A SHRINKING PRESENCE

THE END RESULT

I don’t leave breadcrumb trails

or porch lights on anymore.

Anyone who wants to know,

can find the door;

few come through.

I once upon a time

traveled these dark streets

leaving bits and pieces behind.

A trail of actions

dodging

meteors,

rain drops,

the thoughts of others.

Today I don’t duck

or run for cover,

there is no need.

I am well armored

by silence.

© M Durfee

12/13/16


The day I turned 62 I thought about--

QUIET LIGHTNING

I step outside and see the lightning.

It is dry and there is no formal resound
of thunder only a pulse of light

dancing with itself among the molecules
of this steamy atmosphere where rain once fell.

There is no more awe of air
or all that happens above my pay grade
only the grave sight resignation

that much beyond my porch
is far from my control.

I have walked among both

the rain drops and the tombstones
I am touched not by either;

they have become oddities to me. 

Water, undrinkable, comes from above,
eroding the stone reminders

of a person once living

now decaying ‘neath the marker,

‘cept by etching, unremembered.

Such is my own plan,

to be undrinkable

to be unremembered.
My own nothingness will be

a solace in my soulless being.

The lightening glows for a moment
then disappears
I do like the way of quiet lightening.

© M Durfee

7/28/16

NAKED NOW THE CURTAINS GONE AND ROOFLESS

THE SLOW DEATH EXECUTED

Daily we see the huge maw

of the deconstruction,

destruction of Detroit.

Annihilation for profit by individuals,

Swift to reap the roof of a homeland,

spitting its tasteless plundered portion aside.

The pile grows with the dual plights of poverty

and pillage as the gaping hole expands

in the name of economy.

Three hundred years of history

reduced to a few worthy square miles.

Miles made manageable

with intentional disregard

of the larger, by far, wings of the home.

All chewed up in the name of urban cleanliness,

exposed now is the door level,

where many a resident

with teeming numbers of temporary guests,

a place in the palace where all had been welcomed

to drink from the now dried up well of wealth.

Until the friends and families finally stopped coming,

forcing the mewling men of officialdom

to go to them afar off now, forever gone,

begging forgiveness of everything evil for the sake

of the memory of yesterday’s prosperity.

Now food for monsters of destruction

who will profit from disdain and indifference.

To hell for them yet trying to live

in a new urban wilderness of helpless laws and conscience.

“Make way, make way” they cry.

We need habitat for displaced animals, feral and wild.

A dumping ground for a murdered society.

Without so much as a belch 

the tools of our destruction

move on, next door,

down the street,

block after block,

neighborhood by neighborhood

all deemed unworthy of a savior 

by the gods of prosperity.

More always more to tear and rend apart,

faster now the piles of loss grow into political points

for the hypocrites who say this demise is salvation.

They lie. They lie, they lie 

and they do it with a smile.

© M Durfee

6.13.2016

LIVE YOUR OWN LIFE

DO AS I SAY IF YOU DO AS I DO YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG

The path to sanity is conformity, do as others do, speak as others speak, wear what others wear and when it all changes, change with it. Follow that path that is worn so deep from the footstep them whom you follow, that all you smell is the ass gas from the person whose heels you walk on, where the sun only shines in that chasm of conformity when that ball of fire is directly overhead. May it burn your ass for being ignorant of real sanity! 

Sanity is finding the footsteps of another and going in a different direction, cutting your own trail to your own end. Your dreams are the first thing to die in the canyon of conformity and then your sanity follows and all hope is dead with it. Watch that god damned television as long you can, eat all the crap you can find falling into your well-worn trench, thrown there by them who made the signs pointing you to the trail and making you think it is the only one. Fucking ignorance of  conformist sanity—I hate it.

© Durfee
10.7.2015