Into the Woods

I run away, hoping the evil within me dies,

To my death I scurry, deep within the trees.

Within the lush undergrowths my body lies,

My life drains, as my physical form sighs. 

I leave behind a bitter trail of blood and toils—

As the people rejoice on tear soaked soils.

I am the beast who has gone off to die,

With a dulled ache and blood that boils.

For my only hope is that within the shade

Love will find me when my debt is paid.

I have fallen victim to a moral absence—

I lie in the brambles of the mess I’ve made.

I am dying, and hoping I soon awaken—

I amble into the woods, somewhat shaken,

While the wounds within me fester—

A gift, in exchange for all I’ve taken.

         DannYetman

www.yetmanpoetry.blogspot.com

For Now

For now, I am confused and lost,

I feel as though the words which

Pass my lips are not my own.

I am facing a moral dissonance

Which is dredged across the

Fibers of my being—I am floundering

And falling. I am unable to deal

With the being who lives within my flesh.

And in my search for meaning,

I have come to the conclusion

That all life’s purposes are subjective

And any motivation is frivolous.

Love and hate are not differentiated

By their consequence, for they

Both end the same—in death.

The words I speak cannot be authentic;

My physical form is ever-changing

And is apparently only a fraction

Of my being’s totality.

For now, life has no purpose—

My ambition has been emended.

For now, happiness and apathy

Seem equally appealing—

But perhaps someday I my regain

My true thoughts and relearn

How to live this life.

     DannYetman

www.yetmanpoetry.blogspot.com

The Cloak

I am cloaked within a despair so great,

The grief may not be alleviated

By the remedies I have sought before—

Distraction cannot be deviated

Sufficiently to live in reverie.  

I have made mistakes so utterly dire

Most of my life has been lived in malaise

While my heart has become withered by storms.

Perhaps the cure for dysphonia lays

In disregard to the faults of being.

I must forgive my imperfect ways

To find love, and trade hate for elation—

Weakness must be accepted and endorsed.

Love is not born from depreciation,

But openness and vulnerability.

       DannYetman

www.yetmanpoetry.blogspot.com

Final Words

These cannot be the last words we speak,

For they do not definitively deliver the dreary

Emotions which are bound to cast

Me into turmoil for days or weeks…

A millennium of moments must still exist

Or else I am failing to acknowledge

My thinly veiled disbelief.

The words that have passed your lips,

Do not yet inspire a need for comfort

Or the yearning to retreat into my bedroom—

To curl within a blanket to bury my face

While the sheets dry my tears and keep me warm.

I have not yet begun to realize the ridiculous

Nature of human despondence,

Therefore a continued discussion must still

Be near. Final words do not promise

A continued dialog or mention

The possible occurrence of a next meeting.

A true farewell is copacetic in the mind

Of each member of the parting,

Because there exists both conclusions

And confessions—above all there is a mutual

Understanding that a tomorrow certainly

Does not exist. The words that have been spoken

Neither feel as though they have brought

Resolution, nor remedy to my fleeting sanity.

So I must believe I have yet to say goodbye

And I can continue to live my disjoint delusion,

And awake as if nothing has changed. 

       DannYetman

www.yetmanpoetry.blogspot.com

Strangers

One night, I sat, and felt as though

I had been twisted inside out—

My heart had been plucked,

And punctured—it had been

Horded and misplaced,

And I pondered upon serendipity,

As I chuckled coyly.

I wondered of the strangers

Who walk with uncertain struts—

Faltering gazes lead to bashful ruts,

Shoulders brush and heads become

Carefree—filled with needless luck.

I learned a lesson, of nothingness—

To remain blank is surely best.

And bitterly I began to pace,

Back and forth as I failed to reminisce

The exact reason of my heart’s escape—

The reasoning behind my chase,

The inner voice, leading me astray.

Humbled in the way of the fool,

I remain, a forcefully empty page.

     DannYetman

www.DanielYetman.com

Lay Me Down

Lay me down, so I can see—and be

Befuddled, a mess, and afraid to wake—

Drag me down and heal all wounds.

Wake me up and show me how to live.

Take my blood, take my lust and

Hold my head underwater so that I

May feel fear—a fervent awakening.

Show me how to mistrust and sneer

At divine awaking—I want to dabble

In stupidity and necromantic similes

Of my own inner distrust and rude rekindling.

Let me rest, and mediate meticulously

In the art of feeling nothing, being a

Blank slate bore with no desires,

No wants, wishes or woeful bickering.

Lay me down, and be the entity that

Heals the poor, the rich, and the diseased—

Heal me! So I may be—oh, can I be—

Carefree and unstricken by melancholic luck.

