Mike Falconer

Helping Hand

Right or wrong I give you this gift
Self doubt, and guilt, do not make it any easier

Why can I cry?
For so many other things tears do not come close

Short of the cheap manipulation of film and TV
But the sobs for you are real

The pain lingering and numbing
A contradiction in emotion

Struggling to find the love to fill the void
Inevitable comparisons invalid as they are inescapable

The national trait of self repression
Mistaken for stoicism and a lack of care

Wrong and right
Fear and sadness

The weight ever present
In spite of the best laid plans

Moving on from the onward rush
Cowardice is an ugly and unpoetic word.

A Gift of a Book

Poems of old
Thoughtful in return for thought provoking
Written words for the written word
An author’s blacked out signature in a signed edition

A value of forty cents.
A new inscription, new meaning, and new value.

A mark of friendship
Uncomfortable as unmasked feelings are to those who should be the least concerned
For others there is acceptance of a new found identity
That prompts a return to exploration after a soul laid bare

What greater gift?

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