Ponderable polemics, poetic

WordPress site of poet Mark Lucker

growing older

  • Pictures

    We were a long time ago years? decades? lifetimes? carbon dating? time is filled in a long forgotten coloring book half the pictures never finished bold, black-line outlines dated, quaint stumbled across by accident you flip through remembering all the scenes beach, park, ball, puppy love ? first few pages carefully colored giving way to Read more

  • Crisis averted

    I watch my peers unsteadily trampling middle age sitting on various benchmarks when they need to or when they just want to watch older, we are, most certainly wiser is a tougher read for those denying the need for glasses or just out of myopic stubbornness when, what, why, how, where the cryptic mysteries of Read more

  • 33 (For Johnny)*

    Twenty-one years was not nearly enough; we had just embarked when you left. Thirty-three years is not nearly enough to erase what is indelibly sketched not a pencil caricature, a dimly recollected photographic snapshot or grainy home movie just you, at nineteen, before illness rudely smudged and dog-eared the picture you are smiling, damn it Read more

  • Muse bemuse

    She has been a muse nothing more and everything less since we met as teens inspiration still flows from a fleeting reminder; hearing her name (commonly used by others out of parental laziness) the searing stubbed-toe pain of an emotional owie only she could’ve kissed and made better longing springs from trying to remember just Read more

  • Manly

    At eight-years old machismo has a very different feel ‘Don’t cry like a baby,’ my son would admonish his second-grade peers ‘…cry like a man!’ As he is now sixteen I wonder…would he challenge them at all? Read more

  • Renovating

    Vestiges of then subtly shade the now today is decorated with yesterday’s hues accenting modern life with retro-chic shades life-makeovers via t.v. show gurus who use family tschotskes as odd focal points visual statements from an old magazine viewed in current settings; obligatory oohing-and-ahhing at the big reveal fading into jaundiced indifference once the show Read more

  • Guardian pal

    Like a shadow you know is there but disappears when you turn to confront it it’s there, but he’s not Following discreetly, benignly nourish part of the atmosphere minus the trench coat Sometimes light diffuses instead of illuminates My father’s memory, legacy, aura follows me no, I am not paranoid just aware of the oddly Read more

  • But is it art?

    Large, bold strokes spray painted symbols, words innocent and sinister hieroglyphs and slogans in black and blue on pulsating, animated canvas Names, times, events, places feelings and forgotten emotions weathered, all Some are ancient, indecipherable some still hurt some never did some are funny a few not at all Many names are legible, a.k.a’s various Read more

  • Whether banes

    You’ll never know what might have been you’ll never prove what could have been to loudly proclaim what should have been is the greatest of curses self-inflicted by men Read more

  • most monochromatically not

    I’ve never seen the world in quaint, stark black and white even as a child, vivid shades of gray were crystal clear I have always seen life for what it really is; unnamed, unruly tints and hues both opaque and austere seeing life as purely black-and-white takes a special color blindness that I did not Read more