PS Conway

- “Life Sucks” doesn't suck. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Hilarious, #satirical, and deeply human - like Monty Python with a colonoscopy. - A must-read for anyone just in need of a damn good #laugh. - Darkly #funny, brutally honest, and weirdly comforting. Buy here: a.co/d/bX0YQE0 - #booksky #writingcommunity

- i have lost my footing – there is so little level ground. Main Street is full of potholes, each a deeper concentric circle, and the rumbling all around me drives me to my knees. the crossroads and alleys i once traveled no longer deliver me home to you. - #poetry #vss365

- do not seek me in autumn dew at sunrise, do not ask my name in Ben Bulben's dusk, deep in the spell of Yeats. look westward instead to a heathered hillside that tapers to a capricious sea – you will find me there, dancing in the spindrift, calling you to me. - #vss365 #poetry

- shambling into another captious sunset is thirsty work, i have forgotten the kiss of clean water, the nestle of her lap, long ago. bees guide me along the sea, eyes blinded by Philistines – and there are so many dusty miles left before i am free of Ashkelon. - #poetry #vss365

- there’s nothing like routine to collect my thoughts. a morning shower – eyes closed tight, hoping shampoo doesn’t deliver its sting. feeling the confidence in coming clean. all the while, forgetting my doubts, circling the drain – whispering me to change. - #poetry #vss365

- the journey back has left me empty-handed, my voice betrayed by stage fright. a liar, it seems, who’s lost his [lyre]. no backtrack - no Eurydice. my commitment to being [better] has left me beneath a godly sunset, seeking the sin of a shadow. - #poetry #vss365

- nervous the sunset over Lake Mendota might engulf me - body and soul. - #vss365 #poetry my 📸

- when i was young, love was an idea captured in blown kisses, effortless for those lucky enough to capture their magic. oh, to return to such naïveté - never knowing love’s many labors. so, i remain in training - this lonely acolyte, seeking his sensei. - #poetry #vss365

- i chased you around the backyard, your laughter just ahead of me. round and round circle upon circle we carved our path – you pretending to flee, and me in hot pursuit. there was so much mud on our sneakers, and still we came home clean. - #vss365 #poetry

- good luck, the stranger says, handing me a receipt. i blink through the rain at his list of printed digits. each number holds a piece of us – each corresponds with a date. i’ve never felt so alone – frozen outside the bodega, wondering if i won the lottery. - #vss365 #poetry

- the TV's ghosting me again. all the channels have gone dead. wifi is working [that’s how i’m writing this] more disturbing still are the voices slurving from the blank screen. this unexpected haunting may be scary, but at least i’m a little less bored. - #vss365 #poetry

- the dead boy revisited me last night. his eyes gone black from all the horrors – i'm not sure he sees me. i'm not sure he sees anything. the air is still – its thick silence echoes in my chest. a nightingale alights at the window – he manages a wry smile. - #vss365 #poetry

- i shiver in the gray twilight space – my new home. shadows pass – wraiths damned and lost. oh, but for the bravery of a fire. some warmth to draw close, like memory. but the space is barren – no trees to burn, and i seem to have misplaced my lighter. - #vss365 #poetry

- autumn rain rages against the screen door, demanding entrance, demanding its gray invade my greening thoughts. but i am caught in spring – in the sound of your wanton smile, in the sound of rose petals falling. - #poetry #vss365

- red dawn light draws me from my repose. a murmuration of starlings – the beauty in precision, the purpose in design, the calm that comes before the auspices – lost in their signs. - #vss365 #poetry

- i feel the stain of being American today, you look at me with disdain – return to your phone for the firing squad live stream. i quake, listening to crows' laughter in the yard recalling how we once washed our feet in tears & dried them with our hair. - #vss365 #poetry

- turns out there is no hell no fire no brimstone just the terrible clarity of a black silence listening back no way to discern remorse from prayer just a sleepless vigilance and fathomless time to think on my sins no one there to say enough. - #vss365 #poetry

- i never learned to fish – it’s a wonder i’ve endured. hunger can be such an odious teacher, a reverse arithmetic – five minus four equals one. i must leave this island forever, hideous secrets interred among the screams. - #vss365 #poetry

