The Pub

Vibrant sea of holiday merry makers

Swirls incessantly around me, cacophonous

Jubilant in their social interactions

Bundled up against the persistent cold outside

Wind howling with fervor and creating

A bitter, freezing canyon of the alleyway

Jewel bright lights twinkle gaily

Diametrically opposed to the mood

Striking up within me and without

Remnants

Remnants of time permeate the atmosphere

Vestiges of small moments in this life

Where contentment seemed the merest

Of possibilities, both real and imagined

Swiftly fading to nothing and soon will

Be gone and lost, leaving only nothing

Vast and empty but with hope for more

Be Kind

 The holidays are difficult for so many and for so many different reasons. There is so much pressure in the media and from family to be happy. So much pressure to enjoy the season and be festive. I feel for any and all of us struggling through this time. I knew this one would be difficult. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I too would struggle even more than I usually do. I so desperately want to enjoy Christmas time and all the other parts of this time of year. In the end...I just can't. 

 My personal reasons aren't important. The reasons of others, aren't important. If you're reading this, please, remember to just be kind to people. We never know what they're going through. So much of this world has lost the ability to be empathetic and kind. It has become a society of "me first" and it shows on a daily basis. Ultimately, I'll put on a happy face each day until mid-January. I'll go through the motions to show everyone that the holidays are great. I'll watch my favorite Christmas movies, mostly the ones that aren't so Christmassy (is that a word?) and walk alone around Christmas markets. I'll shop for friends and family, I'm an amazing gifter, and hit up the family events. Mostly though, I'll just try to do my best to be patient and kind and good a human.

Imprisoned

I feel imprisoned by words

Held captive by language

Enthralled by every concept

Of the written and the spoken

Jim Carroll's "lavish tyranny of words"

Written large onto my psyche

Every fucking song lyric

Poems by the handful, reduce me

To the very core of emotion

As surely as if I'm chained up

A prisoner of construct

Feedback, comments, questions

 If anyone would like to leave any feedback, comments, or have any questions, feel free to email me at averagelyerudite@proton.me and drop a note. You can do so anonymously if possible or not but I'll never share it on the blog unless requested to do so. 

Thanks to any and all who read this, my forum for expression and sorting out my life.

Elusive

Home is that most elusive of concepts

Dissipating into the air like a cup of coffee

Steam wafting into nothing in the cool fall air

Redolent with the scent of comfort and hope

A Measure of Peace

There is no loneliness in the forest
Birds flitting about, squirrels playing

Noises from every direction, insects
And deer and all the creatures playing
Walking amongst the trees is home
There is no loneliness on the water
Whether a cool mountain stream or
A river moving urgently along its way
Serenity and comfort flow with the water
Bringing a measure of peace to the day
There is no loneliness in nature

Just Great

They ask, how are you doing?

But they don't expect an answer

They do not want you to tell the real

Feelings and thoughts that emanate

From your lonely yet busy brain

So you flash a smile, the one

That is masked but once seen

Says that all is well and eliminates

Further questions as you confidently

Answer....Just great!

Transience

Such a transience now to human relationships. Even the people that should be in your life with some permanence, come and go with every whim. I think it is so easy to blame it on the internet/social media and the like but I'm not sure. I think those factors contribute to the situation. They create the ease of moving on, of giving an excuse. I feel more we've just lost the ability to be loyal to stick with people through hard times and it's just become the way to move on or only deal with people when a situation calls for it. Everything is too fast and to self absorbed when selflessness and compassion is called for, now more than ever. 

Evaporated

I just want to go home

But it is long gone now

Evaporated in the heat

Of several summers past

Merely a thing of memory

Living in sights and sounds

Occupying smells and feels

No longer a corporeal entity 

Wisps of what once was

Dancing like a mountain fog

Every Song

Every song reminds me of your eyes

The way they're so indelibly marked 

Upon my existence, they way they shine

With this ethereal light that I've never

Ever seen look at me prior to meeting you

It's like that perfect harmony in a tune

So subtly impactful that you can't get enough

And feel altered in that peculiar musical way

The Home Cafe

The rain falls, ploddingly

Soaking all it touches

Without hurry or speed

I learned these slow

Coffee filled mornings

From you, cream and maple

Mingling with the beans

As we sit languorously

Without hurry or speed

A moment to dial back

The urgency of the coming

Day but not the urgency

Of time spent and these

Slow coffee mornings

Austerity

There's an austerity to this sky

A warm but grey bleakness 

That belies the cool breeze 

It mocks me with it's simplicity 

Most Eloquent

I was at my most eloquent with you 

The words flowed with the ease of a

Wild snow melt gorged stream running

Down the mountain to the inevitable

Collision with a vaster body of water 

Now, language feels cumbersome 

As if I'm trying to wield a sword that 

Is much too heavy for my arms

Everything feels stuck in molasses 

Eloquence will return but for now... 

Haunted

Haunted as surely as any fallow field

Where deaths occurred, millennia ago

By memories and things that once were

Possibilities discovered and taken away

Feelings wrapped around me like a

Spectral mist rising from the cold ground

Only to evaporate into bleak nothing yet

Lingering within, unable to fully dissipate

Haunted by music, by scenes, by small items

Strewn about my life and apartment and mind

Detritus of what is no longer and likely never to be

Herbal Vignette

Rubbing the herbs between my fingers still

As I watched you do a million times over

Smelling their very terroir, their essence

Purple basil, Greek oregano, red-veined sorel

Each one unique and flooding me with

Vibrant and vivid olfactory memory

Vignettes of our moments together 

The Breton Language

In the Breton language there exists a simple word, 

Grasz

It's meaning is anything but simple

Beautiful and encompassing a part of nature 

That has always been my favorite

The confluence of gray, green, and blue

For me, the color of a winter mountain stream

For the Bretons, a sea faring people

A group in tune with their environment 

It's the sea at that precise moment of color

Grasz

Simple but heart wrenching 

The River Flows

The river doesn't care

It flows on to its destination

It rises

It falls

It is relentless in it's force

Knowing only the water

There is no thought to me 

To what I feel 

To what I am going through

There is only the water flowing

Onward

Losing

I knew I would be incomplete

Could foretell the hole that

Would rend from losing 

A consequential piece of goodness

That had woven itself into 

The very fabric of my life 

What I could not prognosticate

Was the absolute vastness 

The all encompassing desolation 

Of losing

Replies

It's the things we don't say that cause the most harm

Unspoken goes unanswered until it's noticed and then

Catastrophic replies can come bounding in waves

And with it the last of the light gone, darkness abounding 

And one is left standing, alone and without the best of what once

Was all that was needed and all that truly knew the real you 

Trying

I don't know how to move on. No matter how hard I try. Always, in the back of mind, she sits. Looking at me with those warm eyes. Smiling that smile that briefly, was luminesce only for me. I've never been so accepted or seen. Some memories are so fresh that they don't feel at all like time has passed but ultimately they are but memories and none new to be made. I just wish I could figure this out and find a way... 

The Cycle

We all know it well, that cycle

Birth and death and re-birth

Spring is so verdantly green

Then comes summers heat

Oppressive and dry and dusty 

Drawing into the first strains 

Of the dying of fall, colors

Coming on so vibrantly

But quickly moving into

The death rattle that is winter 

Cold, bleak, trees bare

Until finally life returns 

The thaw revealing re-birth