Tag Archives: rhythm

I’m Really NOT Trying 2B A Player: Revolutionary Romantic Blogging Free Verse Lament

Great.
I try
to be nice
to a woman.
I talk
to her.
I’m interested
in her.
I try
to find common themes
we can connect on.

I probe
not to manipulate,
but because I’m interested
in people,
especially women
would might
be right
for me
eventually.

I’m kind.
I don’t try
to string them
along.
I simply try
hard
and harder
and even more
to see if
there might be
some way
we connect.

When,
at last,
we don’t connect,
not really,
I try to be honest
and direct.

Maybe I’m not direct enough.
Maybe I need to say
“Thanks,
I’ll see you around,
but I won’t be asking you
out any more,
because I just don’t feel
“it”.”

But I don’t,
maybe because
I don’t want to hurt
her.
She is,
after all,
a daughter of Heavenly Father.
He loves her.
I wouldn’t want my daughters
to be hurt,
so I try to protect
all of God’s daughters
from that hurt.

That doesn’t make me
a playah.
I’m not trying to manipulate
or seduce
or lie
or be sneaky.

When she calls me
a player,
especially in my
Church’s culture
and society,
it’s like me
calling her
a slut,
a skank,
or worse,
(which is something
I would never do).

Yet she seems to think
it’s okay to warn others,
to tell them
that a month or two
of long-distance phone calls
(because I was thousands of miles away),
followed by two dates
that didn’t go well,
is somehow misleading,
is somehow wrong,
is somehow stringing her along.
That such actions
somehow make me
a player.

It doesn’t.
Because I can’t help
the way she felt.
I can’t help
what she thought about.
I can’t help
what she dreamed of,
or what she imagined
our future would be
together.
When together
doesn’t happen,
it doesn’t mean
it’s my fault.
It just is.

Now I have
a reputation
I don’t think
I deserve.
I have women
who won’t go out
with me,
because I
inadvertently
hurt a fellow
single woman
by not falling
for her.
All I can do
is write,
complain,
whine,
and ask other women
to come see
for themselves.

Oh, and to all women
who brag about how sisters
protect each other,
it might be wise
to get facts straight.
What you are doing
is gossiping,
and it doesn’t look good
on you.

My Gardened, Watered: Revolutionary ImproVerse Free Verse Poem

Decades after I turned
my first garden dirt
with a shovel,
clearing away sterile lawn
for food and scent and joy,
I didn’t know my last time,
the time at the helm
of a rototiller,
would be so emotional.

Someone else,
hopefully another family,
will now grow and prosper
in this garden,
in my once yard,
in this house,
where Smashing Pumpkins
and volunteer tomatoes
and lemon balm
and popcorn popping apricot trees
and temple roses
and forget-me-nots
and kornblumen
and black walnuts
and the Kirkland rhubarb hat fan club
once grew
and flourished
and prospered,
but where there are now
only rotted logs
and cut stumps
and smooth dirt
and the old mossed rock,
and memories.

And I will water my garden,
one last time,
with my tears.
Temple rose and apple tree before my garden was tilled
Forget-me-nots and korn blumen before my garden was tilled

If There Are Times, Then What? Romantic ImproVerse Free Verse Poem

Are there times
when you have to do
the important things in your life?
Or are there times
when you have to ignore
people you’d rather not?
Are there times
when you have to make
tough choices
and those choices might not be
what other people want you to do?
Are there times
when you have to let go
and suffer the consequences?
Or are there times
when you have to just do
what you feel like God
is telling you to do,
regardless of what anyone else
wants you to do
or even needs you to do?

When you hit those times,
do you just have to take a deep breath,
perhaps shed a few tears,
and hope that,
if you are hurting someone you care about,
maybe someday they’ll understand?
And they’ll come to learn
that what is best for you
and what God directs you to do,
will ultimately also be
what’s best for them.

Eating Out Alone: Romantic Free Verse ImproVerse Poem Lament

I love to eat out,
but this was a different
type of meal,
a spiritual Feast, really,
and I longed to share it
with somebody I cared about,
someone who enjoyed the same cuisine
(or so i thought.)

I reached out to her
time
and time
again
but there was never
any response;
never
any indication
that she
was having
the same feelings.

At last,
as I waited for dessert,
(knowing she was not
going to partake,)
I realized
that she and I
were not looking
at the same menu.
I thought
that she might not even
be hungry.
Or that maybe
she might be eating out
elsewhere.

I learned,
again,
and was reminded,
again,
that the gut-wrenching feeling,
the butterflies,
in my stomach,
that familiar feeling
that had come around
for over a decade
was not caused by her,
nor by my hunger,
but was a result,
as it had been
so often in the past,
of my silliness,
my over-indulgent intensity.

So I asked for the check
and left.

Never Saw It Coming: Revolutionary ImproVerse Free Verse

As he listened to his daughter
rant
about what a terrible father
he had been while she
was growing up,
he couldn’t help
but recognize the same words and complaints
that his new love had claimed
about her ex-husband.

It made him sick,
and it made him run.
He didn’t think he
was that terrible person, but maybe he was,
and he had just never seen it.

Everybody else had,
but he couldn’t.
And isn’t that
the narcissistic
way?

Knowing How To Dance And Whisper: Revolutionary Blogging Free Verse

It’s odd folks think I/
don’t know how to whisper ‘cuz/
I dance hard. That’s why.
Convertible top down dancing in Wisconsin farmland, finding rural art (Mosquito along County Trunk M, Winnebago County)
OR
People
may find it strange
that I,
one who dances hard
and sees much
and sings loud
and long
and deep
and lives life,
(Carpe Diem, Man!)
top down,
tunes up,
arms outstretched,
hands up,
with passion
and vigor
and tears
and laughter
and joy
and energy
and YES!

would

know

how

to

whisper.

That’s exactly why.
Picture of a Picture-taker -- whispering at Lake Winneconne, March, 2016 sunset