Chester, VA
rbargdil
Poems like "Dume" and "Smirror" are poems that play a little on creative misspellings (something I often do) but also speak to the psychological questions concerning depression and identity crisis.
You can see some of my new poems at http://poemsforthemedicated.blogspot.com/
Dume
by Richard Bargdill © 2008
and
the
Cant's
pile up
like the
sand
house
of
ants
SMIRROR
by Richard Bargdill © 2008
What I'm dealing with here is ghost
What is stopping me is history
What I'm dealing with is history
History is that ghost
Should I cut my hair
Should I shave my beard
Should I wear new clothes
Should I change my name
Should I tell myself new lies
Could his ghost story become a new I?
Whimsical Poems
"What Matters" is apparently a serious poem that takes on absurd qualities and ends with a wry or absurd twist. I see myself as a humorous poet which is almost a bonafide oxymoron. "Just Plain" simply frivolity—100% word play for the fun of it. It might (loosely) be about what it is like to try to be an artist.
JUST PLAIN
Richard Bargdill © 2008
From where does Passion come
And from whence does it go?
I checked the corners of my socks
but only found a hole.
Threw the hole to a door
by a table set with plate.
I wait and wait all day long,
but passion came too late.
I left the room with a tune
Laden in my head,
Returning home to screams of dreams
Frothing from my bed.
So Run Rabid Rabbit,
Sleep Sleek Squirrel.
See the sun setting Saturday
by the wallow wisping world.
I past a match through leaves of grass
And felt my face in fury flicker.
I drank the world both hot and cold;
The mixture made me sicker.
Knock the neuroleptics,
Tear the toxic treat,
Tie two trees together
through the cracks of the concrete.
I tried to find in thoughts of time
In oceans of bodies and motions of rhyme
In strums of strings and midnight's glow
Movement's back, to and fro.
I finally found friends who could feel
The profundity of a saying,
Who understood the underside,
The bent vision of just playing.
The longer poem "Go my children" spells out some of those existential feelings: concentrating on metaphoric guidelines that one might want to tell older children--only to know that they won’t understand anything you say or mean.
GO MY CHILDREN
by Richard Bargdill © 2008
Go my children
You know the differences of
What brings life and death.
Go on your adventures,
Plant trees in foreign countries
Walk the streets of strange lands,
Gaulk at peculiar objects
Unseen and unthought of
In you home town.
Go my children
Run through fields
For no reason,
Watch the sun fall over
The hills,
Catch sight of odd shapes,
Disturbing sounds, smells
Of the earth after the rain has
Brought out the odors.
Go my children,
On your way
Become a stowaway
On the ships of life.
Let it take you and you take it
On a wild ride through rapids,
Hard rocks will you hit,
Pushed through the water smoothly
As leaves drop Subtly
On water Reflected clearly.
Go my children,
Expect to capsize at some point,
Lose you belongings, becomings, identity
Card that tells you who you are,
Have to abandon thoughts, convictions
Your ship, then portage.
Carry only what you can hold,
What is snagged on to you, drag.
Go my children,
Meet new playful
Exciting terrifying friends
Who you may know only
For a day but will stay
With you your whole Life.
Take lovers along the way,
Take many of them.
Each will teach you something new
About you.
Go my children,
Dance in the rain,
Smile at a puddle,
Enjoy the sound of the word "drizzle"
And laugh at yourself
About the thought that dripped
Through the filter which strains
Your daily definition.
Go my children,
Live dangerously
Be careful not to be too cautious
Nothing is worse than living
Long because you took no chances.
Nothing could hurt your borrowed parents more
Than to think that they did not
Give you a sense of safety
To cross the lined
Streets.
Go my children,
Read books that you don't understand
Fly kites that you can no longer see,
Give when you have very little
Be rich in more ways than one
At least once be a friend to someone
Who has none
And run, just run!
Bless you my children,
Listen to all I have said
And listen to none of it
Live your life as a leaf
Falling from a tree
On a windless day.
Recent Poems
The final poems are my most recent. "Zen poem" speaks to peace in actions. "Evolution" and "Jars" both speak to darker issues of human life. Evolution ask how this theory can be true for humans when so many of the great people have been killed along with their children. Jars suggests the pondering of the drug addict as the poem is shaped in the form of a hyper-dermic needle.
Zen poem
by Richard Bargdill © 2008
D
o
n
o
t
D
o
t
o
D
o.
D
o
t
o
B
e.
Evolution
Richard Bargdill © 2008
All
the brave ones
are
d
e
a
d
.
I
couldn’t
save my
soul
in a
thousand
jars.
Richard Bargdill © 2008
Chester, VA
rbargdil