      DannYetman

www.DanielYetman.com

Serendipitous Muck

It could have hailed an empty seat,

As easily as the fortune of hapless luck.

Literation licks the edge—curtails—

Of a surplus of supposings, serpentine

Sayings that wrap around poetic meaning,

And get cut, by brevity’s churning.

Nearly, or equally, as curious and cunning,

It could have crafted with the momentum

Of monumental token, and held torches,

To reason and being—as it wrote a story

Of reminiscent thieving—a merry crime,

Of veracious, victimless animation.

Actuality could acted as a fantastic

Comparison to a colourless and doleful

Dream that dies and delivers itself to me—

And befriended with paradox and repartee,

It could have laughed heartily at lethargy

And cheerless cretins who balefully

Blow words of discouragement

Mixing venially with dreadful yearning.

It is youthful sight, and unaccounted for

Improvisation, that sets an iconic image

Of fizzling circumvention—as easily

As a misstep or blunder—I wonder—

If I could have reimagined the beginning—

The silent, slippered steps that slid gently.

I err to remember or forget, the in-between

Or distal luck, that has lingered, laced

With karma and serendipitous muck. 

     DannYetman

www.DanielYetman.com

Muted

Have I always been muted as such?

Or have I developed the tendency,

Sickening reasoning, to withdraw

And be one, without meaning.

I have vacant eyes and a vapid mind—

Surely I am mostly blind.

If it wasn’t for my heart, the diamond

Hiding beneath my flesh… I would guess,

That I am not alive and that, I am,

An entity who has been born benign.

It is that instrument of evil,

That makes me wake, and entangles me,

Sourly intertwines me among fear,

Tangling my tongue as I beseech

For another moment to undo the knot.

It creates a being who is passive seeming,

And behaviour so bizarre that I am

Embarrassed to speak or seek, for a

Greeting or gallant remark.

Have I always been muted in this way,

Or has my tongue decided to hide as such?

     DannYetman

www.DanielYetman.com

My Tongue

It is my tongue that is tied

In the most magnificent fashion—

A faultless knot bound by sorcery

Unbeknownst to the kindly folk.

It is that simple organ—the organic

Hymn teller, word speller, thin

Leather organ that I cannot control.

For it seems to possess a subtle fancy

Geared towards forging its own distress—

Diving in the book of my own desire,

It tears the pages, and smartly smiles,

As if it feeds off my displeasure.

It is my tongue, my speech maker,

The word creator within my jaw

That jousts me with incomplete sayings,

And fragments of sentences

Which I always seem to speak.

It plummets me into proven silence,

And shifts my gaze towards my feet,

Which linger well beneath

The metacognitive and battered belfry

That never seems complete.

It is my tongue I would trade,

And return in exchange for

A thousand repeated rambles,

Or at least, a single, settled smile.

The Dream

For one moment, I had life—I lived, I felt, I cried.

My flesh, taut over my cheeks, had color—I pained,

And from the agony came rebirth, joy, and desire.

By the most serendipitous turn of events, you were

There too, in the dream—the single moment of life

In an otherwise statuesque series of heartbeats.

I don’t remember why, but you were smiling…

There in the dream. It didn’t seem to matter,

Because fortune should have it, I was smiling too.

And though when you spoke, it was not English,

We both spoke gibberish, there in the dream,

As such, we seemed to communicate fine.

For some reason I couldn’t understand

The need of yours to pull upon my heartstrings,

Until the illusion was shattered, and I awoke.

My eyes shot open, my fingers clawed the sheets,

Trying to pull back time, regain the memory

Of when we both sat across from the sea,

Staring at the deluded sunset of my cognition.

There was no temporal component to our lives,

The stories we exchanged, are tales to never be.

We both existed as ghosts within

The confines of my twisted dream—

The Eden I whittled, was blown out like the

Last flickering flame we lit, the flame we lit

Within the dream.

         DannYetman

www.yetmanpoetry.blogspot.com

The Tempest

Upon the window, enveloped in despair,

Reflects the caustic image I wish wasn’t there.

And as the tears come rolling down,

The water weds the solemn ground.

Under watchful eyes, I’m not alone,

Through the picture the tempest moans.

But those eyes, those blue-brown eyes,

Distract me from the thunder’s rise.

Binding me within the confines of my home,

I’m left shackled as the monster roams.

In my ire, ere a single thought, I shout,

“What has your mischief brought about?”

Upon the window, without despair,

Laughs the demon I wish wasn’t there.

And as the tears come rolling down,

The water weds the solemn ground.

      DannYetman

www.yetmanpoetry.blogspot.com