X[1]

I saw the best minds of my generation

starved into servitude, strides for recognition

unheard by ears listening to another word,

forthright regals regaling unwittingly

about pond scum to bigger fish.

They moved with surety once but

never again, with age, their pages lost,

their songs unsung except to one another,

temple to temple all night long, cost

again by Burning Man and outre suave

signs o’ the times and Y2K like

the best minds produced exiles in rivers

damned by those who bar the crossings.

I saw the best women of my generation

struggle to become both woman and man,

fight against one another with tea cups and

soirees against reason for reasonable lives

and Jumbotron kisses raising daughters

who dare to bare in instagrammatic spheres.

They lost to no lunches and fast food,

diets and airbrushed mini malls, pork

size poker faces every day in halls

built for man-sized business balls.

Still in the fight that has become

meatballs at home only, lonely

to make ends meet with the hubby,

in hijacked housing ballooning

daily.

I saw the best minds of my generation

pour themselves into garments

unfitting, constructed

by previous generations in kind,

and fail to break free or be united

in time to reveal any mind behind

their own, stuck with Nirvana

and a dead man’s head

to blindly adore evermore.

Nevermind.

[1] With acknowledgement to Allen Ginsberg

*

Reaping dreams—

I have them, more or less than others.

Not a contest of territories.

Simple survival,

more or less,

the kind that can make you harden, cold.

The freeze that never thaws.

Stay gold, Ponyboy.

No time, slow time.

The ticket to our monstrosities.

No out. No gliding to the light in vitriol.

“Who can compare?” screams what is left of nobility,

brimming will, cut down to a stump,

death head, full of fuel.

Games immortals play. The pretext of clown;

upside of your dark side.

Winter kissed,

I fight for alternate endings

while you engage in sexy toy talk.

A feral ballet,

vanishing finally like traces of snow on the lawn.

I have before me books on a wall,

the laughter, or is it rage, of crows behind,

broadcast to the sky, in depth, inside.

An image comes with the engine.

Torn out teeth; no sleep.

Abandoned, you’re never off the brink.

It follows you like a dirty instrument

waiting to play it’s melody.

A slender imprint to a dappled persona,

my concrete I, and in the stripes I see

the red in our flag. Hemorrhaging.

Mental and physical.

A brush within, a blush without.

No use to close your eyes.

Noiseless walk in empty rooms lost

endless or endless

embrace of your dying brother

half a leg on the dirt,

half of you, caught.

Play it loose.

See the door to the basement.

Don’t choose.

*

About the author:

K. D. Rose is a poet, essayist, and author. K.D. was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry for “There are Species of Stars Yet to be Seen.” K. D.’s book, Inside Sorrow, won Readers Favorite Silver Medal for Poetry. She has written books in multiple genres. Her poetry, essays, and short stories have been published in Word Riot, Chicago Literati, Poetry Breakfast, BlazeVOX Journal, Ink in Thirds, Northern Virginia Review, The Nuclear Impact Anthology, Stray Branch Magazine, Literary Orphans, Maintenant Contemporary Dada Magazine, Lunch Ticket Arts and Literary Magazine, The 2016 Paragram Press Anthology, Eastern Iowa Review, Bop Dead City, Santa Fe Literary Magazine, Hermes Poetry Magazine, Slipstream, Wild Women’s Medicine Circle Journal and The Offbeat Literary Magazine.

Dream Poem is now available on Amazon

With a distinctive voice, K.D. Rose illuminates and embraces the songs of our lives. Revelatory and urgent, her poetry combines fearless beauty with the strangeness of an other, watching and bearing witness to the exquisite and heartbreaking world while embroiled in the intensity and passion of life’s dynamics. In turns ethereal, haunting, and brazen, Dream Poem invites the reader to the trance of what it means to be living today. For the first time K.D. Rose’s literary published poetry and hidden gems are gathered together in this bold collection. Includes a bonus section with The Essay “I Have No Voice and I Must Write”, and the short story “The Empath”!

Find and follow K. D. Rose

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