Mike Falconer

The End of Days

Did I fail you?
To die in my arms
Without warning or mercy
Both of us knowing that this was not right
But being helpless and hopeless

Quick, trying to save you
When I should have been saying goodbye
The long drive to the vet
Knowing it’s too late
But needing to go anyway

Never underestimate the privilege of a proper goodbye
The end of days
No blame other than guilt and self doubt
A hole in my life
Where your whole life was

The awful nature of our final moments
Overshadows a life lived together
Making memory raw and painful
Rather than joyful and treasured
The assurance of time is scant reassurance

The detritus of daily lives
Slowly removed and stored
Your crate, bed, bowls, and meds
Gone, like the padding of your feet
The staring from walls, all thats left

Life, love, and death condensed
But loss is magnified by its repetition
Those that have gone before
The inevitability of those to come
Collecting lives, experiences, and heartbreaks

But that’s the good stuff
Life has no meaning without death
Love has no meaning without loss
A companion for the living of life
An unconditional bond to bind

So this is my goodbye to you
As lackluster and inadequate as it might be
It comes from a place of love
And framed by the good times
The hope that I did right by you and the love you so selflessly gave

Farewell to yet another companion,
The ones who shared my journey
Those whose lives structure mine
As hard as this is, the privilege is mine
Grief is but love persisting

Just ask my other dog
Who grieves in his own way
We rattle around the house, unbidden
Finding our place in our own world
Without you, but with you in mind.

For Dapple

A Perfect Match

Thinking about you
A race to feel, feelings
The struggle with impatience and the passage of time
Hurry up and fall in love
Delete the apps
The dignity of banishment of memory.

Get it done
Start the run
The deep dive past the small talk
The intimacy of peeling back layers
Uncertainty and caution
The emotional safety of men
The physical safety of women.

The perfect match
Never so simple
Hallucinations of the future
The channeling of the love songs of lone guitars
Waiting for walls to be broken down?
The games that were not to be played.

There goes those ghosts again
Putting into shadow the dawning light
But this poem is not going to go there
Rather we’ll look to the possibilities
The future noir of being our best
Social media coming outs
And the juggling act of being what we want to be

Fear of apathy and a lack of relevance
Shaky foundations looking for new pillars of reinforcement
A certain resignation is a dark cloud on a summer’s day
Too much control, too much past and too much age for getting lost
Again.
I am adrift, not looking for rescue, but how to swim.

A Friend of a Fiend

Stranger by the day
A stranger by deed and thought
When did you disappear down the rabbit hole?
Begging and taunting, for me to come after you
Only to spring a trap of mind and soul
This is no longer Kansas

To argue, correct, or engage is futile and frustrating
The person I once knew seems to be gone
Lost in a distortion field bubble
Does one give up so easily?
Friends are few and far
To lose them to conspiracy and fakery is heartbreaking and reeks of cowardice

The contagion of influence
How dare you fall for a lack of critical thinking
Debate me, argue with me, but stop with the broadcasting
Engagement is a team sport
With glue and dedication
The monster you are becoming would be reviled by who you once were

A friend of a fiend
A job to mourn and document
An obituary for a friendship
Part of the larger cultural miasma
No less important or devastating
The decay of an orbit and the collapse of a system
The final joke to take it all seriously

An Unnamed Airport

I hate you airport who will not be named
You have the worst layout
An experiment in alternative design
And brutalist architecture
Futurist ideas aged before their time

I hate you airport who will not be named
Offsite car rental
Obnoxious traffic
And people being housed like mistreated cattle
A lack of services does not endear you to the traveler

I hate you airport who will not be named
For the four hour wait in line
The overnight delay
The airfield like a lake
And for being too hot and humid inside

I hate you airport who will not be named
For all of the above
But also for reminding me of saying goodbye to a love
In the place that I told her how I felt
Like they do in the movies

I hate you airport who will not be named
An ugly place for beautiful memories
And feelings of loss
A turned head on the way through security
Being indiscreet after days of discretion

I hate you airport who will not be named
For being unexpected
For the surprise and being caught off guard
For being different, and therefore memorable
For needing to make allowances for mind, body, and heart.

Trapped

Blocked and adrift
Untethered yet trapped
The cages of the past
Reinforce the bars of the present

Gaslight replaces moonlight
And rhyme replaces reason
When there is no aptitude for altitude
Wax releases feathers

Nightmares of a disturbed sleep
“Wait for the officer”
Narrow concrete crawl spaces
Getting stuck, a rising panic

Dystopian safety equipment
As the weather turns
A voice from the dark
A house of rats

Places and props from before, forever frozen in memory
Unexpected intrusions on today
A future unknown and unforeseeable
A black highway at night.

The End of The Climb

A jarred back
Twisted knee
Not the injury of nightmares
The injury of age

What am I doing here?
Replaced by “I don’t belong”
Am I doing this because I feel I should?
Rather than for enjoyment, no longer there

Tempus fugit
The end of the climb
When risk outweighs reward
When obligation increases gravity

If the why becomes self identity
Then self identity may need to change
Life is too short
Happy or right, rather than neither.

Escape

Leaving – home, city and responsibilities,
For the singular job of travel
The company of anonymity and strangers,
Retreating into a bubble of one’s own invention:
linear, predefined, insular and temporary.

