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Poetry in Black and White

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Poetry in Black and White

Category Archives: Poetry

Battles

22 Tuesday Feb 2022

Posted by Michael Ray King in Poetry

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Age.

The toll of life.

So many simply say to pick yourself up and move on.

So much damage. So much pain.

So much euphoria. So much joy.

All exact their payment. The price you pay one day will bankrupt you.

Yes. Joy. Euphoria. Positives require energy. What happens when that energy no longer allows access points.

Huh! (gravely growling voice of a John Wayne type) “Pick yourself up! You gotta have the hunger, boy! You gotta want it! You gotta go for it!

Exhaustion doesn’t tap your energy. Exhaustion doesn’t steal your energy. Your hunger. Your desire. Exhaustion simply convinces your mind, heart, and soul there remains no point in carrying on.

I’m behind the keyboard again. The distractions of exhaustion, videos of great sports feats, Tik Toks, solitaire. What kept me from them this day?

Nothing.

Over an hour of sports, movie shorts, Tik Toks.

The hunger never dies. The desire flails and withers…but never dies…completely.

One day, one wicked day, the passion, the desire, the hunger, will perish completely. Let that day be the last breath.

Whether the words come brilliant, overloaded in pathos and insight, or the babbling of a pathetic madman, allow them to fall off my fingertips through the last breath.

Choice becomes more channeled, more of a struggle with age. The fire of youth, altruism, passion, boil away in the toils of life. Where does this keystroke owe its gratitude?

The intangible will.

That place within us we’ve always needed to acknowledge, respect, and utilize. The unnameable will within which lies as our final line in the sand. That line is not intended to be Tom Petty’s stand at the Gates of Hell, but the line you will yourself to step back into life, take the punches and throw your own.

In this day and age, a major shift has been machinated by sick, moralistically bankrupt powers who would divide a world and set us all at each other’s throats. I’m no different. I am disgusted by bioweapon domination and fear instilled controls that demean life and the simple human beauty of facial expression which robs us of one of the most powerful human traits, smiles and frowns and joys and loves and nearly everything precious to human communication.

I know there remain few open-minded souls. We no longer possess the luxury of an open mind. The manipulations have forced and foisted a black and white world. A do or die life scenario. Fauci’s failed attempts to eradicate large numbers of humans continue to struggle. Eventually, he/they will make it more powerful and deadly.

Screw the thought that the endgame will work out well. The camps have effectively been divided. The powers that be machinating all this strife and destruction obviously will keep doubling down on their media/corporate/governmental control of narrative until conflagration manifests itself.

Unless you live in that mass-manipulative circle that has the entire world choosing sides, there remain few options.

This negative, fear-based world delivers exhaustion to us all. This is what the media, global pharmaceutical drug dealers, and government desire. Take the attention away from “us”, the “us” being the puppeteers, and keep them all fighting, dying, and miserable. Global tyranny has finally arrived. Instead of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin-type megalomaniacs, we are experiencing the shadow tyrants.

The conquest is not through what we call “conventional weapons” this war is currently fought with words constructed as control through absurd fear and lies. There is no “conspiracy Theorist” here, only those who see and understand and those prone and groomed to mass manipulation.

There will be no “conversions” of camp by this writing. There is no expectation of open minds stopping to consider this “may” be true. There is only the hope that those of us who see, feel, and understand the despicalbe disgraces to humanity will never stop until they are identified and dealt with, do not give up under the exhaustion driven into our minds and hearts by ruthless media, corporations, and corrupted governments.

We either step ourselves over that line in the sand and step into living a HUMAN life, or we wither and die at the hands of those who would gladly see us all dead.

So maybe this is a rallying cry. Maybe this writing is a call to compatriots who are down but not out. The real issue for BOTH sides is not the narrative the media has so carefully crafted and disgusting liars like Fauci have fomented, but each side recognizing that the perpetrators of the destruction of humanity on a global level HAVE NOT BEEN IDENTIFIED.

