Gathering Poem by Michael Walkerjohn

Solo, self
in thought
of what?
Cleaning
the week
from under
my nails?
An uneasy
exhale contemplating
the works of words
which will entail
that to be of
nexus, or what hex’s
each days mindlessness
and the eternal stress to attain
simply the perfection of basic mores…
Chaff blocks this morns light; brightness
dimmed as darkness fights to have its way
within my inner essence, my cautious brood
my conscience and my every spirit’s presence
in some sense senseless as H2S, gaseous and
how very deadly and contemptuous…
This blight, my life’s light spurned as
thought churns thinking’s yearn from sweet
cream to soured milk; over worked and under
played, short each week that bill or two from even…
The notes now due languish unattended to and unpaid
my thoughts reach down beneath these toils and find
no bottom, so in freefalling further stressed, thinking
struggling at its best to focus, to clarify, to conclude
that ‘sour’ sometimes proves tonic more that toxic…
Stop it! Consciousness screams out and I blink
as IAM returning to that razor’s hone, my strop
further heated by my worrying mind’s blades edge
and dream of how the Reaper’s scythe will cleave each
head, so smoothly off one’s shoulders…
Behold! The gleam of ‘that Smithies’ fire
dedicated, intense, both in context and pretense
incessant and reticent, mix of the hottest heat
and my lamentations…
on just how difficult personal relationships prove
to be in these daze and poorly directed times
My self sighs deeply and profoundly so at
these depths my heart explodes; and I question
why are life’s pleasures pressured away? ? ?
Falling, extended further from the truth
and so aloof to the sweetness of my youth…
consciousness spins and thoughts return
to the pain of what remedy will heal this
moments wounds; as that storm of conceit
and unmentionable hate stirs within…
Once again the ragging battle plays upon this
theater’s stage of life, gathering together personal
pros and convictions, and decisions once clear
again smothered in doubts and revisions as is my thoughts
that mind’s recompense denies the very sentience of the
species human being, being less, most inhumane and beastly…
becoming less and less and more so convincing that
in a day’s gathering and gleaning there will be
no substance which will feed the hungering for change…
Building to a bursting point, a heaving puke, an explosion
of worry streaming up and out of every atom of my flesh
every ounce of my belief and my unconscious reasoning
such rancid seasoning of substance, of value, of thought’s
receptions and then, mind bending rejection of this perception
ends this downhill slide…