I have three sons,
The eldest gave me money,
Live a good life mummy and left,
I will send you more,
I didn't want his money for I had my own,
With his I will have to be wary of thieves.
The youngest gave me a huge maisonette and a  luxurious car with a chauffeur,
Live in style mum,
No, maintaining your house and car would be a strain on my old self.
The second came with his wife and two children,
We give you ourselves and our care,
We have enough to have you with us,
To hold your hands forever,
In health and sickness,
I said Yes!
9/9/2020

Love is the key
      that opens every door
      it ushers in ecstasy
      the heart desires nothing more

You
demand to know
where

we are going
but when we met
you said you liked surprises

I thought that included
the journey
too

but I guess I was
wrong
forgive me

at the next gas station
no

not the one with sage brush
rolling across the hot
asphalt

the other one
up ahead
in any case

I promise to get a map

Whit Howland © 2020

Oh how it howls
like through a glass
jar

dark is the sky
and days much
darker now

where did it go
you go
we go

when did the worm
turn it was a fat one
but for someone else

other than us

Whit Howland © 2020

I was born
without roots

free to land
in any field

and spread
myself

words and all

into others
find the other

lost souls
and create

a messy garden
wherever we

land and when
the others

want to clean
us up

we can follow
a breeze to

a more
welcoming

land and
spread our

simple seeds

how tranquil it would be
to sleep as deeply
as an anchor
at the bottom of the sea

When I was an
ideal and dreamy teenager walking amidst the
trees in the backyard,
there, curled up beneath a pine, I discovered a small creature and stared at it.
I gently picked it up and held it to
my chest.
It opened its eyes.
I felt The power within .
It went back to sleep,
and I set it down.

The next morning
when I walked
out the back door,
headed for school,
the little creature
was sitting there,
wide awake,
looking up at me.
It had the most
unreal looking eyes.
They seemed to change color.
Apart from English and art class, I hated school.
I didn't quite fit in .
I had good friends,
but I always felt lonely.
Bouts of melancholia struck me at the strangest times,
soon after, I found
it to be the
terminal affliction of being a poet.

I stayed home from school that day and played with the
creature.
It seemed to
hear me, almost understand me.
I liked the feeling.
it became my
best friend.

I fed it every day
and it grew and became unruly and hard to control at times, but overall, it caused me much more joy than pain, way back then.
I missed it when it
was gone,
and threw my arms around it when it
came home.
I named it buffer
because it was an equalizer for me,
and the world, and pain,
It went inbetween the sharpness and vividness, in which I didn't know how to cope.

It got big
and became
a beast.
I had a love / hate relationship with
the thing.
I sacrificed a lot
for it at the
altar of idolatry.
It wouldn't let anyone get close to me,
My wife, my kids,
I chased them
all away.
I was alone with
the beast.

After years of
pain and degradation,
I put the beast down.
I shot it in
the back of the
head, like a rabid dog.

Life raged on.
Pain and joy came with equal measure,
but I no longer
needed a buffer to
keep living, laughing, and learning.
I finally figured
out how to
truly love.