- no golden bird remains – only feathers and cage, and i have too long tended this tattered coat on its stick, long into a lifetime’s indigent shadow – the fields are fallow, i sail to Byzantium on a boat full of old men. - #poetry #vss365

- do you recall how mighty our tempests howled? how we’d smile so full inside the chaos – nothing survived, just a shattered world spinning around us. but now our love yields under competing pressures, our terrible hurricane, reduced to a petering breeze. - #vss365 #poetry

- i have squandered the last of my obols, but i know i must depart this place i once called home. you are sleeping still, and mist has consumed the harbor. no time for goodbyes – tears catch in my throat. and i must now swim the Acheron behind a dwindling boat. - #vss365 #poetry

- old things dwell among the trees – the forest glowers at me, daring me to enter her twilight lure. ribbons tied ‘round branches – bright and fair, much like the pink ones you wore in your hair. the treesong is haunting – taunting me to find you, and i am afraid. - #vss365 #poetry

- i glide through another twilight valley, lost in the torpor of liminality. remnants of voices trail in my wake, eager for me to exit this place - climb another mountain, they say, to see if there’s light on the other side. i go, knowing, there is none. - #poetry #vss365

- gray overcast – i feel gravity’s hug drawing me closer today, feet heavy-laden. it claims me, restrains me, i have ever only wanted to fly – touch a sky so young and rebellious, oh, my love, to be so free – part the clouds, then boil the seas. - #vss365 #poetry

- i have missed your certainty ever since you left, faith was never a question - you knew who you were in the eyes of god and acted accordingly. there was never a need for some new Pentecost to purify you. you let the rest of us learn the taste of our new tongues. - #poetry #vss365

- i remain still in the rowboat, run ashore on a pebbly strand, safe for now from the ineffable stars that pursue me, safe from a peace i never earned, renounce the majesty of our meadow abloom in wildflowers, a bee-buzzed glade to which i shall never return. - #vss365 #poetry

- indiscreet star(ing) at the end of the bar – lidded, liquid eyes music puls(ing) – a visceral heartbeat, new circadian whiskey shudders around its ice cube her finger motions come hither – i mouth, me? take my glass and saunter toward my reckon(ing). - #vss365 #poetry

- forgetting – recalling – i cannot sift the sands of truth through my hands. a tempest – a madness – sails slatting, pulling me across a sea spellbound by the tumult, love – death – the passion in Calypso’s eyes, followed by cries, i cannot discern from the wind. - #poetry #vss365

- pinned down by sea ice, my ship groans under the cold sea's ever-shifting indignations. you are somewhere out there, lost to me – across the expanse of barren blue and white, the ever-day awaits me to disembark, subsume into the blinding palm of sunlight. - #poetry #vss365

- i want to recall our halcyon days, nest with you – two kingfishers upon a settled bay. but life is never that simple – is it, my love? we must drown, drink a living death before stormy seas abate, and we return home shiny, and blue. - #poetry #vss365

- oh, to reclaim our childlike wonderment – being still among fireflies, listening to their faerie wings hum by. stargazing – first shooting stars, mother saying we’re safe from harm. bedtime stories, words, oh, such beautiful words! when did we cease to marvel? #vss365 #poetry

- my mother collected Precious Moments figurines. she arrayed them just so behind a glassdoored armoire, their dead black eyes, pupils oversized, after she died, i would explore their menagerie, stare at them for hours, my reflection overlaid, my pupils so small. - #vss365 #poetry

- there is no hunger in this glade of buzzing bees, all the lions are dead – their ribs cracked wide and filled with honey. we pass by, we eat, whispering riddles amidst its sweetness, our only need is each other – stuft with knowing proximity shall sustain us. - #poetry #vss365

- table or slab – it no longer matters white-washed walls covered in mud from the flood that swept you away i am still underneath the flickering halogen let the procedure commence – everyone looks angelic in white and i am eager for the change. - #vss365 #poetry

