I Dreamed
I took a nap.
I dreamed.
Something good happened.
I woke up.
I wasn’t there.
© Copyright 2017 William S. Friday
billfriday.com
fictionary… 8 megapixel artist… bloody awful poet.
Archive for the category “Bloody Awful Poetry”
Green Grass
Silence,
the green grass upon which
every dream of summer rests,
to wither,
lost for seasons,
burnt,
then cold,
unremembered,
until awakening in the
nightmares of another spring.
© Copyright 2017 William S. Friday
Ghost Town
Today I moved into a ghost town, where the past and the future live in perpetual now. Leaving behind all my worldly possessions, except my bed, where all my senses are aware, in dreams.
In this ghost town, there is everything you need. There is silence and solace, ignorance and inquiry. And time, because in a ghost town, time is as plentiful as weeds in eternal sunshine.
There is no fear in my ghost town. The neighbors, because they are good ghosts, welcome you. But slowly, as they know that you, like themselves, came here with the echoes of the noises of your old life in your head, and that is scary enough for now.
So today, I live in a ghost town, where life and death aren’t the law, only acceptance. This is the place I always belonged, where hope and love keep the peace, and the ghosts of the past shake hands every day, because they have made peace with each other.
And they wait to shake hands with you. Wait, until you are one of them.
© Copyright 2017 William S. Friday
Coffee and Mid-Afternoon Panic
I think I’ve seen the world as it will be, but that might have been a mistake.
The voices, real and imagined, pretty much all said do it.
But I can count on the fingers of one amputated hand how many times the voices, real and imagined, have been right.
I lived a lifetime of failure within structure, and now that’s gone, replaced by an endless freedom to fail.
Quiet times are the worst, when the voices, all of them imagined but one, my own, come.
Louder times, spent in the company of people or amusements, I think of as distractions.
And both come with a feeling, a gnawing, like the scraping of a stone tool against my bones.
And in the wake of all this, come the times when I tell myself I will create worlds, unimagined.
When I limit my distractions to coffee and mid-afternoon panic, and I shut off the world, all of it, the voices included.
And I tell myself, only I, that everything will be as I’ve seen it.
© Copyright 2017 William S. Friday
Wishes to Ashes
History becomes remembrance when you leave the past behind.
Even the bad that could never be turned into good, becomes its best version of sepia and gold nostalgia, while that which was truly good and green, and can never be recaptured, becomes a dagger in your faint-beating, grey-fringed heart.
Playful turns to wistful.
Wishes to ashes.
Until, long forgotten by next-of, next-of kin, in the collective mind of the cosmos, it is held as it was on the day of its formation, new in all minds, as it once was in one.
Fresh as infancy, and with the hope of forever, eternal.
© Copyright 2017 William S. Friday
Good Intentions
Life is a fucked up bitch,
playing give-and-take
with your good intentions.
The problem with this is,
you were never one to take
Life at face value.
The problem with this is,
you loved Life.
You spent each day
dying for more from this Life,
and the moment you set in your secret heart
the plans for how you and Life
would spend your remaining years together,
you learned that
all your good intentions meant nothing.
In Life’s eyes,
your dreams weren’t real.
In Life’s eyes,
your dreams were yours alone.
You aren’t special,
and you never were.
Life saw you as a dalliance.
And as you let this Life go,
and look the next,
all there is left to do is
curse the days of your youth,
and with one last dream,
and good intentions,
dream you had been raised
not to care.
© Copyright 2017 William S. Friday
On This Day
My dad gets a flag
on this day,
even if I’m not there
to plant it.
© Copyright 2017 William S. Friday
Baby Face Chinaski
I don’t have time for your shit,
you post-pubescent misanthrope.
Once upon a time,
when your ironic alter-ego roamed the streets,
and haunted the bars of dirty L.A.
like a piss-stained ghost,
you were yet a regret in your
bitch of a mother’s misbegotten womb.
Although I don’t think I blame her
for how you turned out,
given how you beg for the teat
in every Facebook post of yours
I have ever read.
Maybe I’ll listen to you
when you can grow a mustache
thicker than a row of pubes.
Until then,
I will simply shake my head,
and comment less and less,
because the only two things you are listening to
in these last days of your misspent youth
are your own mewling laments of growing up too fast,
and the hollow sympathies of girls your own age,
who would sooner court the clap
than give you what you think will make it all better
for just one night,
before the sun rises in your sunken child-eyes,
and you post online once more.
© Copyright 2017 William S. Friday
To Walk Down a Dead-End Street
As an introvert with comically low
self-esteem,
I have made some truly awful
choices in my life.
But writing isn’t one of them.
It’s true that a life of
settling for less along the path of least resistance
has given me
a point of view most successful creative folk never see,
and I can write from that view
as easily as breathe.
But there is still
something missing,
and I don’t mean something missing from my
smalltime life.
I mean something missing from my
genetic code
that enables others to whisper a resolute “fuck it”,
and move onto the
places where few go,
and fewer survive.
I have always been,
for less than better,
and often far worse than that,
one who only moves forward with
a wall at his back,
and this time is no different.
But it is
forward I must go,
because the only right direction to walk
down a dead-end street
is out.
© Copyright 2017 William S. Friday
Teach Me
Teach me to laugh,
and you’ll teach me to cry.
Teach me to think,
and you’ll teach me to die.
Hold it against me,
and you’ll teach me to lie.
Forgive me for all,
and I’ll only ask why.
© Copyright 2017 William S. Friday
