Slowly

I try to see you as you are, not as I imagine you to be

Having idealized too many too often before

Your reality needs no photo shopping from my imagination

Because the beauty in my eye as I behold you is real enough

I resist the urge to fantasize about what might be

To focus on what is, today

And if there are possibilities for the future

I won’t dwell on them

Like with those clouds rolling in from the horizon

There’s nothing I can do to squeeze rain

From those airborne reservoirs

So I wait patiently for floods or drought

Ready for experience to teach me a lesson

When I think of you, I quell the fires of enthusiasm

Dampening dancing flames to smoldering embers

Waiting for you to add some fuel

Instead of overheating at a bonfire that burns too bright too fast

Serving as a warning beacon for careful navigators to avoid

Which is somewhat disingenuous I realize

Since I stand on rocks enough to sink a fleet

But in the bright light of a clear day they’re obvious

So if you can find your way past obstacles

And if I reduce my expectations to warm affection

Perhaps we can find ourselves a place to be a plural pronoun

Together

 

 

David Trudel   ©  2013

 

 

A Toast to Regret

This is for the thought that slipped away

And for the words that crumbled at my touch

This is for the feeling that couldn’t be expressed

Elusive into bitterness

This is for the love that didn’t stay

The love that didn’t bother to unpack

But left without a backwards glance

This is for the pain that never fades

The chronic longing of the unrequited many

This is for the false starts and might have beens

The unrealized potential of the never was

But should have been

This is for the anger that flared up

Burning bridges across deepening divides

This is for the smoldering resentment that hangs around unwanted

Homeless but camped out at my front door

This is for the time I should have called but didn’t

This is for the weakness I nurture and carry with me

This is for the look that ended with a turn away instead of towards

This is for the rapids never run

Mountains never climbed or just because

All the things I didn’t do but should have

And those I did but shouldn’t have

But mostly I regret not loving you

 

 

David Trudel  © 2013

 

 

Unprompted

I don’t write poetry from prompts

Except the ones the universe sends me

Special delivery

Unexpected words that tumble into my mind organically

From my sub-conscious

Or random events that create inspiration through synchronicity

I resist the safety of corralled intention

Rebelling against the imposition of someone else’s truth

Even as a push in a general direction

Poetry workshops bother me with their forced creations

Those poems I treat as bastards

Who I’ll never love completely, if at all

I am sovereign in and of myself

Arbitrary and demanding as any jealous lord

Just as security conscious with my borders as any other

State

Of being or mind

So I wait for divine sparks

Or dogs that bark

To lift me into the right moment

To write my untranslated words

In my own time

 

 

David Trudel   ©  2013

 

 

Sundown

A rim of banked clouds fringe the horizon

Where the sun lowers itself into the west

I look out across lichened rocks and a curtain of trees

A river of farms rolls through the valley

Before hills that belly up in the distance

Becoming not quite mountains brooding darkly, distantly

There are no people here

No shouts or interruptions

Just myself and my own turbulence

Which settles into anxious thoughts

That I try to rationalize and quell as best I can

I breathe in deeply and exhale

Over and over

Until tranquility becomes my steady state

Interrupted only by birdcalls

And the rustle of the wind in the leaves

 

 

David Trudel   ©  2013

 

 

Poet

He’s really more of a choreographer

More Alvin Ailey than Nureyev in the way he wordplays

Creating ballets of verse that dance and fascinate

Sweet gibberish made magical by its intricate arrangement

He layers words upon words

Throws them across the room

To himself

Using every corner to conjure up more tricks

Riffing off sounds into a labyrinth of meaning and not meaning

Which charms this roomful of conspirators

Because he goes over the edge that they so very rarely touch

Lives a spirit life that isn’t anchored in security

Insecurity isn’t what drives him

In circuitry is where he creates

Security isn’t what he represents

The vicarious thrill of brilliant insanity compels attention

For how often do we witness invention

Or listen to the wellspring of creation

We sit at the same table and share observations

Insightful or oblique as they might be

As safe and solid singers of truth harmonize within the lines

Weighed down by gravity

We, the unruly, understand release

And how to be unhinged enough to transcend normalcy

 

