says I, to my maker, my God,
What has become, why is there blood?
Why are my knees no longer strong?
What force has left my music gone?

Heart and Death (day 1040)

Today I go into beyond,
Parting heavy gates.
Closed last season.

Battling;
Clear.
Never understanding
This strong grip.

What lifted my spirits
Above swords so sharp,
To plunge back down
Into death so brown.

Here I grow
Beyond my heart.
Alert and
Lost to earth.

Bound with opal strings
I gaze into my holder.
Eyes so strong.
Until I smooth clean off
Like rolling fog,
Smothering my choice.