Cedar Dust and Winter Breath

 
I found the paper folded brown edges
In a box that i thought held old pictures 
Evidence that i was too lazy to die young
Pinched into the spaces 
Where the memories get clouded by the sadness
And abuse 

I found the paper and i hadn’t thought about you
In ten years except for when I’m drinking
And the edges seemed as fragile as your hands
Covered the last time i held them
For the best interest 
of all persons involved

I found the paper smelled like cigarettes
Patchouli cedar dust and winter breath

The words themselves didn’t hurt my heart
But the fact that i forgot 
Their composition


 -Stephen M Crow
10/6 in this style

Somebody Else’s News

 
The newspaper said this is the saddest 
Sunday of all time
Eyes focused you read with the squiggle pinched
Between your eyes. The newspaper
Was a dagger to the digital age
Providing a few precious moments in bed
Not illuminated by the screens 
Of our phones. Or the barrage 
Of noises humming from the television
...So silently we stay
...And play a game
Where the newspaper knows we’re over
And we can face it from a distance
Like somebody else’s news.


Stephen M Crow
10/6 in this style

 

You Have Only Killed a Man

By the time the bullets pierce

My thorax

And I drown on my own blood

You have only killed a man

When the crowd draws close

Their mouths empty for words

Crying at the scene

You have only killed a man

When my death is pronounced

In somber tone

And the cleanup has begun

You have only killed a man

When the sound of my voice

Sits unrecognizable

Long since departed the ears of my loved ones

You have only killed a man

When my words are found

Scribbled on napkins and papers stuffed in notebooks

And new eyes see your shame

You have only killed a man

When you’re forgotten

Turned to dust

An empty page in the books of history

You have only killed a man

When the lovers smile

And share my words

That this world is beautiful and mean

Wondering about my life

The drink, the inamorata

Revolutions lead and followed

The accounts left for generations

To follow in my unlikely path

My name on their future tongues

Jubilant in my grave

You have only killed a man

Stephen M Crow 2019

Puppet

Sometimes when I’m sitting with my wife and\or the kids, I’ll notice that hours can go by while we all stare at our individual phones and only communicate to show each other something we found on Facebook or Snapchat. I miss sitting and talking with my parents and friends. It scares me how much we have isolated ourselves, even from our loved ones. It’s even scarier how easily it happened, and how innocuous it all seemed.

Love in the Age of Enlightenment

The Murderer Inside

I’m drowning in your love
My resistance has grown thin
I’m sinking down below
Below this ocean made of sin

I’m searching for some wings
To catch a breeze lift off and fly
To look down at the world from the perspective
Of a teardrop in your eye

The cynic in me knows
That nothing good can come from this
The numbers don’t add up
And there’s a knife behind the bliss

The poet in me says
That tragedy can write a song
But the murderer inside knows that blood
is the only way to right this wrong.

-Stephen M Crow

Without You, My Dear

I'm beginning to think
that I'm unlovable.
I carry all of the traits
of wanting to be loved.

I love.

Deeply.

I invite these hearts...
openly
blindly

based upon things like
music
film

my blind ideals.

I'll never profess 
to be a perfect man.
I'm as shitty as the bum
eyeing your final drink.
But I care

in the way the lion
cares for the antelope.

Without you, 
my dear, 

I'm nothing.


-Stephen M Crow

The Very Breeze

The very breeze
that makes the grass
appear as waves
that kiss the shore,

and gently stirs
through branch and limb
to make the leaves
dance without care,

can move a man
to change his heart
to love, where there
was hate before.

In whispers blown
through nations ears,
we are but one
one world we share.

The Bouquet

Forgiveness