Scruffy

These are just a few individual thoughts that pop in daily; some stick around for further examination and some run away in different direcctions like tiny schools of shiny little fish being pursued by something hungry.

How fascinating that peace has often been the source of revolution.

All leavess a path behind us; twisted, narrow, slim

Can’t fix that damage to that road; can’t go back again.

All repairs are in ouor minds; revising hows and whys

The truth stings when the winter comes and cold wind burns our eyes.

She gave all. Which she never could have done if she were well known or a protracted amount of time spent. Love falls victim to time.

Everything is broken in someone’s perspective or estimation; imagined or real. The meaning of life is found in identifying the profound or minuscule beauty that eclipses or overshadows the flaws.

My voice was strengthened by my youth; but I had nothing to contribute but volume. Ironic that it should falter and fall silent only when I have something to say.

Was it that great a mystery; so hard to discern. Love only comes in disguise.

You can’t be out of tune if you only sing one note.

Floating is unproductive unless you are drowning.

Bob was wrong the times are not a changing. Just more verses to an eternal song.

Someone chose how you got here; you don’t choose how you leave.

Some will laugh and shake their head; others cry and grieve.

I may take my final breath; I may close my eyes;

All you need to know is this; this love will not die.

Everything is a sign to someone. Chocolate is mine.

I thought I heard the velvet soft sound of angels on wing…

Only through the greatest loss may we esteem and recount the greatest victories.

Your personal best is relatie to your personal bottom.

Our love was born in Autumn; those leaves turned ever so slow.

Baby don’t you cry; some things broken stay that way no matter what you try.

She may have gone to far.

She said she used to love someone; maybe that was me.

Stones scattered over this field belonged together before and after; now alone, they are just stones.

You are drawing the breath from me; I can feel it and want you to know; I know.

You can make a resounding crash or the faintest of thumps; depends on the height from which you jump

I miss the hurdy gurdy man; the man with the little stand organ and the monkey dressed as a doorman; bringing his cup by for your coin. He would bite the coin to see if it was real. Little red box hat; expressive eyes and wonder on the face of every child. I remember him well; hope he is wherever I show up next.

I swear I heard some off notes; yet, could not tell if they were meant to be there or that was just the way they fell on intention or mistake. Whatever is left is the song.

Rivers of shadows: wash these thoughts away.

I said I was devoid of stimulation; she said well that’s on you

I gave a shrug and walked away; but knew it was the truth.

We are all living under the influence.

You’re on a rocket; I’m on a bike.

I cant go that fast; you can’t go this slow; neither can know what it’s likel.

Get a job; you can’t always bum it; if it were that easy I’d have already done it.

The men in the cells to my right and left say they are innocent; well if that’s the case; I am too. Just not of the crime charged with; we are all innocent or guilty of something.

This street seemed longer last time I walked it; I must have been walking slower; perhaps barefooted and more cautious.

The Great Wall; the surface of the moon; I’ve seen one already, I’ll see the other soon.

If the sign is really large; it may be misleading or ill placed, It is the small signs that must be watched for with diligence.

Depravity just rolls off the tongue.

Depending on the way I turn; my shadow says I have grown to a thousand feet; or am so minute as to not exist.

If I don’t belong here and I don’t belong there; do I belong anywhere?

Will it matter to someone else when it ceases to matter to me.

A LITTLE POEM THROWN IN

You’re thinking that you’re thoughts are right on every count.

You’re voice full of conviction; no hesitance or doubt.

With no room for error or those who disagree;

the world may well sit silent to your fierce soliloquy

It’s well to be assertive, it’s well to state your case

It’s somewhat less to cook it all with no regard to taste

Of course that’s my opinion and one you’ll disregard

But the road you walk is lonely; the journey very hard.

Perhaps consideration that other thoughts exist

and something quite important might be something that you missed.

I cannot stand in judgement but merely may observe

that a straight line can be tedious and life is full of curves.

