1.

Between the gray sky and gray
earth the darkling crowds
of those who
don’t and won’t look up
swell the concrete streets but
no cement can hold back time
no built thing can support the sky and
the earth holds me, but
I hold nothing:
holding nothing
back, again,
still.

 

2.

I can’t even
get lost just once, I
got lost then
right away
did it again. Later
that place I was headed for
changed into another, so
I never found it.

 

3.

Hip hooray for the Brooklyn Bridge!
A comic book for the Bowery Kids!
Nobody’s lost, nobody jumps,
We all stand up & take our lumps.
From here to Brooklyn, never back!
And into the great wide world at last!

 

4.

Never can remember
the endings of movies
quite right and then
I’m afraid to watch them
a second time
since what if the whole world
could come undone
just like
that?

 

5.

I used to love rocks and
talk about them. Now I don’t
remember why
I thought I knew so much, why
I thought the world was all
about the rocks.
Kids, huh?

 

6.

If the bay froze – right now, right away –
I bet those sharp gray
waves would fetch a pretty penny
you could cut up the bay, not have any
thing left but sunken wrecks and fish
skeletons, and everyone would wish
they’d bought a piece while they could
yeah, you best believe it would be a good
deal while it lasted, buddy

 

7.

I have this friend
let’s call her Chris I
haven’t seen her in
a while and I
forget if I owe her
a call or if
she owes me so
anyhow it’s pretty
late now
maybe in a day or two
I’ll remember
again

 

8.

She got her world from
Headlines, so was always in
Despair, or shopping.

 

9.

That creek meandering through
the grass doesn’t want
a thing and moves
always. That bird poised like
death on the bank
wants what it can
get; it doesn’t move
but once.

 

10.

This morning she was up
before me, who used to be
my slug-a-bed, my slow waker.
This morning she has
opinions, who used to
wait and see what things
would be like.
This morning as
I reached for my
coffee cup I realized
wait
this is no dream
this thing is real.

 

 

I take no responsibility for the pen that wrote these poems: I have no idea where it came from, what it was about, or, now, where it is, for I seem to have misplaced it and thereby, perhaps, released it into the wild. Maybe it will surface again; if you come across it, let me know

Noticing readers may think they see a certain similarity here to the series 10 poems in 20 minutes over at the Some Bad Plankton blog. I have no opinion about any alleged similarity, however, and the pen, as I say, is unavailable for comment. Also, these poems weren’t all written in twenty minutes. I don’t know how anyone does that. Finally, unlike the Some Bad Plankton series, which as of today (update: or is it tomorrow?) is ending a hundred-day run, this series ends here, unless another such ambitious pen should cross my path. Even then, it would be a different series, wouldn’t it, since all the poems would be coming from a different source.

Images: #1: Alone *C* by Flickr user Aaron Offord, license: Creative Commons  Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0);
#2: Muddy Corn Maze by Flickr user Ada Be, license: Creative Commons  Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0);
#3: Painters on the Brooklyn Bridge Suspender Cables-October 7, 1914, no known copyright restrictions;
#4: Damaged 8mm Film Frame by Flickr user Jim Lind, license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0);
#5: In the Mountains by Flickr user Tiffany Terry, license: Creative Commons Attribution-2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0);
#6: edited version of choppy by Flickr user Sean Benham, license: Creative Commons Attribution-2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0);
#7: Man on the Ice Beyond Tables by Flickr user Maxwell GS, license: Creative Commons Attribution-2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0);
#8: Today’s News … Athens Views, by Flickr user Niels Linneberg, published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) license.;
#9: ready… steady… by Flickr user Pierre Boidin, license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0);
#10: collage of Bananaquit bird hanging out on a coffee pot by Flickr user troy mckaskle, license: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0), and Texture Red No. 36 by Flickr user Elné, license: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0).