Submitted by Neil McKay on August 9, 2013
Oh, you're still here?
I wandered away for a bit.
Not realizing you would remain
Seated and patiently waiting for the next poem.
The truth is, I never have believed
My poetry was all that good.
Compared to yours, compared to anyone's
Especially compared to the dead poets
Of my former acquaintance.
The truth is, my poetry
is simple and maybe pedestrian
is theraputic and less universal
than I had once hoped.
The truth is, my poetry
Speaks to me and I can't expect
any more from it than that.
How could it be your truth
Unless you deliberately misinterpret it?
But if you do choose to wring out
Some arcane truth of your own design,
I can't stop you, unless I stop writing.
So keep on sitting there and try
To wrap your head and heart around this next one.
Submitted by Neil McKay on June 30, 2013
Tea and honey in the morning,
The cat impatiently follows me
From stove to cupboard and back
In need of companionship
And kitty treats.
It is six a.m. and
It is Sunday morning
And it is summer
And it is quiet.
In an hour, you will rise
I will make real coffee for you
Your whirlwind mind will start to spin
And the day will begin in earnest.
Submitted by Neil McKay on June 23, 2013
More than a month since I've written a poem
While Old Man Clayton just keeps on rolling them out.
You and me, we sweat and strain,
While metaphors flow from the mouth of Old Man Clayton
Into the great sea of...
Of...
Something.
I grow weary and tired of trying
I resort to stealing lines from show tunes
But Old Man Clayton, he just keeps rolling,
He keeps on rolling out poems.
Submitted by Neil McKay on May 19, 2013
I want to dance but I'm too lazy,
I am no Patrick Swayze.
In this world gone crazy.
Submitted by Neil McKay on May 14, 2013
The second spoonful of peanut butter,
You methodically chew, the broken nuts
Are rocks and your molars are sledge hammers
Swinging down like they belonged to prisoners in leg irons
In that Paul Newman movie where he stuffed himself on
Hard boiled eggs just to win a bet.
You imagine your teeth now, singing freedom songs,
Dreaming of the day they will be loosened from their roots
Take wing and fly away.
You are a little crazy in the way you allow your imagination
to go off like that.
You go back to concentrating on the chewing
Which, however methodical it is, is not compulsive
Your compulsion is to swallow the whole spoonful
And then swallow another one,
Like you did the first one.
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