We better wake up and realize this or the war will be real and the consequences will be a global disaster. Of course, that is the apparent endgame. Follow the money. Follow the power. Once upon a time, the media would do this. Now the slime of sellout pours from the media, a putrid cesspool of manipulation.

Someone knows. Someone knows who is behind this global war. If the identification does not happen soon, all will be lost. Live like a human. Cease being a puppet.

Line crossed.

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In this Midnight

20 Sunday Feb 2022

Posted by Michael Ray King in Poetry

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In this midnight…

Words tumble from the heart
They bounce around like ping pong balls in a lottery shuffle
Yet, these words don’t tumble, do they?
They gain release
Once you allow
Once you cannot deny them their voice
So, they’re not really words, are they?
Not inanimate, prickly-edged symbols
Not brilliance captured
More simply…
Emotions released…
Observations given wing…
Expressions escaping into a reality we don’t understand
Expressions departing the chaos within

In this midnight…

Flow becomes rapid when restrictions relax
Love aches more beautifully painful when allowed to fly
Peace etches silken smoke rings on nascent winds of life
For the snapshot of who you are
That body, mind, spirit, and soul
That intangible, creative, deep-feeling retch
Escapes the captivity of fear and control
Into the realm of shared existence from captive existence
Flow unencumbered develops a meaning
A life
A passion
An anger
A love for the ages
An underlying fear/dread/avoidance/rejection of death
A nebulous meaning
An anti-concrete version of this world and the beings in it
One which fits, just for this moment of keystrokes,
Into an intricate multi-dimensional representation of truth
Only the writer recognizes as the flow squirts out fingers
From the highway of one’s heart.

In this midnight…

I think of you
I feel you in my heart
I see you in my mind
I touch you on the keyboard
I hear you in my memory
I sense the aroma of your life
And I know it to be precious
Important to many
But as my fingers allow the expression from my heart to flow

Important to me…

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The Call

13 Sunday Feb 2022

Posted by Michael Ray King in Poetry

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Power.

A whisper
tease
promise
an aspiration
words coagulating in a pool of brilliance
meaningless
yet everything

Keyboard black
etched in white symbols
Mind Cimmerian
sketched in gray symbolisms
Truth
elusive as a thought on a hurricane emotion
Relevance
problematical as an individual raindrop desiring autonomy

Called to indite wisdoms, truths, pains, longings, passions, fears, triumphs, dreads…
all a whisper
insistent
Irritated by negligence
power wrested from the word cloud in one’s mind
limited by imperfections
perfected by the same

Know this:
Love exists
A vast, gigantic well which may only be truly tapped by conscious surrender
Love abides
An unfathomable profundity one only discovers once ego quells under capitulation
Love flourishes
A garden flowered by passions enormous and bantam
Love lives
Not only in Keats’ Grecian Urn scenario but in each breath, thought, desire, longing

For there lives not a human who at some stage did not wrestle with love’s mystery
Power
Love’s power rests strongest in those who embrace and yield to their innermost truth

The Call
She beckons
Every moment
Every thought
Every scent
Every notion
Every heartbeat
Every desire
Every fear

The Calls awaits fingertips,
Dancing waltz’s, cha cha’s, foxtrots, passions
Flitting the black oasis of plastic confinement imprisoned whithin the white symbols
Craving
Release
Expression
An ear to hear
A heart to connect
A gentle boomerang response
A desire for a recompensive echo rooted in the multilingual aspect of love itself

The Call of life
of passion
of writing
abides in love

This world crushes love.
Destroys the will to love.
Inhilates the roots of love
Yet,
The Call
The Spark
The passion
continues against all odds…


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Life. Death. Living…

08 Wednesday Dec 2021

Posted by Michael Ray King in Poetry

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Once there was a way to get back home
That way lost itself in perilous joys and heartbreaks
Once there was a way to return to innocence
That way crumbled under the decisions of experience

Once there was a way to get back home
A tattered, littered, obstacle-filled trail
Peppered with pain, delusion,
A perpetual carrot
Always in view, always beyond reach

