Mythos & Marginalia

2015 – 2025: a decade of days

  • ask the impossible

    Don’t talk to me at dawn. Caught up in whispers
    of residual dreams beyond my control,
    I’m not always ready for a new day, and
    frequently have difficulty comprehending
    where the night falls.

    Morning is not the time for words
    if the night has come before. Every breath 
    a struggle. I wake. No heartbeat. No. No talk. 
    Blinded by sight and sound I won’t hear 
    the meaning, or the message.

    Give voice to my days instead, where I won’t 
    see your reflection, but will feel the wonder above 
    the cacophony and confusion 
    that terrorizes an otherwise 
    monotonous day.

    Evening’s long shadow laps up scraps 
    of humanity. I pay less and less attention as 
    the planets close in. Considering your many renditions, 
    I await your arrival. Any night. What shade
    will you be this night?

    Then is the time, when distance fades, where we tell 
    each other stories. Little else matters, and we ask 
    the impossible. Inevitably darkness 
    consumes me, until you become 
    less significant.

    Through nights, when I’m restless, when dawn 
    is simply a concept, don’t waste your words on me. 
    I will not hear them, promises or otherwise,
    or find the light, or time, to 
    see your lips move.

    Dawn reveals serious wounds, time misspent 
    and misplaced words. Where morning hints 
    of the night before and I may not hear your call, 
    don’t talk to me at dawn, 
    or talk to me at all.

    © 2015 j.g. lewis

    April is Poetry Month

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  • obsolescence

    Ravaged by rain
    tormented and
    tortured with nature’s harsh breath
                   Skin torn away and hanging
                              a mangled skeleton
    left for dead
    in the gutter                    an umbrella
                         alongside broken bottles
    matchsticks and cigarette butts
    a spent condom
              salt and dreams washed away
    with the rain
    Items which once served a purpose
    now used or used up
    no longer of use
                      Servitude
                                    sins and secrets
                susceptible to societal ways
    Disposable
       Obsolescence
         Everything once had a purpose
    or a reason
                       or an excuse
    Now
        all but forgotten
                                   until it rains

    © 2016 j.g. lewis

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  • more or less

    “If you want to win the teddy bear, you have to break the rules.’

    Advice from a panhandler, a regular, 
    outside one of two coffee shops. People come and go, 
    tedious ebb and flow of those getting by; life in this city.

    Daily she is here or there, barely warm coat, 
    hands clasped in prayer, paper cup and her frowzy blanket.

    Where she sleeps is often a wonder; 
    women’s shelter a block over, or congregated
    rooming house. Downtown. There are many not far away.

    ‘Any spare change, anything helps.’

    Passersby, some smile, others won’t. Many don’t 
    look down. Not everybody stops, not everybody walks on by. 
    A quarter or two, a coffee or crumpet. Here and there.

    More or less.

    ‘God bless.’

    Slight smile from an everyday face that has braved cold 
    winter winds, scorn and rejection. Her life harder than 
    the dirty concrete where she sits. Every day.

    Empty stomach. Little promise. Few possibilities.

    Some other day.
    Some other time, the world was different.

    So was I.
    So was she.

    Society does what it does.

    We rarely know 
    who breaks the rules and do not question those who make them.

    © 2021 j.g. lewis

    April is Poetry Month

    Leave a comment: more or less

  • like jazz

    Rhythm and pattern easily obscured, it’s what you feel, 
                                       not what is heard. Polyphonic syncopation,                     bass line
          holds the inspiration                 well before anticipation, a rush of melody pushes
                to the fore                              you hear it again, but never have before.
                            Rim shot crack
                cymbals crash, 
                        the beat is burning, and falls
                        like ash.                                      It marches and it swings,
                                                                             like laughter, it is tears. 
                              Emotionally charged, by no means irreverent, it suddenly switches gears.
                 History more than the future, a time though, never passed.
                 As definite as prayer, 
                 cool as a sweaty glass.                             Full moon rising
                                                                                      heroin highs
                                                                                      the music lives on
                                                                                      the player only dies.
    Straight up from the psyche, deep down in the core, no matter the decade, 
    more than less though less is more.                                Solo piano
                       full of vigor                            the notes interpret all you have known.
                       Time signature changes, on a dime, or rolled up bill, the rhythm method, 
                       it comes from the gut
                       no matter how it is played or how it is cut.                        Free form.
    It is life, it is living, it is solid, it is forgiving. As simple or as complex as a saxophone riff,
    no four-chord progressions.                         Never boring.                                  Never stiff.
    Wholly original, as much as it is copied, and studied, sweated over, with notes cast asunder, improvisation,              muddied by emotion
                                            perpetual motion,          realization, over and under.
                      Though practiced                 it is free, it is glossy, and messed up, so dirty it is clean.
    Quietly you dream, completely obsessed.                           A blue note cries out
                                                                                                           to lovers
                                                                                                           and all the others, 
    calmer, smoother sounds, longer linear melodic lines, you don’t listen as much 
                   as you go for a ride.                           Off the charts,
    it’s art and it’s plastered with culture,
    a contradiction not comprehensible, it is not responsible 
                                                  should you dream a life totally possessed.
    More about attitude than instrument of choice, the minor keys and major chords create it’s own noise. Structured silence played oh-so-slow in parts of deep reflection, blood rushing through the vein, it steps back then it rises up, triumphantly, again. Again 
    and again, and again.
                             Only a genre is to say night is just darkness, or a day is but a year,
            it goes down easy with dinner, or a six pack of beer, seedy downtown club 
            or a scratchy vinyl disc
    it comes with a purpose, arrives full of risk. It nourishes the soul from a rhythm, whatever it has,                  whatever it be
                                                         we should all live like jazz.

    © 2016 j.g. lewis

    April is Poetry Month

    Leave a comment: like jazz

  • at seventeen

    It was never for the night, but only 
    for the summer.     My seventeenth 
    summer. Never would I say it shouldn’t 
    have happened, because it did. 
    You with a past 
    I would certainly become a part of, 
    and I collecting stories.   An identity. 
    At seventeen. You took a part of that; 
    of all, or whatever, went forward. 
    What I have become. 
    Bones are formed through experience, 
    shaping us emotionally, physically, and 
    psychologically.           Down to the soul. 
    You were there.    There I was, 
    not knowing what to expect, and you 
    expecting nothing but honesty. 
    I didn’t question your motives, nor did I 
    question mine. Age was not important, 
    you said, nor was intent. 
                               There was a difference. 
    Seventeen years. but only one summer. 
    July heat, the scent of patchouli, 
    sandalwood and #5. Intoxicating. 
    I tasted the moon on your breath, 
    and witnessed the clouds in your eyes. 
    A sullen anger, a hurt from before, and 
    your impatient need to get over 
    the emotions.       You talked about it. 
    I could only listen, or try, to understand. 
    At seventeen I could not know. 
    Yet.   I would learn.   Eventually. 
    In times of give and of take, we took 
    consciously. Each of us. Never a moment 
    of mixing the beginning up with the end. 
    We knew.      I wouldn’t ask; 
    at seventeen you don’t.    Of course, 
    I remember fireflies, the music, touch, 
    and the sense and secrets we rarely 
    acknowledged.   Not enough time.   Only 
    one summer.      It was close, something 
    I had never had before, but it was not 
    friendship. A friend you would see again. 
    Not only for a summer.

    © 2018 j.g. lewis

    Leave a comment: at seventeen