February 2018
I'm almost 70 and still working because I lived a reckless life beginning in the Sixties. I've lived all over the USA and done everything from stand-up and radio to factory work. I have a lovely sixteen year old daughter who I try to help along the way with my second ex who lives close by. My poetry has appeared online and in print.
How I Strive
-for Dick Allen-
To see the unseen,
Hear the unheard,
Be empty mind.
My striving, though,
Dooms me to see
Only surfaces, hear
But noise and be
Just mere flesh.
One day, perhaps,
Striving shall cease
And moonlight
Become eyesight.
A Question of Loss
In February, a stout tree, bare
but enduring, stood at the edge
of a busy highway. In an hour,
a thousand cars had passed by
it, all the occupants various
distances from their own
onrushing ends, while that tree
would breathe on past all of them,
always waiting patiently
for the next warm June,
for the sweet company of new
leaves. Did it notice me
in that parking lot, watching
in wonder, marveling at what
I’d soon never witness again?
Still the Tao
He despised his body:
the failing flesh,
disintegrating organs,
withered muscles
and bones as brittle
as a baby's.
He wanted the damn
thing kidnapped,
carted away in the trunk
of a beat-up, '55 Chevy,
held prisoner in some
invisible gulag,
unreachable,
forever forgotten.
Then he'd be free, mind
and spirit left to roam, wild
with the 10,000 things.
(first appeared in Poydras Review)
Winter Nor’easter
January deep freeze.
Time stopped. Stark blue
sky against bare branches.
Mountains of snow.
Hoping the car will start.
Then wishing it wouldn’t.
©2018 Paul Lojeski
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