So should you find it in you to pause for just a blink

and consider possibilites and other thoughts to think

If just for entertainment; it might shed some light

and reveal continuums that run tween wrong and right

Scruffy August 2023

This poem was found as all others; among grocery lists, individual thoughts and random words. There are hundreds if not thousands; dating back to my childhood. I hope to have time to put as many down as possible. As scattered as it all may be; it is the story of my existence on this ball of string. More to come.

\If we are predisposed to see faces and objects in stone or leaves or other mediums; then perhaps we are predisposed to hear voices as well. Our task becomes to discern which to follow or listen to: our lasting contribution becomes that which we held closely and nurtured. Each breath a separate lifetime; each heartbeat a gateway to our private world

What makes someone who they are?  This eternal question has an often complex answer which can be applied and is experienced at several levels.  While we cannot control genetic predispositions or native intellect; we cannot exclude them from the question; however, what remains and is flexible are the interactions and relationships that from our earliest moments, assist in defining us.  We must also bear in mind that as interactions and relationships are ever evolving; so then are we.

Viewed another way, our life events create many daily, defining choices and thus, a diversity within us that allows many concurrent paths to be operable at one time.  The ones we choose, become our identity.  Artists; perhaps moreso than the rest of us, are constantly re examining their lives and interpretations of events and at various points in their existence, seem to break the mold and set in motion new paths; thus making their personal statement; which may not have existed before that statement.  The artist Marina Abramovic through her work Conjuction makes such a statement; reaching into the diversity of her development and her subsequent identity to make her personal mark on performance art.

hey friend you’re looking ragged a little down and out

I don’t like to speculate, but I know what its about

You’re questioning your reason, your doubting what you feel

you’re trying way to0  hard , it’s really no big deal

First you’re wanting out, then you want back in

turning left and turning right and circle round again.

Some will paint by number, some prefer surreal

Just paint it how you live it,  it’s really no big deal

Aint no big deal no need for self deceiving

aint no big deal its whatever you’re believing 

Love is not a sentence, there’s still time for appeal

just go with you’re conviction, it’s really no big deal.

The sun comes up tomorrow, the moon tomorrow night

in between is all the nonsense tween the wrong and right

love can make you crazy, just running on that wheel

 just give what you are taking, it’s really  no big deal

Let us agree to not always agree.  Social and intellectual growth are dependent upon thought and thought is suffocated by agreement that has not been reviewed.  The danger of “group think”; much like a run away train, has little choice but to destroy what lies in its path; however, while we have a choice as to whether or not we board that train, the decision must be made before the train leaves the station.

Far, far, from the shore I drift; amid waves both wild and dark,

at crest I see the lights afar, tween they and I a life apart.

I know that I can only swim a fraction of the sea ahead,

and know that in the absence of some miracle I’ll soon be dead.

Floating in the shallow bay, I rode the early swells of morn

and felt at peace with God and man; in natures womb safe, reborn.

The sun lay soft upon my face and warmed me thru as did the sea

as gulls and frigates flew above, all the world was one with me.

But somewhere, somehow, I drifted out past the shelter of the bay

and soon realized the span between myself and where the shoreline lay. 

Had someone called my name; had friends waved arms and wept?

No matter now, be truth the worst, I view it all from where I’m swept.

Did I tempt fate through self assurance, or did I create my own

a question now rhetorical; the relevance of options gone.

What led my life to this upheaval, what destiny or dark moon tide

that yield me now so small and helpless, void of hope, stripped of pride.

I merely float now, struggle spent, I sense I’ll not be safe again

and will reflect till this is done, my trite response to others pain.

Seeing others swept away; never gave me thought or pause

till far from shore I find I’ve drifted, in retrospect a drowning flaw.

jack Scruffy Ainsworth

3/4/15

The Coffee Shop

Chocolate ice cream seemingly slathered from restless childrens chin to eye,

Cookies crumbled helter skelter ; most upon the floor beside.

Laughter, squeals tattle telling the little ones play their made up games

while faux stern adults beg their quiet, it all continues just the same.

Ladies talk of myriad topics, their lives, their dreams, their men, their truths

while the men just nod and drink their coffee; quip about the ladies views.