Once there was a way to get back home
Home being that idyllic landscape which both never existed and forever lives in our hearts
A shiny, dewdrop laden blade of grass on the way to elementary school
Filled with wonder and beauty
A moment in time where the vociferous voices of angry parents ceased to exist
An escape into a continuum only you could enter

Once there was a way to get back home
Never out of our reach
Forever in our wounded hearts and jaded minds
If only we could stop the world and search out that moment
A moving target becomes our sole view
When in truth there exists no target
Only a willingness to grant permission for entry

The way home lies broken and obscured by Life. Death.
Living encapsulates home in a boundless infinity
Stretching not to the ends of universes or galaxies
But to the infinite heart deep within

Once there was a way to get back home
Once every nanosecond
Once every breath
Once every heartbeat
Once every thought

All we need remains our own permission to travel…

My mentor and friend died a few days ago in his recliner in his apartment alone. This likely was how he would have preferred passing on. For me, his loss has shocked my heart just like a few dozen other deaths throughout my life. I cannot imagine he is gone. All I can grasp at this moment is that pieces of him, quite valuable pieces for me, live on within me. My ascent into the writing world, no matter how bumpy, varied, and full of mistakes, owes much to Rikki Ravioli, otherwise known as Rik Feeney. He lifted me, mentored me, was an incredibly good friend to me, for which I will continue to live in gratitude for his kindness toward me.

I have completed my sabbatical from writing. Once again, he has prompted me to action. RIP my friend. Wherever you are now, I’m sure you’re stirring up hornets’ nests…

I cannot write more in this moment.

Thanks to you, Rik, I WILL write more…

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When Life was Worth Living

19 Tuesday Oct 2021

Posted by Michael Ray King in Poetry

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Did you ever have a dream that made you scratch your head? One that appeared on the surface phantasmic, but upon further scrutiny, owned a strong bit of Truth? Questions. Questions without answers. The definition of life for us all yet we emphasize the answers. The answers others create appall us. The answers others create resonate. Same for the answers we create ourselves.

Answers do not mean much in the end. Your answers. My answers. Their answers. All exist as a quiet whimper in a maelstrom cacophony of shouting mouths and minds and emotions. Yes, we track paths and resonances with others. Even these words, sounding so much like an answer falls prey to the din of voices in our heads, our media, our entertainments, our arguments, our perspectives.

Therefore, what is truth? What pushes us to strive for the sublime answers? Panic? Desire? A need to be heard? Loneliness? Frustration? Anger? Joy? Love?

In the end, Solomon owned the question. There exist no answers save the gold standard catch-all concept of diety and a plan. A plan laid secret. A plan we cannot fathom. Solomon stated that our lives are a “chasing after the wind.”

At the risk of pretending Solomon’s statement lends an answer, the concept only describes the reality of life. We convince ourselves we possess the wherewithal to divine answers. Answers plucked from the tornadic destruction surrounding us. We know nothing.

When Life was Worth Living

Ignorance.
Carefree moments.
Depths of emotional soothing
Sensory deprivation beyond the beauty we periodically wake long enough to admire before we fall back into analytics and answers

Sunshine
Blank mind open to our internal pencil…no, chalk
Simple observations accepted as a gift
Until the rains sweep clean our slate of answers.

When life was worth living
I stole a moment for myself
A concept to dream
Roll over my internal mental and emotional tongues
Revel in the experience of everything
of one thing
of focus and clarity
of foolhardy, delicious ecstasy

I remember many of the days or moments worth living
Despite the growl and vitriol of competing answers from countless trillions of sources
All demanding their place in space and time
At times recognizing my own folly of tossing more into the endless black hole abyss drawing us near
Each pretentious answer another shard-dagger to my perception of knowledge
When life was worth living

I know nothing
I must reach that point of recognition
From nothing, I create my next moment when life was worth living
Fringe thoughts allowed to fly off into the blackness
A central thought which defines me vanishes
I feel the life worth living become something tangible
Something attainable
Something beautiful
Despite the blithering idiot within and those without

