Tag Archives: Suffering

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.

Childless Father’s Day Redux: Revolutionary ImproVerse Rhyming Poetic Lament

Mere minutes away,
but they’ve got no money.
Don’t our children know
that their dads would mow
their lawn, take out the garbage,
or clean their garage,
to be with their children on Father’s Day?

Anything beats sitting at home
all alone,
staring at the phone,
waiting for their call.
Trying not to bawl
or feel dumb
When the message doesn’t come.
Feeling sad,
I wonder: “How bad
was I as a dad?”

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

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.

Painful Garage Discoveries: Revolutionary ImproVerse Free Verse Lament

They fell out
of an old cardboard box,
in a pile, onto the floor.
It was like that scene
from Garfield’s Christmas.

I, too, found a stack
of old love letters,
written from she who now,
as I move her out of her life,
must be obeyed;
she who I betrayed.

I’d forgotten,
(or maybe I never knew,)
how much she loved
me.

Her words tell me.
Surprise me.

Now,
nearly four decades later,
I can only stand
in the messed up
and cluttered garage
the cold, damp space
that still holds,
for a little while longer,
the life
which we shared.

There,
amid piles
of old,
handwritten papers,
scarcely daring to read
those words she wrote
decades ago,
I weep bitter tears of
sorrow,
guilt,
pain,
and deep remorse.

She’ll never know
how sorry I am.
How could she?
Until this moment,
I didn’t even know.
I found some old love letters on the garage floor

On Accepting Help: Revolutionary IMprov Free Verse Poem

It’s such a common thing
among
the sisters of Zion.

So many walls up.
So much fear.
And worry.
And don’ts.
And can’ts.
And shouldn’ts.

As though they think
anyone will think
less of them
for the less
that others do
to them.

As though we
who have been
or could be
there
would ever
deride them
for seeking,
quietly,
for the help
others force them into.

They feel bad
and hide
and suffer
inside,
instead
of letting charity
never fail.