- first frost – colors’ vivid ache, leaves gust about in the dawn chill fleeing from the rake, barren trees – arms stretch to skyward gray, ever upward to touch a somnolent sun, the bluejay stiff in her grassy grave, an autumnal offering to hold winter at bay. - #poetry #vss365

- Sunday football tailgate another Monday hangover mouth dry eyes red head hurts sweaty bed need water then i can die – why do i do this? [draw the blinds!] victim to another sanguine sunrise, rife with the hellish cries of all those fucking birds. - #vss365 #poetry

- paddling down river, each oar-strike a reminder of my efforts, confused by mists that disguise your landing. my canoe leaks, patched by moss & rapacity, your scent tainted by petrichor – this esoteric pursuit of love, each seep exposing places left unmended. - #vss365 #poetry

- words escape me maundering deep in the woods, seeking counsel from careworn autumn trees, the eloquence of wind coursing through leaves, a soft susurration – a tongue i ache to decipher, teaching me how to weather a season absent you. - #vss365 #poetry

- another azure morning - blue has not been pretty since. 25 years, Mike. i can’t believe it’s been 25 years, Mike. the naïveté of safety, hatred is real. tears still fall like towers under azure skies, never safe again. be at peace, Mike. you were real. - #vss365 #poetry

- the simplest things fluster me – clarity, supplanted by complexity the choices of a heart – to bleed or not to bleed. across that chasm of desire or need, this mélange of feelings is a bridge suspended & frayed, trembling in gale-force winds. - #poetry #vss365

- no longer clipped, my wings have regrown. but common sense has died with your roses, suffocated in thorny vines seeking to bleed me, extract one final oblation. and still i lack the intuition to stay grounded, flying across a roiled sea to find you. - #poetry #vss365

- i beheld you dancing along the shores of Lough Gur – your golden hair unraveling starlight, your robes flowing like a windblown tide, my eyes lost inside the moonglade upon which waves dappled and danced, aching to know your touch – a shadow in your wake. - #vss365 #poetry

- buried alive inside my own mind scraping arcane runes whose meanings die in its meaty wall an oubliette a palimpsest an ode writ in tears scoured clean each night Keats laughing from the dark places where the nightingales have quieted forever. - #vss365 #poetry

- Sunday brunch tastes less arresting – you loved chilaquiles, yolk clinging to your smile. unabashed laughter filling our corner booth, who knew brunch could be so adroit at nourishing a heart? now that same heart beats, famished for another Sunday. - #vss365 #poetry

- the eastern gates of Eden have fallen, and we, the inquisitive, must find a new home. we, who dared defy our father’s will – i will reconnoiter the deer trail ahead follow the call of the mockingbirds whose words deliver us from the fruitless valley below. - #vss365 #poetry

- oh, the litany of mistakes i wish i could undo – i’d begin by understanding distance, love's greatest papercut, but i've lost you forever, i know that now – you’re a gray silhouette on the edge of a darkening forest, waiting to be summoned by its envious mists. - #vss365 #poetry

- pour me another – one for my friend. foggy and blurry, my memory hurts less, words drown, slurred like cursive penned by a lover long lost, its beauties tainted in shipwrecks and blood, so, for now, i have found my elixir, and Donn sits beside me smiling. - #vss365 #poetry

- she has been forgotten by the gods, or maybe she has forgotten them. no matter – there is no solace for her pain, no warm embrace to soothe night’s horrors, no gentle touch to console a mother’s tears just another Niobe turned to stone, weeping for all time. - #poetry #vss365

- self-worth – an azure cenote hidden beneath our skin, calm and clear, waiting to be discovered. for those who can’t swim, we require others to teach our souls buoyancy, an empathetic breeze to beckon us long after we have forgotten what it means to be needed. - #poetry #vss365

- concentric circles – votive candles – the sea rumbles along the strand. i am the temple un-maker, words my blasphemy, a final sonnet – an oblation for Ophelia. ivy grows along the trellis, her last warning – wax poetic once more or stay silent forever. - #vss365 #poetry

- love can be contagious for the unprotected. a disease that has no vaccination, you come prepared – the mask which steams up your glasses, the gloves you wear when you hold my hand – hoping to stave off infection. - #vss365 #poetry