i clutch
dreams
a handful
of loose
pearls
the floor
is covered
in the
perilous
lost spectres
each step
an uncertain
risk
i stand
shaking
clutching
a handful
of dreams
flinching
as another
pops out
of my sweaty
palm to
clink and
bounce before
chattering
into place
scattered
delusions
a floor
covered in
caltrops
soon there
will be nothing
left
Mike's Manic Word Depot 
Enjoyed your word choices and spacing in this one.
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thank you, my friend. hope you’re well.
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Thank you. It’s been a tough week, but I’m doing ok.
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sometimes okay has to be enough. you’re pretty awesome, i suspect things will be better soon.
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ok auto correct went with captors… I like the caltrops you wrote…
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i am used to the perils of autocorrect. made sense to me.
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ooooh… I love how you used the word caltrops. I’ve heard people write about clutching pearls and strands of them going loose and the sound of them dropping in different ways, but the captors MAKES this perfection. Well done Mike!
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thank you. i have always been partial to the word but it seldom has a good place.
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Me too actually. I tried to do a porcupine poem with the word caltrops in it a long time ago, but it was so badly written it was embarrassing. oh well. Your placement is stellar. And even tho your poem is short, the reader can viscerally stumble and slip among those pearls and feel sharp deterrent… You are a deft poet.
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thank you, truly. the words do all the work, i just tap my thumbs foolishly on the phone.
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Whaaaat? You type all your poems from your phone? Daaang… hitchhikers eat your hearts out. btw, I’m reading your book. I liked the narrator feeling, a sorta modern-Poe the way you build up the “sighting” in the first one and make both what is happening but also the narrator P.O.V “questionable” but I’m only thru the first one… Anyhow, thanks for being a writer Mike. It’s good to have you on planet earth no matter where your mind/dreams may venture. ❤︎
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an unreliable narrator can always be fun. thanks for reading, my friend. i appreciate it and you.
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My book report addendum: Your modern-Poe narrator voice actually slipped into Waynes-World (not to imply dumbed down just campy)
I hope it’s ok, to once in a while, snapshot my reactions… as I don’t mean to detract or side-track from the poems you are posting…
My best to you on this day, Mike. ❤️
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of course not, I am always curious to what people think of my stories. I am taking part in a buddy read of one of my books on FB, and it is interesting to see reactions I didn’t anticipate.
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Well, I’ve lived in Illinois and been thru Texas… and the “sense of place” you write about starts to come real and then it slips into a dream version… and it floats… lucid… and even tho there are occasional thuds, like crashing sparrows… the pace keeps moving forward. Even tho memories tug backwards the writing moves forward. It’s good Mike. I’m liking it.
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Where at in Illinois? That’s home. That house exists and I’ve stood at the very upstairs window mentioned back home.
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I lived in Chicago. But I travelled around the state to various places…
You can feel that house in the story.
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I spent a lot of time in Ottawa, by Starved Rock.
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