Quiet
Calm
Peace
Alcove in the aforementioned storm
Swept away by the frailest of voices
Whispering the concept of answers

When life was worth living
My life did not care about answers or questions or concepts or rightness or wrongness or any other -ness
Life Is, Was, and Shall be the absence of questions and answers
A place of me, a moment, an experience, and a lack of qualification

when life WAS worth living
when life IS worth living
when life SHALL BE worth living
Owes nothing to anyone
Including myself

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Strolling through the Brightness of Joy

17 Tuesday Aug 2021

Posted by Michael Ray King in Poetry

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Strolling through the Brightness of Joy

Evil doesn’t stab me because I embrace my joy

I rest in the beauty this world quietly offers – meadows and brooks and mountains and seas

I’m reborn each morning as my eyes open to the possibilities inherent in another day

I stroll through a chorus of sunrays and glinting water, and I enjoy joy itself, for nothing is more fulfilling or important

Dark winds and gray clouds mean nothing more than a good sleep, my heart singing, my life exploding in rose petal rain showers, and sparkling snow dreams

Without doubt, the evils of this world fall away from my contentment achieved when I embrace the beauty in my heart burgeoning with all the joy one soul may possess.

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Where We Live

18 Sunday Jul 2021

Posted by Michael Ray King in Poetry

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Where We Live

Time is not a river
Nor a blessing or a curse
Time is this moment.
This breath.
This thought.
This truth

Past and Future exist as fictions
Fictions we create often in our minds
Excuses for this moment’s ill-use
While time continues to simply be now…

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How Do I Love Thee?

03 Saturday Jul 2021

Posted by Michael Ray King in Poetry

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How Do I Love Thee?    IMG_1867 (2)

The slight meandering of your crooked smile
Dancing-spider-palm-tree-shadows on evening walks
Laughter free, full of life
Eyes vivacious-sparkled with secret mirth

Hands intertwined in communicative connection
Joy embedded in simple activity
Patience held in high regard
Sacred night a stroll through nature’s peace

A breath
A life
A love
A moment

All existence reduced to important tasks
Like sighs
Like smiles
Like wonderment
Like snuggles
Like snowflakes
Like raindrops
Like sunshine in the heart

Flow
Words
Concepts
Realities

Fingertips recognize the impossibility of this task
Understanding all this author asks
Find your love in all which surrounds you
Step out of stress, you will find this true

Creativity and the core of your heart

Writing. The craziest, most beneficial exercises of my life. Struck this morning by my withdrawals due to a self-inflicted sabbatical from writing, I’ve felt the floodgates bursting to create. Any topic. Anything. I simply must write.

The pressures of people weigh upon me far too much. I take on their pain, their criticisms, their harshness, their bitterness. Don’t tell me to stop. The effort conflicts with my nature, my definition of who I am and who I desire to
be.

I truly, to this day, feel alone surrounded by people. Even though I enjoy emceeing events, especially my Inspired Mic where creatives enjoy a platform for their own definitions of who THEY are, I still feel the dark loneliness
which only abates in close connection with love or, most often, with a blank page and the freedom to spew.

My writing champion, whom I miss dearly, Ray Bradbury, once wrote, “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” The past two years may be somewhat of a hangover triggered by my sabbatical, yet contained within these past two years are a number of writing successes like the third-place achievement of one of my short stories, (found here – A Matter of Time by Michael Ray King – 3RD PLACE), and other pieces I feel effused through a higher quality of writing.

This day the poem preceded the post. I am thankful for my creative resurgence. Regardless of whether anyone reads this but me, I am content and drunk on my creative writing. Another of Mr. Bradbury’s quotes goes on to say so much more about writing. This quote has been paraphrased many times, but I feel the entirety of his observation stands stronger than the sum of its parts:

“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let
them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”
― Ray Bradbury

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Fatal Push

20 Sunday Jun 2021

Posted by Michael Ray King in Poetry

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Fatal Push

Decisions.
Life.
Breath.
Heartbeats.