All the questions of the world are typically the daily fare

and lives are lived among close friends, from smile to tear all are shared

How sad that there are those alone, no laughter heard no solace claimed

that have no place to share their story, their lone hearts burdened and restrained

How fortunate the hearts that bond collective at the evenings close ,

feeling, feeding on life shared; through common cause all made whole.

Each person there a puzzle piece, without whom pictures fall undone,

all integral to that seized moment, all components meld as one.

And as the evening comes to close, and each soul rises homeward bound

there’s closure to the daily woes and order is restored somehow.

Jack Scruffy Ainsworth

3/3/15

3/3/15 Untitled

Hear ye; hear ye; nevermind. 

What mattered then is lost in time.

Pontifications, pompous lines

meaningless one breath behind.

Moments, shared in peace and still,

count for more than rhetoric will.

Bellicose and brash barked words

will be forgotten as if unheard.

So let us now pause this soft gaze 

drink from this chalice of memories made.

I will not speak now nor need you

as words could only stain this truth. 

March 6, 1836  The Alamo

Few men know when their time will come; not so with us, for each sealed their fate,

by standing together as night marched toward us, all resigned to die here within this gate.

We had time to think, time to consider, time to abandon this pre scripted end

but each with reasons that only they knew, choose death at this Mission with comrade and friend.

We’d asked reinforcement, but held little hope and understood well that such hope had run out,

We talked mongst ourselves with bravado and laughter, but now quiet came to quell any lingering doubt.

A steeled eerie countenance slowly replaced the edged nervous air that enveloped this place,

As we all made peace with the lives that we’d led, no more love, nor laughter, nor promise to make.

Dawn has not broken but hangs there obscured, mud neath my feet, mist in the air.

The cries of “No Quarter” are rising to din, but oddly I feel no fear or despair.

The army spills in like ants from a hill, and I and my few, stand to meet that fierce swell

The screams of the dying the cost of our choice, the sulphur and powder, as each of us fell.

All was in chaos, long rifles, cannons, bayonets at close quarters, the wails and the cries

through the smoke filled mist, the shadow of death, the blanket of fog o’r the ones who would die.

Soon it was done, soft rain and blood mingled the enemies there with our own

And from our pain and sacrifice, revolution took wing; born of the mud and our bones

Should anyone ask, why did they stay, why trade life for death or pain,

I would ask how could we not; with all at stake would not they the same.

While true that few may know their time and fewer still that time would set.

What happened here did change all time and for that change our blood we let.

Scruffy Oct. 2018

Heartfelt emotion should always triumph over protocol 

Zombies vs. Aliens

I know so many people who pretend they are alive;

they walk, they talk, that can’t be denied.

I don’t buy the Zombies so I don’t think that’s the case

It’s there’s something missing; something out of place.

Perhaps they are simply new souls, and thus yet untrained

in the subtle touch of empathy or when their tongues to restrain.

They look at me quite puzzled at things I see as quite the norm

and stand agape in wonder when the path before is thorned.

An absence of: what to do; when to do, how to do: confusion,

Is noted in their darting eyes and fixed surreal illusions.

They perplex me; I must say, by defying the terms of life

 they are not alive; yet are not dead: like they can’t decide.

I try to give them room; advice, the means to go beyond grey

I touch their skin to feel for pulse, or discern supposed decay.

Aliens!  That must be it; visitors from other worlds

where all emotion has devolved, to whit the absent heartfelt words.

For certain it is grace to me to finally have it sorted out,

the  Zombie thought was disconcerting; I’m content they’re not about.

Aliens on the other hand may in their logic cause more grief,

but at least they are not dead and that of course is some relief. 

Scruffy March 2018

Time has come and time has passed,

and in the end the love will last.

All the pain and all the hate

will not pass through heavens gate.

Those who stand with demons now

will fall with them as they fall down.

Those who rise on wings of grace

will walk the wind and be embraced.

Twisted words from twisted minds

reinterpret grand design.

and by their works shall lose the crown

They will all fall down,

Scruffy (I don’t remember when I wrote this) probably 2015 or so.