Not the Same
Never was
is not the same as
never will be.
But never was,
and never was to be,
are.
© Copyright 2017 William S. Friday
billfriday.com
fictionary… 8 megapixel artist… bloody awful poet.
Archive for the tag “bloody awful poetry”
Everybody’s Shit Stinks
Whether attitude or actual, metaphor or literal, in prose or rhyming couplets great or small…
With a certitude among those who, for good or ill, agree…
Observed in one’s behavior, mercurial, or philosophy, obscure, a truth which should be obvious to all…
That in this world of humankind, there is one fact, indisputable, thinks not just me…
Everybody’s shit stinks.
© Copyright 2016 William S. Friday
Listen…
POETRY: On the Edge
Okay, maybe this isn’t really a press release, but…
on Saturday, July 24th between 3:30 and 7:30 pm, for an early evening of books, poetry, stories about books and poetry, and special guests…
Ra Avis is the author of the book “Sack Nasty: Prison Poetry”.
Ra is a long-time WordPress blogger, 
currently spending her nights (and most days) at rarasaur.com. Sack Nasty is her first work to be published after 438 days of incarceration. The poems and short stories she shares in the book are just the beginning of her story.
William S. Friday is the author of the book “A Death on Skunk Street”
Bill has been published both online and in print, 
hosted an internet talk show, and is the keeper of his very own WordPress blog. After 10 years of writing online for two citizen journals, as well as two long-running blogs, all those years and all those words became the basis for his first book.
Meet Ra, and Bill, at MADE in Long Beach, along with other incredibly talented guest artists, J.W. Gardner and Matthew Blashill. All four of them will be reading excerpts from their most recently published works, and Ra and Bill will be signing copies of Sack Nasty and A Death on Skunk Street.
For additional info, click the MADE in Long Beach link at the top of the page. See everybody there.
Golden
A place to live,
quiet and warm.
A dog,
big and loyal.
And a woman,
golden,
right and true,
who will love me
as much
as she loves the dog.
© Copyright 2016 William S. Friday
Muth Labben
Today is for counting my wasted yesterdays
Each one neatly lined up
row on dusty row
Every year the same
Today is for remembering your unborn tomorrows
And the time I sit
because walking is too slow
There is no blame
Today is for pretending to make sense of the past
From a life ended
with nothing to show
When I speak your name
Today is for thinking that memories last
But all they do is fade
until they go
Like every unfinished song to be sung
About the death of a son
Copyright © 2012 Bill Friday
The Urgent Necessity of Words
I have grown to hate the urgent necessity of words…
poetic in their expression, as though they cannot be, any longer, spoken in something longer than short bursts of weak prose…
I have grown to hate the uselessness of words…
volumes of thought, stripped bare of all muscle and sinew, till all that’s left to show for it is the bleached bones of time…
I have grown to hate the feeble sounds of words…
their drone as repetitive as an infant’s vocabulary of need, never more expressive than I will, I want, I always I…
I have grown to hate the self-awareness of words…
knowledge without understanding, always one step behind, late for every good thing, yet right on time for eulogy…
I have grown to hate the hopefulness of words…
bright future in the shroud of history, always rising from within, like morning sun in the eyes of an all-night drunk…
I have grown to hate the efficacy of words…
healing souls that otherwise would die, mine being the first, as in physician heal thyself before you malpractice upon others…
I have grown to hate the eternality of words…
from the time before there was time, to the time when time is again no more, and how they have found me at my most lost…
I have grown to hate the urgent necessity of words…
complete in their ability, to hurt and to make whole, to damage and to comfort, and to seal their work with forever scars…
And my understanding of their purpose.
© Copyright 2016 William S. Friday
The Next Time
My childhood is the nightlight
of my waning years.
My dad died,
on the front porch of my childhood home,
at the age of 68.
His dog at his side.
Only God could tell you what he,
and the dog,
went through in that moment,
together,
like they spent most days of his retirement.
My mom still worked,
so she was not there when it all went down.
His final heart attack,
with Harry,
their next door neighbor,
finding him long after it was too late.
And Jo-Jo,
his little girl,
the Sheltie who kept him company.
Things we learn so late.
The hug.
The smile and nod.
The dismissal of anger
when anger’s escalation feels so much more natural.
And the acceptance of the flaws of history,
in the things that can never change.
Because the past dies before we do,
yet we hold onto it tighter that we do our own departed loves.
Three days before his passing on the porch,
I had my last dismissal,
in a dinner and a game
with the man whose whole existence would shape my own.
Weakened by years and a failing heart,
he was now not the man of my youth,
but merely the container.
A shell of clear glass,
incapable of concealing anything,
especially the truth.
He was almost dead that night,
but in him I saw only life.
We said goodnight,
not in any sort of dramatic understanding of what was to come,
but in the knowing way two people
of the same DNA hug,
then smile and nod,
expecting nothing more than to do it all again,
the next time.
Except the next time never came.
© 2016 William S. Friday
Once Burnts
Quitting is easier
You just stop
Of course the consequences
of concerns
laid bare
Hurts
and the scars that accompany
Twice shys from
more than once burnts
And the dreams
The visions of your heart
that come
if only to explain
what it means
© Copyright 2015 Bill Friday