I fled the news today, oh boy!
Two hundred people claiming life for themselves
One tainted judge to strike them down

Truth.
Bruised.
Battered.
Unrecognizable.

Media drives division
Blatant manipulations to set people apart
Ask the question why? Why?

United people cannot be feared into subjugation.
Beware the fatal push.
Beware the fruitions of control.

Waking up too late will never serve your life
Unless you mean to lose the sight you own
Unless you care to live the tyrants’ dreams

Wake up, people of the world
See that fear screams and TRUTH walks silent in your path
Resist the final push toward the losses of your freedoms

Force.
Force employed which robs you of the basics of life
Force with fear as its staff and sword
The fatal push toward humanity’s downfall

Unfortunately (for me) I DID read the news today…oh boy!

And so it begins, the final, fatal push to the loss of all freedoms of mankind. If a human has no right to determine what goes into their body, if life itself becomes restricted because of passive-aggressive marshal law type edicts, wielded through fear, what freedom does a human truly possess?

A federal judge ruled against nearly 200 health workers who refused the vaccine for COVID 19. The judge stated they were not being “forced” to have something injected into their bodies. He stated, “the workers simply need to work elsewhere” if they do not vaccinate.

Simply? What the hell? The track record for deaths and complications from the vaccines are not exactly great. Of course, our media, our medical community, and certainly our governments are not willing to report such things as congestive heart failure, heart attacks and other side-effects from the vaccines.

When COVID first came on the scene, it was over 6 months before I knew anyone who contracted the flu. Once my friends began getting vaccinated, I immediately know people who’ve had serious side-effects from the injection(s). With a nearly 99% survival rate, which is only a small percentage less than survival of the now-no-longer-reported flu, taking away people’s livelihood by Draconian means certainly does at the very least whisper Naziism, which is a claim these health workers made.

The judge repudiated the comparison, but the day is fast approaching where, if you do not have the proper numerical coding, you will be relegated to far less than a second-class citizen. When did we give up the simplest of freedoms? The freedom to our very bodies? Really? Other people now control what happens to our bodies. And we, the people, lay down for the propaganda, bullying, and derision because of fear?

Not all of us tremble in our boots, beds, or anyplace else from the rhetoric raining like negative verbal daggers threatening to pierce anyone who does not lie down and comply. This is nothing new. Entire countries have done this with evil dictators and leaders who promised incredible lives they possessed no hope of providing.

This evil is the most nefarious. This evil is a not-so-passive-aggressive entity. Fear is mongered everywhere you turn. Even though the very paperwork you sign when you get the vaccine clearly states they are experimental, and none have been vetted and passed by the FDA in the US, the mere fact the the FDA said, “Okay” to an emergency use of experimental vaccines, this judge blows that off.

People no longer think for themselves. Few are willing to stand against such a basic loss of freedom because the backlash and the crushing negativity is more than they could handle. I am saddened, not just in this country, but the entire world, falling so quickly and easily to the pressure of those who would control our very bodies.

When did life become an “extend-at-all-costs” experience? When did societies fall into the blatant and most dangerous trap there could ever be, of governments controlling what goes into your body? How can the lemming-masses flee to this? When governments obtain such totalitarian control, nothing good ever comes to the people.

The other issues at play here are the powerful wealthy. Tracking money to Wuhan was quite the reveal. Once upon a time, the media would have jumped all over that. Crickets.

The media of this world does not serve people other than to create havoc, fear, and set up control factors, such as placing experimental drugs into your body, not voluntarily, but forcibly. That day has arrived, and it will only get more Draconian, more pervasive, and more deadly.

You have the right to what you put into your body. You make that choice. Allow me the same right. A life lived in fear is not a life. A life lived and controlled by fear is nothing more than a manipulated existence. Sadness befalls me that powerful entities will soon control our bodies. What fear will they create when the argument is made that those who live in fear are now vaccinated, so they are safe?

