Poem - Always Backwards

I tend to binge-watch a new person on YouTube that I enjoy. YouTube’s best unattended viewing mode is from most recent to most past posting. The poem “Always Backwards” shares this experience.


Always Backwards

Always backwards, the clock turns
time moves forward in my world
this is not the case on YouTube
when I binge watch the history
viewing a channel in reverse
the opposite of what they saw
regression by moving pictures
turning back to where we were.

Watching the years fall back
one, two, three, and more
to a time I barely remember
there they are as if today
outcomes are seen before the promise
the only mystery is what was said
before events took their place
commitments made against the good and bad.

Styles come and they go
hair colors change in tens of minutes
when years passed between the dyes
in these minutes I am the same
as the show comes to an end
no more to see of a distant voice
both in space and time I've viewed
always backwards, the clock turns.

© 2017, Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20170213.

Poem - I Once Lived

Trigger warning: suicidal ideation. “I Once Lived” is a poem about the forms that suicidal ideation may take, and how its transformation over time can be subtle, hidden, and ultimately deadly with little warning.


I Once Lived

I once lived in a land
filled with quicksand pits
deep enough to kill
dragged me down until
I could no longer breath
yet in my lingering pain
I was still very much alive
destined to survive

anguish drove me to madness
the former was just life
driving me to lunacy
within my own four walls
there I found a door
writing to find the link
to others outside of angst
or those who shared my shame

here is the rub I try to say
that end of times came to mind
it was a thought I've long had
yet I stayed away from its hand
the quicksand pits have now gone
I no longer wallow there
you'd think me safe from the dread
this is not the case my worried friend

sanity seems to be the ruler
in a land with firm surface
if you look beyond the lines
of failing spirit in the ground
when there are no walls, no prison cell
the way of the world is my peril
one day I will be just fine
and then the next I'll find cleft

the land I walk has solid ground
mostly though, there are the cracks
waiting for a misstep taken
before they swallow another victim
three foot and a mile deep
the crevice yawns aside my feet
waiting for when I sway
to swallow life and convey tears

I worry that the warning falters
when the precipice is so sudden
here I am one day you'll see
and then bam --- six feet deep
simple dirt would will be my cover
set with flowers above the fissure
where I fell to the Grim Reaper
by the breaches hand and this speaker.

© 2017, Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20170213.