COME STAND WITH ME

By Keza And Charles Robert Lindholm

Arrows,
Arrows
Everywhere,
Flying
Through The Air

Darling,
Please Don’t Stand,

A Note

Hi All, it has been a really long time since I posted poems here. Recently I have been working on making music videos with Covid as the theme blended with my guitar compositions (to whatever extent I know to play). I am posting them in my wordpress page – https://quatrainpoems.wordpress.com/

It is not poetry in written form but then is there any thing that does not have poetry underneath? These music videos are a series as part of 30 days challenge I took on myself.

-Venkat

41

The suit I’d purchased for twenty-five quid
all I could afford at the time
just after my twentieth birthday
my life waiting there on the line

The tie was one of my fathers’
as were the shoes on my feet
His passing was five years too early
to see his son’s wedding complete

Now forty-one years have surrendered
themselves to the life we have led
since that day way back in seventy-nine
when Sally and Jeremy wed

Atoms

Is matter
What matters?

or

Is what matters
More than matter?

This Glorious Passage

Photo by Roger Levien

My past is as implausible as
the tale of a frail
butterfly that flies from Mexico to Canada.
Why? How? To what purpose?

Here and now, I’m between
million-year-old mountains
and the damp, salty shores of
one of an ocean’s quiet, protected bays—
where the fish and the plants and the chemistry,
change day by day, but where the whole is eternal,
where a thousand centuries is as a day.

An ocean and mountains
show us who we really are,
Mere children pretending to be
some heroic captain,
braced on a stormy quarter deck
defying the gale,
the rocks too close.
But the ocean knows it
has swallowed many like us before,
and will take many more.

The Broken In Me

I’ll comfort you.

when times get rough

you’ve had enough

& no longer feel tough

just feel like giving up

I’ll comfort you.

when tears of despair fall

I will catch them all

toss them to the rain

wash away the pain.

then you’ll come to realize

this, this, is where love resides.

O’Prunty 6/32/2020

To the Daughter I Never Had

I don’t mean to sound unkind, and I am far, far from perfect, as a father or man. But I have spent some time in your future, and hope to help you avoid some of what just ordinary life, and poor judgement and the next 20 years of wear and tear might do to you, as it has to too many of your older sisters.

For now, you revel in the intoxicating power your young beauty has to excite desire. It just landed in your lap —no pun intended— and by God, you’ll use it. And, it’s fun for a while. (You’re smart too, but that will last longer.)

Older women like to mock men’s appreciation for younger women. “You look ridiculous–” they’ll say “–panting after her like that. “Don’t you realize how ridiculous you are?”

Yes, we feel ridiculous a lot,  especially when we’re reminded of it—and often when we walk by a mirror, so we don’t need more reminders. Do they, do you suppose?

But we realize it comes from losing the illusion of immortality, of hurt feelings, and fear of being left behind; from the cosmic unfairness of time slipping away, and also a realistic understanding about how men are suckers for a good visual. You feel you can’t win. Ever. Some days Sisyphus wins, some days the rock wins.

Actually, the rock always wins. It’s the same for us.

Americans Have Sacrificed So Much For What?

The voices of the dead can not cry

so we cry for them

we cry for answers, justice, equality

and we cry for accountability.

A. L. O’Prunty

Arrows

arrows
arrows they bled tears
thin sheets of time
split words under water
in jawless whirls
nails in clouds fill my dream

these sheets of tender ink
leave words under stones
to colour these stitches
fetch love in threads

image: pinterest.com

Mother’s day 2020

My mother didn’t make it
to see my sixty years
when she passed away in May last year
amongst the smiles and tears
That saddened me (of course it did)
but it’s other times I miss
like the joy of giving flowers
on Mother’s Days like this
Yet the solace that I take away
from all the days I’ve cried
is the ever joyful knowledge
that she’s by my Father’s side

FAR AWAY – BUT ALWAYS BONDED

By Nichole Sulpizio And Charles Robert Lindholm

Far Away
He Was

Feeling Her Heart Break
Listening To Her Sobbing

Wondering How To Ease Her Pain
And Kiss Her Tears Away

19 February 1974

The knock at the door
I remember it well
though forty-six years have now passed
The vicar right there
with something to share
for a slap in the face that would last

It was anger I felt
with a fist in the air
that my father had left in that way
And I heard not a sound
from that hole in the ground
as I stood on that February day

Self love

Happy Valentine’s Day to all the lovelies. Love can happen anywhere, anytime with anyone but it always starts with you. Self-love is the best way to live.