This has been preset for some time. This amazing flu that came out of nowhere(?) has many “mutations” occuring which will mean that people will need to constantly have things injected into them. Very convenient. Has anyone studied mutations and how they may happen so quickly from something that came out of nowhere?

It does not take a research scientist to come to the conclusion that these mutations are occurring from a created product. There is no other conclusion. The only question left is will those who fall in step with global government edicts persecute those who see things differently. In WWII Germany, the Schindlers were massively outnumbered by those who kowtowed to the yoke the Nazi’s threw around them, at first through promises of a better life, then through edicts of control through fear.

Humanity stands at its most vulnerable crossroad in history now. Right now. Will you join the forces who would control the very fluids and workings in your body, or will you allow choice? The basic freedom of choice. Once you sell that away, you no longer live your own life.

Many have chosen to take the vaccines. That is their choice. Will you allow others to make their own? Or will you condemn them, berate them, bully them, and separate them from society as less than second-class citizens? This has happened time and time again throughout the history of the world. Will you participate in the next evil regime to dominate people? I hope you will allow dissenting views, studies, and decisions on life the opportunity to live as they desire.

The forces at work today in our despicable media are beyond disgusting. The media propaganda falls in step with those taking control, not of a country or countries, but the entire world. How the masses can be so easily duped is a shock to me. All governments lie. Politicians, on the whole, are professional liars. They lend ear candy to the masses like a corporate Pied Pipers, then, once they wrench enough control, leave the people wallowing in the wake of their true agendas.

I’ve lived long enough to understand, observed sadly enough to comprehend, the underbellies of government, corporations, and religions do not stand positively under the light of honest scrutiny. The COVID lies have been apparent from the beginning, yet the masses give those hungry for power carte blanche with their edicts. The CDC has reported completely ridiculous and untrue “facts” since the beginning, which fed into the “fear-factor” they needed. Remember sanitizing shipments because the virus could be transmitted through touching something and someone else touching it?

Incredibly irresponsible “facts” which brewed fear on blatant day-to-day levels and on subliminal psychological levels. Masks, which have been proven time and again to be ineffective, INEFFECTIVE, to stemming the tide of this created virus, are one of the most effective tools being used by those who would deflect people from TRUTH. If the CDC and media and governments and corporations can keep strife between people who crumble to fear and those who stand against it, they can keep the spotlights and microscopes away from the ugly intentions behind their agendas.

When a judge rules against people fighting for their jobs simply by saying, “If you don’t get the injection, simply work someplace else.” there becomes exposed a serious problem with even our courts. What a farce and miscarriage of justice. Changing jobs is not simple, and, once the corporate evil gets one toe-hold, soon there will be no place to work, no ballgame to go to, no cruise to be able to enjoy, simply because those in control wish to exert their dominance so they may then enforce their background agendas.

The day will come when humanity regrets turning over their very lives to people, who throughout history, have horribly abused similar but far less daunting power over its people.

Never.

Never has it been in the best interest of people, of humanity, to lay down for the wealthy, the government, and their propaganda. Poisoned candy still tastes sweet. Please do not participate in fear control. You possess the ability to not join the ranks of those who would strip all humans of their right to choose what happens to their bodies. I’m telling you, this is not something to give away.

Make your choice as to what you do.

Allow me and others the same choice.

Please do not help perpetuate the fatal push through fear and coercion to strip humanity of that choice. Whether you wish to believe or not, there are forces who are using this manufactured virus for power and control on a level this world has never experienced.

Time to write my poem. I will place it at the beginning of this post.

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Dainty Demons

17 Thursday Jun 2021

Posted by Michael Ray King in Poetry

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Soft, lush memories scream to life
Sleep a mellow cradle to their rebirth
Scars of joy so deep few would understand
Beauty and love and freedom and sentiment as pain.

