Simplex the Onion

Moving
through the sheen,
with totally non-academic
expression,
I am a simple being.

On this wide morning,
floods are warned
not to exceed embankments,
won't be tolerated
while fording

because I am so simple
as to be without a Plan B,
unstudied.
I am single-minded and
bulletproof thus.

In fact my temperament
must remain unexamined,
otherwise it's too much like
analysis or
thoughtful complexity:

love rots
in such simplicity,
creativity is
road-kill squared,
a self-absorption.

This sheer
clear-steerance,
almost
blind, mirrorless,
becomes me I think.

The Upperworks Gone Astray

That time I lost my mind
the air was thin,
moments long. Attempts at describing
episodes (I'll call them)
were pointless, removed from me.
Those others spoke of crisis,
fear, regret, age, imagination.
But my first-hand ruled
after all.

A search
is a series of choices,
not a chemical. True? Touch
becomes stored
in bottles of adjectives
loosely sealed and spilling on my shirt
as I drive to whatever office. Volume and structure
expand,
cracks can form. A merge maintains
scars
while creating something altogether new.
Others can view
the result
from a couch of neutrality,
but the vessel himself
looks out himself.

I'm not certain of my retrieval,
may never be certain.
For sure I won't look to others
for the answer. Maybe found,
and hadn't lost, this mind.
The metaphor
just couldn't be uttered,
to my thunderous chagrin.

^

Biography

L. Ward Abel is a life long poet, spoken-word performer and composer of music. He lives in rural Georgia, USA. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in White Pelican Review, Electric Acorn (Ireland), Poetry Super Highway (as a featured poet of the week), Poetry Motel (Wallpaper Series), Wings Online, Lit Pot (Anthology), Ink Pot, Verse Libre Quarterly, Muse Apprentice Guild, Versal (Netherlands), Prose Toad, Dead Drunk Dublin (Ireland) and Tin Lustre Mobile, among many other publications. His chapbook, "Peach Box and Verge," has just been published by Little Poem Press (http://celaine.com/LittlePoemPress).