A warm and a tight hug 

can do wonders I have heard

It can lick and suck all your pain

for those who have eternally suffered

It’s that magic potion

that elixir

that have worked wonders 

42 Valentines

Forty-two and counting
Valentines I’ve sent
every one of them sincere
and full of sentiment
Forty-two to the same love
my soulmate true and through
a love that’s shared and deepened
the more years we accrue
Forty-two with every word
each February fourteen passing
meant and sealed with promise
for a love that’s everlasting

Questions That Come With Age

The clock… relentless.
What’s my allotment going to be?
How to make the best of it?
How to keep dignity,
avoid a failure of imagination,
avoid self-pity….

“Savor each moment…”
Yes, well that’s a cliché.
I know what’s coming,
What I’ve lost for good.
The trick is to
Savor these, too,
With a little grace.

No lies in the mirror.
No false smiles.
No regrets.
No cruelties.
Kindnesses given
with no expectations.

There are enough
bitter herbs around.
But

One surprise smile is enough
to recharge a whole day.
Thank you, darlin’

Cowgirl

I encountered a young Colorado woman, once,
from a distance. Our trails crossed in our personal badlands.

A beauty, she had the raw fire of a mustang.
I caught her at a terrible time in her life.
Or should I say, she caught me.

Her marriage was coming apart,
her husband having lost interest and sunk into cruelty and betrayals.

We never met, except
as passing
electronic ghosts. She writhed and wrote of her pain,
her bruised pride and injured beauty.
She touched us with her anger and anguish,
her soul’s search for beauty nonetheless,
In that state she painted lurid images of
what she would do with me,
to me, what she wanted from me,
pinned against a wall, legs apart,
full of anger, fury, revenge.

Passion, Courage, Choice

I have chosen to seek
each day the path of courage
and passion.
I fail, often.

I don’t
say this with bravado,
because I do not feel brave.
If I could choose something
easier, I would.
It never gets easier.

But to make the choice each day,
Each minute, to turn and
face the sadness and suffering,
of the world; the pain and joy,
each on it’s own terms
and not be defeated by it—
that is something that
must be chosen again,
and again, and again.
It is the job of poetry.
No compromises.

It is not a choice of pleasant fictions,
a diversion of entertaining nothingness;
nor like the fog of opium that
leaves us still breathing,
but dead.

Each night, darkness does not fall.
That is the wrong image.
Rather, when the earth spins away
from the sun, it rises up from the deep places
of the earth and the oceans, from
the caverns and the bottom of rivers and lakes and seas.
A deep exhalation.
A time for alternatives.

School of the Electric Fence

Photo by Richard Calmes

I suppose I knew this,
once upon a time,
but love is a little like
the electric fence I used to
crawl through to get to the woods.

You have to be cautious, not timid.

(I wouldn’t go so far as to agree with
Crosby when he said being with Joni was
like falling into a cement mixer.)

How do we still fall in love?

Fool’s love is all that they say
they abhor the pain and still want to stay
Can’t change the way we are so willing
the way it morphs and shines
like broken glass in a roll of hay

A JOYFUL CELEBRATION

By Charles Robert Lindholm

A
Christmas Party,
A Joyful Celebration
Shared With Friends And
Family

Copyright © 2019  Charles Robert Lindholm – The Reluctant Poet
All Rights Reserved – Please Come View My Archives!!
12.19.2019  11:40 p.m.

CHRISTMAS HAIKU: CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY – 2019 REPRISE

By Charles Robert Lindholm

Christmas Every Day

HAIKU: A CHRISTMAS SLEEP IN – REPRISE – 2019

By Charles Robert Lindholm

A Christmas Sleep In

CHRISTMAS WISHES AND MEMORIES

By Charles Robert Lindholm

Childhood Memories
Of Christmas Celebrations
From Years Gone By
Parade Across My Mind

When I Sit In The Dark Watching
The Christmas Lights Twinkling

I’M THANKFUL FOR YOU!

By Charles Robert Lindholm

I’m Thankful For You:

My Wife
My Children
My Family
My Friends
My Followers And Readers

After the small hours

After the small hours we awaken
and with Wolfgang to Alcampo
Parking in our usual space, he leads the way
for he knows this place well
with coffee and conversation and
dog biscuits in a bowl by the bar

Sentenced

My first thought
When my daughter was born
Was that I just killed someone.

Her gurgling cries of life
Contrasted with the ominous, death tone
Of her mother’s solemn flatline.

And as the doctors hung their heads,
Declaring my lovely wife dead,
I realized I had just killed again.

Prenuptial

Marriage for the sake of love
Is doubling down
On a sunk-cost investment.

---

My sons tower over me

My sons tower over me
making me feel like I have shrunk