Poet Writer Albany NY
HARASSED BY SQUIRRELS
Cold December Morning
Too early to wake up I sip
Hot coffee mumbling as the
Local squirrels harass me
For more bird seed
With evil & angry
Stares
~ R.M. Engelhardt ©2022
Poet Writer Albany NY
Within each man a shadow exists.
The shadow of his past.
The shadow of his future.
And the shadow of all the things he
Could have been.
~ R.M. Engelhardt
A POEM FOR THE FRIEND WHO SACRIFICED
ʃəˌlɒm əˈleɪxəm, ˌʃoʊləm
Aren’t you that kid
Who plays the harmonica?
The old man
Sitting in the wheelchair
Said
They had told him
That he had a visitor
But he doesn’t recall
Having any at
The nursing home
In a very
Long time
The nurse told
Him it was an old
Friend, a man with
A beard in his late
Fifties in a cap
But the old man
Now near 80 had
Lost much
Memories and loved ones
Books and all the things
That had made him
Him
Himself
Near deaf
And near blind
The loss of months
Weeks
Years
Within his
Own mind
And when
The lost friend
Walked in he could
See the loss
The sadness upon
The old man’s face
And he said:
Well sir.
It looks like
Both of us have
Lost a few things
” But do you remember the words?”
” The poetry?”
All the crowds of
People the voices
In times of
Change?
And the horror
Of how it all went
Down, the battles we
All fought for people?
The ones for all our souls?
Freedom?
But the old man
Just stared into space
With no recognition
No emotion
In silence
But then?
The man in the cap
Pulled out a harmonica
Out of his pocket
And started playing
A familiar song
And the old man
Smiled
And as he
Played a single
Tear ran down his
Face
And the old man
Softly said:
“Thank you”
“For Everything”
And then
Sitting in his chair
Quietly passed
Away
~ R.M. Engelhardt
©2022
“…The Outsider is doubly a rebel: a rebel against the Established Church, a rebel against the unestablished church of materialism. Yet for all this, he is the real spiritual heir of the prophets…The purest religion of any age lies in the hands of its spiritual rebels.
The twentieth century is no exception.”
~ Colin Wilson
FOR THE ANIMALS
Why does the world at night not see you?
In the fields and in the moon’s light?
Gentle, and taken away from these forests
And separated from others of your kind
Why does the world at night not see you?
Or even in the daylight care about your existence?
I will give you food in the harsh months cold
And without mercy, become the caretaker
And the sacred voice, protect you like you were my own, my kind
Undomesticated & unrecognized by the less
Intelligent creatures in machines
Who do not recognize your beauty and lives
Why does the world not see you?
Protect you?
Because they are selfish and sometimes blind
Lost in a world of their own making
Cruel
And sad
The wind whispers to them and in their hearts
They feel nothing
This is the way
This is the loss of what is all holy
And all that once shined upon us
In it’s own relevance & awe
The cars rush by as time moves swiftly
The roads & highways the divisions,
Graveyards
Where all the dead & bodies lay
Where the night air frees your soul
To another place
Wakan Tanka
~ R.M. Engelhardt©2022
BAD OMENS:
MONDAY NOVEMBER 14TH, 2022 OR
THE DAY OF THE ASSHOLE
The tarot cards have
Foreseen the horrible future
And his return
All the signs
Impossible
To ignore
The first hint
Was The Tower card
The second? A
Loud & long wailing inhuman fart
Sound eminating from the
Downstairs neighbors
Apartment
Who’s a staunch
Republican with a
Make America Great Again
Sticker
On his pickup truck
The candles
Immediately started
Flickering and all the
Dogs in the neighborhood
All took a massive dump at once
All
At the same exact time
And from a place unknown
Perhaps another dimension
Or the spirit world
A loud screaming voice came through
The walls which said in an errie, frightening &
Mournful voice
OH NO, OH NO!
It’s That RACIST ASSHOLE AGAIN!
And He’s Running For President AGAIN!
ASS-HOLE
ASS-HOLE
ASSSSSSSSSHOLLLLLLLEEE …
11 … 14 … 22
BEWARE !
BEWARE THE FAT & UGLY
ORANGE ASS-HOLE !
And then?
A book on the U.S. Constitution
Mysteriously fell off the shelf
And opened up to a page
Which said:
AMENDMENT 14
Which must be read
In an exorcism
To rid him
From this world
For good
~ R.M. Engelhardt ©2022
In the beginning was the word, the word
That from the solid bases of the light
Abstracted all the letters of the void;
And from the cloudy bases of the breath
The word flowed up, translating to the heart
First characters of birth and death.
~ Dylan Thomas,
In The Beginning
The 1st poem wasn’t
Written in English
In fact it wasn’t
Written in any words
At all
The 1st poem
Was a flower that
A hairy cave man gave to
His beloved
Who thoughtfully
Pondered it’s meaning
& then ate it
And without emotion
Left him
For a muscular
Neanderthal
Named Chad
So the first poem
Was actually a failure
A gesture
Of heartbreak & love
Loneliness & longing
But not enough to
Convey it or even
Reach it’s destination
The heart
Or the soul
And on the cave walls
Were painted crude
Drawings depicting mating
To let a woman know
That she was desired
To which their response
Was ” Ew” and a new
Word which they created called
” NO”
But the art approach
Didn’t work
Quite well either
NOTE:
(*See Bathroom Poetry
History of)
WIKIPEDIA
But once humans
Could speak? Talk?