The anxiety of departure times and the potential for forgotten items.
Controlling communication and inputs
The needs of getting from A to B to C
Since when did this become the escape from daily life?

Overhearing strangers stories and morality,
with accompanying and suitably indulgent food.
Unfamiliar music genres of Lyft drivers
Statements of masks, how they are worn, their type, their absence
This is 2021 travel.
Strange in its familiarity.

Nexus points of stress and change
Followed by the simplicity of “going with the flow.”
We are all here for the same reason, but different purposes
Carry on excess, and the discomfort of other people’s extreme comfort
Ludicrous due to the uniformity of uncomfortable seating
Backwards baseball caps, way too may shorts, the horror of flip flops and bare feet
A people at “just don’t care.”

Room service awkwardness
The Inexplicable mystery of strangers meeting and bonding
Overly polite interactions
Explaining to underpaid staff that they are wrong
Trying not to be the asshole.

The lost hours, the lost days,
The cancellations, the change in plans.
The reduced capacity, and reduced services
Making do is anathema to a people sautéed in excess and privilege.
Just not as much fun as it used to be.
But escape is still escape.

Perhaps the need is the problem
Both in context and in situation
Routine of ones own making and direction
A lack of judgement and guilt
Comfortable in ones own company and skin
Affable but aloof
A flight of less than fancy
A purge of grind and mind.

Tired

I’m tired

Your apologies don’t work any more
My tolerance for the bullshit has expired
The lack of care has begat a lack of care

Weariness of the soul is mistaken for weakness
The reality is that it is more like apathy
Congratulations, the corruption is of your own making

Driven away by reaching the point of enough
Not a glass half full or a glass half empty
A glass broken beyond repair

I’m done

Decisions don’t have to be revenge
Self preservation and self determination are reason enough
Done with feeling hard done by

You will create your own story to tell yourself
But in your darkest hours, when I am not there to talk you off the ledge
The truth will rear with the tenacity of the undead

Peace keeper, buffer, and dogs-body
The irony and legacy of my absence will be real change
But it’s too late for promises and bribery

I’m fine

Handcuffs are for those who don’t belong
Owning your own keys also opens doors
Shedding one’s shackles can be reward enough

Bridges may burn
But I did not ignite them
Just chose to walk across

Snow in Vegas

There is snow in Vegas

Like the star that burns twice as bright, it will be gone by tomorrow.
The low mountains will lose their Krispy Creme glaze as the Mojave reasserts its true nature.

The gram and the book reflect a fleeting moment when we look like everywhere else.
Juxtaposition makes for great social capital.

There is snow in Vegas

It will lead the news, and locals will be happy for the water
With apologies to tourists for acts of god.

The 15, the 95, and the 215 become black, slick, and slippery when wet.
Adventure time for desert cars and fair weather drivers.

There is snow in Vegas

And as hell has frozen over for some, for others it is Tuesday.
300 days of sun has another 65 days for three other seasons.

Powder, like on a mirror at a party
Consumed, enjoyed, but fleeting and oh so cliched.

There is snow in Vegas

And while the city behind the city struggles with an “every few years” event
The pace of America’s playground never misses a beat.

There is money to be made in that there valley.
A well oiled machine that deals with active shooters, threat of terrorism, recession, and lockdown, has no time for frozen water – except in drinks.

There is snow in Vegas

The heating is on in houses designed for a/c
Pampered pups protected from the heat, turn up their noses at a cooler and wetter outside.

It is quiet for the services of daily life with a self imposed snow day for those who know no better.
The residents who hanker for Seattle or Portland, have their Cinderella moment.

There is snow in Vegas

For what is lost is but misplaced and it will be back.
The hopes and dreams of the unrealistic will melt away but always find succor

Like spirits seeking safety and hedonism the Friday influx and the Sunday exodus is fleeting and surface deep.

There is snow in Vegas

But not for long.
And with the resonance of a street cleaning.

*Photo courtesy `of Jeff DeKorte`

Gods

They walk the earth as gods
Flawed and omnipotent, the stuff of legend and myth
We watch the evolutionary leap, and foresee the death of a species
The changing of our world for better or worse
But not of our choice

The former tenants, welcome to stay until inconvenient
Who gives whom the right?
When the meteor strikes, will they stand by and watch?
And why should they not?
For the bell does not toll for them

We’ve squandered our treasures and powers
Our time and our dominance
Caretakers was never a role we took seriously
And the house now burns down around our ears
While prayers remain unanswered

Maybe answered in the only way possible
With a “no”
With a hurry up and die
With empathy, but not for us
“My gods, my gods, why hast thou forsaken us”

We promised you nothing
We owe you nothing
Just to be better than you
To be responsible and true…
…To ourselves

Our worship of them in history, book, and film
Was never enough for the reality
For the endgame of endgames
They may be better, but they were never to be what we’d hoped
Expectations also bite back

As our Tower of Babel crumbles
And we await the fate of the dispossessed
A culture of ash, paper, and plastic
Lies under our knees and bowed heads
A reshaping not in our image

Now we have become death
The destroyer of worlds destroyed
A suitably short tenure and experiment
As gods walk the earth
But not amongst us.

For Dapple

*Photo courtesy of Jeff DeKorte

*Photo courtesy `of Jeff DeKorte`