 

David Trudel  ©  2013

 

 

Shavings

Dream shavings lie scattered on my pillow

Whittled to slivers of sparkle and shade

Curled up and disappearing into daylight

Brushed together into a handful of nonsense

Picasso’d deconstructions of unreality

Torn into scraps and gathered up

To be collaged into fragment fantasies

Other underworldly passages into dark divinity

Soul windows and secret passageways

That defy logic and reason naturally

With the assuredness of dreams

 

 

 

David Trudel    ©  2013

 

 

Poetry

One day I woke up

I was in the middle of it

Poetry

A day full of considered beauty

Moments of revelation strung together with wistful threads

Tides of emotion that were just right for body surfing rolled over me

So I rode the breakers into the shore

Transcending the limitations of my heart’s tideline

I looked deep into eyes of others

Saw souls swimming in tears

Watched smiles ripple across rooms

Like the wind ruffling the surface of a calm lake

I was in the middle of it

Everywhere I went was a line worth noting

Each glance brought a fresh word

As easily as plucking apples

In the golden light of the garden of the Hesperides

I stood on mountaintops and leapfrogged over horizons

Breathed honeyed breath of innocents

Felt the embrace of a thousand Juliets

Mourned each passing moment like a tragic death

I was in the middle of it

Poetry

I was awake

 

 

David Trudel   ©  2013

 

 

For The Time Being

Just because you’ve been elusive

Hard to get

Doesn’t stop me from imagining you into my head

And after all, according to theoretical physicists

Linear time is an illusion at the end of the beginning

Or the beginning of the end

So if I need a moment’s inspiration

I’ll go skinny dipping in your eyes

Even if I have to wear a blindfold

For the time being

Whoever that is

Not a Tardis riding lord or clockwork automaton

But the embodiment of time

Segment slicer obsessively compulsed with counting

If I could find the time being

I’d ask to jump ahead to the thunderbolt moment

That instant when our eyes lock

And the bolt slides home

In recognition

 

 

David Trudel   ©  2013

 

 

Naked

My naked thoughts wear these words loosely

These words aren’t haute couture

They’re jeans and a tee shirt

Covering my imperfections and strengths

My thoughts aren’t tourists

But they travel

Boxed by language

I send them away

Stripping down to nothing

Immodest, shameless and proud

Until I remember Eden and try to cover up

Stitching dissimulations into rags

Weaving barriers against your clarity of sight

I clothe my truth to ease my anxious fears

Obscuring the purity of perfection

With imprecision and misdirection

As language turns clean thoughts to soiled words

 

 

David Trudel    ©  2013

 

 

Honestly

My vulnerability is that I’m not strong enough

To expose my weaknesses

I don’t do full frontal poetry

Just let the occasional moon poke through

I don’t write about late night drinking and passing out in the recliner

Or midnight toking when I don’t need another joint

But want an excuse to look at the stars

I don’t write about my precarious finances

Or the precipice I’m skirting

And I certainly don’t write poetry about

The web of relationships that ebb and flow

In my life

My sex life is so boring

That I’d be hard pressed to extract a haiku from that prompt

 

Five fingers stroking

Seven minutes pleasuring

Five small lonely deaths

 

I’m not strong enough to remove all my masks

Or tear down all the walls I’ve built to keep you out

My honesty is opaque and measured

I let the world uncover truths or insights that I pass along

Rendered words transforming fact to transfixion

But in all honesty

I’m not

I’m not strong enough to celebrate my flaws

So I question my own authenticity

Wondering about truth

Or if truth is ever fully honest

Wondering about authenticity and phoniness

Would Holden Caulfield, aged and wrinkled

Sneer at me over his walker and call me out

Hey phony, why don’t you write something real for once

He’d say

And I wouldn’t be insulted

Because I’d recognize the truth

In all honesty

 

David Trudel   ©  2013