Poetry from R.M. Englehardt

GRAVE DANCING

Listen
Time howling
Withering
Time Dreaming
Time Sleeping

Where we dance
Upon our
Night’s desires
Until the end
Of days


DARKLANDS
“Ashes to ashes we all fall down holy is the machine”

Into this world
We come & go
Descend
Into history
Or madness
Or love 
A longing
Hate
With A vengeance

So into the Journey
The voyage
The abyss
We go
Searching
For something
Greater than Ourselves

Perhaps
A faith
A truth
A religion
Or heroes lost
But in the dark
The darklands
There are no
Gods
No beauty
No voices
Muses
Or inspiration
There is only
Fame & money
Politics & wealth
Control
War
Devastation 
Where your
Existence
Means Nothing
But there Is a magick
A force greater
Than all this
Called Truth
That is
More powerful
Than any Darkness
Any monarch
Or any God
Within you


FUCKING SUGAR 

There are times
That living downtown
Walking down streets
At night when you hate
The noise, the traffic
The world as you experience
Mankind at it’s finest 
Going down the shitter

The fat lady
Screams on her
Speaker phone at 
Her man who I imagine
In my mind
To be a skinny little nervous
Chain smoking weasel like creature
Who flinches at the Slightest tone of her voice
The loud fat lady
Is asking him questions
That sound more like an Interrogation
like where
Were you? Where did you go?
Did you go grocery shopping
Like I told you to? Did you
Pick up my sugar? My sugar
My sugar?
There is an immeasurable
Almost an eternity
Of silence
And then, a meek sound
A squeak emits back as
The mouse man replies
“no”
I.. I ….I … forgot it.

What?!
The fat lady’s voice
Goes up ten octaves
What!?
You stupid fuck
Fucking idiot
Fucking wasted a trip
Out to the store you forgot
To get my fucking sugar?!
You forgot
To get my fucking sugar?!
You stupid you stupid
Fucking asshole my
Fucking Sugar
Fuck FuckFuck
I’ll get my fucking
Sugar myself! 
I’ll get my fucking
Sugar myself! 
I’ll get my fucking
Sugar myself! 

And as I walk
By her I smile
And shake my
Head as she
Gives my an ugly
Stare from her ugly
Eyes & ugly face
And then
It occurs to
Me that no matter
What I do, who I Help or save that
Humanity Is doomed


POLKA WILL NEVER DIE

I was born
Raised on Johnny Cash
And Herb Alpert

Became a man
Listening to metal
Punk & goth
But over the
Years the darkness
Came
And all I have is
Southern Goth
Now & memories
Of years, days gone by
Nostalgia
Oldies music
Blairs from the old
Radio 
MotownStill kicking
Ass the blues still
Screaming truth
But
Polka Will Never Die
Because it is
The true music
Of Satan
Proof
There is
A hell
Used To violently torture
The guilty souls
Of men
Second 
Only to
Square dance
Which
The devil
Created
Himself


BENEATH THIS BODY

You arise awake
Early in the morning
The sun
Its light Rises
Upon the Forests
The cities
The beach
Upon Your face

We Become Motion into
Moment
Distant thoughts
In our minds
Telling us
That something
Is not right
But wrong
This life
This world
This song
Trapped
Within a self
A world of
Our own Making
Our voices
Suppressed
Our hearts
Denied
But we go on
Ignore the
Impulse to
Run
Escape from
The cages of
Reality
Reckoning

But beneath
This flesh this
Exterior this body
The spirit still
Breathes the Voice still exists
The soul that
Merely waits
For you to
Find it the
Poem that waits
For you to Write it the
Heart that
Tells you to
Find your true
Self
For Beneath this
Body there
Are no cages
No restraints
No laws
Only sanctuary
Only refuge
Only words
The light
Through the Window
Of the prison Wall


AUTHOR’S BIO:

R.M. Engelhardt is an American Poet and Writer who is the author of several books over the last two decades including Coffee Ass Blues & Other Poems, The Last Cigarette: The Collected Poems of R.M. Engelhardt, The Resurrection Waltz and others. His work has also been published by such journals as Retort, Red Fez, Rusty Truck, Sure! The Charles Bukowski Newsletter, Thunder Sandwich, Fashion For Collapse, 2nd Avenue, The Angry Poet, Winedrunk Sidewalk, Full of Crow, The Outlaw Poetry Network, The Rye Whiskey Review & in many others. His new book of poetry is entitled ” Dark Lands” published by Whiskey City Press, 2019.

www.gentlemanoutsider.com 
https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/rm_engelhardt