Looking glass recollections delivered to the heart’s front door
Never reminded of what we were looking for
Joys and smiles and camaraderie bare
Life’s story splayed naked, diamond needle of playback deep in the soul’s grooves…

Wanton dreams of emotions and women
Traversing the white-water thrills from imagination’s core
Ghosts now. Undefined. General. Wisps of recollections.
Faded as the sun-stained remnants of decades passed into oblivion

Of games and thrills and timeless joy
No times ever recapture the life of the boy
Baseballs, hoops and rivers to swim
Age never dreamt to chase and catch him…

He lived in our house
He walked in my fears
He ruined too much of my manhood
With his follies and fears…

Last of days
Last of life
Disenfranchised children and wife
We strolled the day
We slinked the night
We stand unable to distinguish wrong from right

IRippled blue pool coddling many swimmers
No one racing, everyone winners
Summer days pass like the most pleasnt breeze
No one to worry you, no one to please

Wonder touches our hearts and our minds
Each though each sight, each touch each smell, each sound
Wait patient four our attention to slow and relax
Yet we go, go go go go go go

Your breath
Just now
Special
Another moment of life
Another chance
Speak its name
Acknowledge its power
Allow it to roll through your softened hear
Live
Now

What follows is writing inspiring poetry and vis versa. The poem above was contrived from the text below. Why? Why does any writer write anything? The simple answer is “because.” Because a dream woke me one night. Because the compulsion to write gnaws at me day and night. I love writing. Writing is my peace. My refuge. My joy. My sorrow. I copied each stanza from the paragraphs below and combined them into one unit. I hope there is something in this for you…

Awakened at five o’clock in the morning, ten hours past London midnight (for those who may be interested) my emotional throat lay bare and constricted by memory’s powerful, demanding hands, both of which felt destined to wring all the tears from my preteen and early teen experiences at the “police pool” as we called it. Long chiseled into my psyche that incredible experiences deliver pain as well as the evil happenings in life, I chose not to breathe and allowed the hands to focus my attention on those incredible summer days.

Looking glass recollections delivered to the heart’s front door
Never reminded of what we were looking for
Joys and smiles and camaraderie bare
Life’s story splayed naked, diamond needle of playback deep in the soul’s grooves…

JB. Me. The “police pool” named so because it was funded by the FOP (Fraternal Order of Police) of which my father was a member, he being a police officer. The pool itself was nothing too spectacular. I learned to swim there as a young boy. There was the “deep end” with the two diving boards – one a spring loaded “low board” that regardless of its name, intimidated me with its height over the water. The “high dive” stood as diving’s Everest in my eyes, just as fearful and loaded with potential death as the mountain itself.

There was the concession stand, a magical place for a kid if he had some money. No eating in the pool area, but picnic tables and “The Deck” were surreal slices of escape for the tongue and eyes. Chocolate Black Cows or stringy taffy, Milk Duds and other childhood delights slipped hand in glove with preteen, ravenous eyes scouring girls in bikinis.

The Deck was located on the roof of the concession stand/changing rooms, a long, rectangular flat area peppered with young women working their tans. Most lay face down with the straps of their bikini tops tantalizingly draped careless by their sides. We filled our eyes with what squished underneath them, imaginations wild and begging in silence. Even the music, which was current to the times, fell in step with this favorite focus of our day. “I’m a Girl Watcher” played from the speakers strategically placed around the pool and deck area at a volume easily able to overcome the noise of children squealing and people talking.

Wanton dreams of emotions and women
Traversing the white-water thrills from imagination’s core
Ghosts now. Undefined. General. Wisps of recollections.
Faded as the sun-stained remnants of decades passed into oblivion

“What are you doing?” I queried JB as he sat on a bench staring underneath the high dive.
“I’m checking out a BT.”
“BT?”
“Yeah. Big Titties. She’s right over there,” he pointed, “and when she bends over, you can see nipple!”

Yes, call it base. Call it many things. But this was a time of growing and learning and exploring and many other young experiences. We created different code names from that point on. BT always got attention when one of us uttered the magic letters.