Well the game
Was on
Hunter gatherers
& Future jock types
Started getting angry
Because skinny guys
In fur beret hats starting
Stealing their women
But they couldn’t figure out how
And to this day
Still cannot
And that’s how it
All began
Poets & artists
Being treated
Like outcasts
Unwanted & disliked
(Musicians soon to follow)
Because they had
Higher IQs
And first somehow knew
That words could be turned
Into “Magic”
& Into light
Spells that could
Invoke what feelings
They held urges they felt
And the things they could see
Or could not
Like the silent moments
Of trees swaying in the distance
Like the beauty of colors in the air
And sea, animals & nature
And within these words
They worshipped all
The mysteries which they
Couldn’t fathom or understand
And turned them
Into something
Called poems
Myths
And gods
So in the beginning
Poetry wasn’t really popular
And still isn’t
But without it
We’d all be lost
For it is the whole
That makes us all human
And what it means to be
Human
And that
Is all we know
That and that throughout
Human history that muscular guys
Named Chad and with similar names
Still hate us
And want to beat us up
Without knowing
Why?
~ R.M. Engelhardt
part of the “The Empath Dies in the End” series
Backwards Until When (5)
1 (David L O’Nan)
I keep dreaming of a backwards red balloon floating in a bleeding sky, a paper sky
I keep envisioning a backwards red balloon floating by, telepathically I know it is you.
5 years before, 5 years before that, 5 years before that and the years are crumbled pebbles.
Many men have come and put a forever ring on your finger, they stare at you with narcotic eyes.
They have stared in your eyes with wandering eyes, they have seen you float away into the darkness.
By yourself, spinning in your head.
By yourself, the dreams of children. The children only helped before the yelling killed the heart.
And left you remembering you were on that road, that you have been travelling away in your head for years
And left you remembering the…
View original post 405 more words
I SING OF THE BODY DISSECTED
So let us now all
Sing or if you believe
Pray
Not of these golden days
But in this dead choir of reprieve
Of anguish of suffering of days
Let us all sing of the 21st century
Of all our failures & the false
Triumphs & of the true progress
Of men
Unmade
Undone
Unseen
Watch &
See how we
So easily destroy
Ignore
Incite
Our own defeat
And on repeat
Like a bad news story
Like history
Still worship greed
And money
The holy dollar
And all the fat politicians
On all sides taking
Away what we once
Called ” Freedom”
As a quaint, dismembered idea
As wars are still waged
Poverty still a slave
We post all our success
Stories
But never our shame
As a dead earth
No longer of beauty
But of a violence unimagined
And obscene
Disgusting.
Weapons
Unimagined & unseen
The end of everything
The end
And the tragedy
The murder of all days
Like all the animals dying &
Loosing space
Oh how inconvenient
How 1980s
And Green
Our voices & our
Votes now all dead and
Useless worthless things
Without any real power for
Truth or change
Countries & governments
In decline still crumbling
And arguing, fighting
Killing over race
And over oil
A disgrace
A disfigurement a
World burning
Forests dying
No gods answering
No gods listening
No god here
Because
No god cares
Or listens
Anymore
This planet
This rock
Used up &
Separated
Dysfunctional
Diseased
Destroyed
With hate
With rage
Peace
Now just
Another trendy word
Forgotten
So for thee I Sing
Of this body
Dissected
Damaged by
Monsters & corrupt men
Fake patriots & grifters
Looking for trophies
And hiding behind a flag
And blaming
All other living beings
For everything
They’ve done
More convenience
More sorrow
More lies
The scapegoat
Followed by the
Image of the Tower card
Falling
As the seasons change
The leaves remain
But we never change
And never will
So for thee I Sing – Scream
For the impoverished
Families and their children starving
I Sing for the ignored
And uneducated the unemployed
And for all those
Guilty of being
Human beings
With hope
With dreams
With love
With faith
I sing for humanity
I sing for change
For Black lives
For all lives
For Suicides
And for all those buried
Beneath us in unmarked graves of
Unrest & genocide
And for all those who
Believe in a Jesus Christ
( Or not )
I Sing for
The Great Spirit
That once roamed
This land now a mere
Figment of imagination
Lost in the blood of
My ancestors
The flags all at half mast
Concealing the sadness
The truth
Of a nation
Once called America
Ashamed
I Sing of the body
The whole of the soul
Dissected
Diseased
Where Walt Whitman
Would now if alive
Weep over it’s reality
And in it’s sorrow
Walk away
Where Lincoln would
Crawl up into a ball
And simply
Choose to die
I Sing of A Nation of the
Body dissected
By cannibals
Who’ve erased all of
It’s glory
And where there
Is no honor, spark of
Democracy, decency
Or even electricity
Left
~ R.M. Engelhardt
©2022
R.M. ENGELHARDT 