Mike Falconer

A Shadow in the Distance

The first time I saved your life
You were sitting on a couch
A razor blade in your hand
Plans interrupted by a knock at the door

It was over a girl of course
Out of options, and a future
Humiliated in your own mind
Friend zoned to within an inch of your life

The second time I saved your life
It was coming home too soon
A drink of bitter liquid death
Chased by pills, alcohol, and a knot of despair

Work and anxiety was the culprit this time
Unable to see the wood for the trees
The story for the story in one’s head
The end of a way of life to protect a life

The third time I saved your life
It was a noose around your neck
Talking you out of upsetting the chair
Loosening ropes against changing of your mind

Surprise surprise, a girl again
Run around and no time this time around
Fear of being forever alone
A lack of compatibility with the human race

And so here we are
A future neither of us could have foreseen
Who knew that age would stymie the rage
Disappointment is now just that –
Disappointment
The alternatives almost welcome

Of course it’s always a companion
A reminder of a dark path not taken
A shadow in the distance
But not today, no not today

_{Image by Baggeb from Pixabay}

Scared to know how to ask for help
Mortality beginning to dawn on this 92-year-old woman who has been a constant in my life
“Bury us all” is beginning to look like tempting fate
I’m wondering how long our weekly transatlantic phone calls will continue
The “I love you sign off” that only happens when one of us is scared

That fucking programmed British reserve rearing its ugly head yet again.

So of course I question my life choices
The decision to get as far away as possible as quickly as possible from what feels parochial and provincial
Knowing she would kick my ass for changing a thing
But I still chose to leave and stay away

The guilt is as real as the justifications

How can I not look at futures end?
The singularly after which everything changes
Death is an ugly truth somehow made mundane

I can’t believe I’ve leveraging this moment in a poem

But isn’t this my truth?
How else to deal with it?

_{Image by Sergio Cerrato}

1983

Despite all the warnings
From history, literature, film, and song
We invited them in
With cute names to overcome reservations
For convenience and with the promise of saving a few dollars
Because we were scared and no longer wanted to read
Smug in our self-satisfaction that we were not North Korea, China, or Russia without actually looking in the mirror

The billionaires are listening
Ready for fulfill our need for consumption without our having to move from the couch

The NSA are tracking
mapping movements and behavior ready with facial recognition and social engineering

The police are militarized
An occupying force in all but name
“Protect and Serve” propaganda and upheld as such by the Supreme Court

We spout the phrase Orwellian without recognizing our continuing slide on the slope it describes
Don’t be betrayed by thoughts of Ingsoc and Goldstein
The flag and the Middle East work just as well for the Middle West
This is not a science fiction yarn to put in a basket with Avatar and Star Wars

We turned Big Brother into a fucking game show

The Department of Homeland Security
The war on Terror
Fake News
Alternative facts
The Ministry of Peace
Thought crime
New Speak
How much Doublethink does is take to accept the rebranding of the Mujhadine (our friends) as the Taliban (our enemy)
And the Taliban (our enemy) as the new Taliban (our friend)

We are at war with Drugs, we have always been at war with drugs
We are at war with Eurasia, we have always been at war with Eurasia

Orwell’s thesis was that that control is dependent on complicity and self deception rather than force
That control is a goal itself

How many rights do we have to give up in the name of freedom?
Freedom is slavery

How many wars do we have to fight to defend peace?
War is Peace

The rewriting of the past by forgery at the Ministry of Truth has given way to a lack of care for facts and history
The demonization of libraries
The banning of books
There is nothing to rewrite if we don’t care to look
Even Big Brother recognized the value in forbidden poetry

We do not live in 1984
but we must recognize that it’s 1983.

_{Influenced by George Orwell’s 1984. With apologies to Rush for the use of “the Middle East to the Middle West” from their song “The Way the Wind Blows.”}

_{Image by Pete Linforth}

Old White Guy

I’m an old white guy
How the fuck did that happen?

Straight – with a few predilections just like everyone else – white, and old

British, Scottish to be truly accurate
You might have noticed

I do not share the guilt of southern slave owner forbearers
I share the guilt of empire building classists who raped and pillaged half the world…
And helped invent southern slave trade

Sure we help create the abolitionist movement too
but that’s like saying “I no longer beat my wife”

Call me ally if you must, but it is a title I’m not sure I deserve
I am here to be uncomfortable
To recognize that I will never recognize
I can’t speak, even in fiction, to the inconceivable
I’m not a person of color
I’m not gay, I’m not trans, I’m not marginalized from my position of privilege

Even my outsider status as a holder of a piece of plastic with green card written on it hardly makes a dent it that
They even want my vote
Although they can’t have it
Pledging allegiance is just a step too far

Just being able to say these words is cloaked in a privilege i didn’t earn
But that I was born with
Born to Anglo Saxon white Protestant parents
One dead, one dying

So I’m here for truth
To hear truth
Maybe even to speak it
Exercising my privilege to be welcomed
Or even just tolerated
Without fear other than nerves
As that old white guy.

Weapons

I am the lone booker

The mass reading event
To riddle the bodies of people with fresh ideas
The reading lust a decimation of ignorance

Feared by all who measure intellectual stimulation in hours watched
Hysteria of words on a page
Written in blood, sweat, & tears
An epidemic of literate violence

Fear in the eyes of the shopped and dropped
The loner narrative dictated by those who’s connections are through the one way mirror of a screen

And so to read a book

To scare the gatekeepers of morality with the weapons of truth, hope, beauty, and dreams
If I am to be feared let it be for my words
For words can change things
Words can affect and have an effect

Show me a gun that can do that.

_{Image by Reimund Bertrams}

Missing

And there it is
What is missing
From the expectations of others
The square peg
Not a straight edge
Completion is for suckers.

_{Image by orwatini from Pixabay}

Working Dog: Poetry & Prose

Dogs, work, and place.

Poems and prose that touch on life, death, COVID 19, travel, home, the workplace, working, and, of course, dogs. Raw, sometimes angry, and often touching, “Working Dog” is about our place in the world, where we choose to spend most of our time, and those who we share our lives with.

My new poetry and prose collection is available in Kindle and paperback editions on Amazon.

Hotel Bar Exurbia

Soulless, clinical brightness
The character of a nightclub past time
Accents a parody of diversity
These are nobodies people
And nobody wants to be there if they had a choice

Strangers telling family bios
The conversation of passing time
Making a change from sports without passion
Too many white faces
Too many alone men who aren’t single

Sharing nonsense phone clips
With the volume loud
Much like the half-baked politics
And re-parroted ideas of the world
Forced courtesy beyond please, thank you, and how are you?
Matching the lackluster fuel being treated as food

A lone woman enters the frame of male gaze
Uncomfortable looks under masturbation fantasies
The rejection of this as a self-portrait
The walking away
Beating a retreat from counterfeit human connection
This facsimile of anywhere one would want to be

A preference for isolation.

_{Image by Lothar Dieterich}