Of games and thrills and timeless joy
No times ever recapture the life of the boy
Baseballs, hoops and rivers to swim
Age never dreamt to chase and catch him…

The pool felt great, with its lure of water, girls (we did not think of them as women or even young women) and challenges as to who could seim further, faster, longer under water. Yet, there were other thrills like the ever dangerous, life and limb-threatening merry-go-round. We would whirl that sucker to near the speed of light. I’m amazed no one died or suffered life-altering injuries. We knew we were on the edge. The edge of life and death. This did not matter. We lived to be young. The thrill ran our veins like electricity through high conductive metal. No stopping us. No parental pleading for our safety could slow our brushes with fate.

He lived in our house
He walked in my fears
He ruined too much of my manhood
With his follies and fears…

In later years, they built an indoor basketball court. I discovered it one day at the Policeman’s Annual Picnic. No one was there. Just me, a basketball and a nice, fresh court. As I shot, my father walked in. My first reaction was that he would chase me out. I was in seventh grade and had made the junior varsity basketball team. To my surprise, he grabbed on of my rebounds and actually shot the ball.

Not just any lame, clumsy sort of shot, but one which spoke of knowledge and experience on the court. Up until this point, he had not paid much attention to my basketball exploits, nor had he acknowledged my passion for the game. But this one day stands as a pinnacle or a deep dark well, depending upon my ability to focus on the positive or negative. It would be the only time he would show interest in my love of sports.

I don’t mean talking sports, I mean actively participating. I do cherish that short period of time that day, but mostly, I am saddened by the father who could not bond with his only son. Many years of sadness and separation followed us like ominous storm clouds that would not veer away.

Last of days
Last of life
Disenfranchised children and wife
We strolled the day
We slinked the night
We stand unable to distinguish wrong from right

The Police Pool, despite the close association with my father, is a joy I count in my life. I am glad he shared this with us. I am glad he shared that one day with me. I suppose, in the sparsity of days, this one day has become incredibly memorable and etched into my heart.

Rippled blue pool coddling many swimmers
No one racing, everyone winners
Summer days pass like the most pleasant breeze
No one to worry you, no one to please

Wonder touches our hearts and our minds
Each though each sight, each touch each smell, each sound
Wait patient four our attention to slow and relax
Yet we go, go go go go go go

Your breath
Just now
Special
Another moment of life
Another chance
Speak its name
Acknowledge its power
Allow it to roll through your softened hear
Live
Now

Epilogue

Now that I’m at the end of this lengthy post, my original thought was to call attention to the pains of joy and happiness and glee. Make no mistake. All of these positive, wonderful experiences possess levels of pain. Sweet pain. Dainty Demons.

Memory calls them to the fore at time. I miss and long for the joys and happinesses and glees of days gone by. That kiss with Vicky where I felt, at a minimum, the entire galaxy coalesce into ecstatic wonder. The thrill of one dance, one song, with Dawna in 7th grade. Incredible smells and sights of youth like hot dogs on a campfire or dew glistening on morning grasses.

The pangs of loss, not of memory, but the loss of feeling that original intensity. Not so much the loss, but the TRUTH that Vicky’s kiss will never ride my lips and entire nervous system through the universe again. While dew remains pretty and a minor joy, back then the water droplets barely restrained magic bursting from their precarious and bulbous grasp of a blade of grass.

Stephen King said, “All you need to be a writer is the ability to remember every scar.” I would add that those scars may be positive as well as negative. Beautiful scars pepper my life. Each one a treasured memory. Many of them I rediscover when something triggers a long-lost beautiful experience. Writing about negativity is easy. I do this all the time. Writing about the positive scars, those incredible memories which breathe life into words like melancholy, reverie, and hopeless romantic, should become part of every writer’s repertoire.

Or not. I hope my writing captures the good and the bad. The grays and the yellows as well as the black and whites. Some darkness is good. Healing. Like midnight moons and love through heart-revealing words. Some light is damaging like sunburns and mistake revelations to the world. All deserve our attention. All comprise their space in life.

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