C.M.Mounts

Bitter Fruit

The years pass
In two’s and three’s

You still are as you were
Softer, harder

Not bitter, so bitter that
No one calls or visits
Or wants to talk to you

You are given a choice everyday
Where you want to go
What you want to do

If it is to be enraged
Yet one more day
About what might have been
You are free to do so

But the years will pass
In two’s and three’s

Walking the treadmill
Money in, money out
Sex maybe, food always
Death upon death upon death

Pick the dandelions while you might
Blow them into the wind

-Copyright C.M. Mounts, April 2017

Young Love

This is after all, a love story
The dumbest people on the planet
Are 20-somethings in love
God bless them

Suck the marrow out of that
Because as the pain comes
And the disappointment comes
We grow to become

Ashamed of our longings
Afraid to express what it is
We really hope for from one another
You get to be free

Young and beautiful for now
You get to not worry
If your body will fail you
In the midst of passion

You don’t have the needs or the wants
The dreams of your little child
To worry about as you run long and hard
Headlong into your own

Go, be, live it.
There are decades of being practical ahead
Be precisely impractical
While you can

-Copyright C.M. Mounts, March 2016

Sands of Time

You do not have that kind of time
You do not have time to put it off
The writing, the painting, the music
Day to day has its demands
Takes its pound of flesh

No, your family doesn’t respect your art
Enough to leave you to it
But if you are compelled
If you write because you must write
You do not have that kind of time

The kind of time that keeps you stuck
In the moment twenty years ago
When your ‘big reveal’ blew up in your face
All the joy you hoped to get out of it
Turned into deep grinding shame

Coated your heart with enough anger
To shield the wound in it
But the hole that is there
Still sucks the sands of your life away
And you do not have that kind of time

Write it out
Ink it
Line it
Fill it with
Crumpled paper drafts

-Copyright C.M. Mounts, May 2016

Closure

Summer promises so much
Closure, an end to many things
That churned, burned, dragged by
Some will soar away, some will sink
Oncoming grief, outgoing grief
Change again

Live for the day again and again
Find some tenderness
In the midst of it all
Ride into endless summer
To the coast, to a life saved, renewed
Settle with some age behind you

Artifacts passed along or back
To ones who had lost everything
Be the intervention
The Dutch boy’s finger in the dyke
The lighthouse bearing the crush of high seas
Love, let go

It was the worst, most torturous tongue twister. They were selling it for $19.95 plus shipping and handling- but if I acted NOW!, I could double my order for the same low, low price. It was the latest device paraded at 3am before the drunk or the unemployed or the 3^rd shifters with the night off. It was a steel spring clamp with the color of your choice vinyl handles for a non-slip grip. It could even withstand your saliva. They claimed that elongation exercises of the tongue improved ones appearance, health, ability to speak, bad breath, headaches, and of course made you irresistible to anyone who wanted to have sex with you. Of course, trying to get sex from those who want sex with you anyway is no real challenge but tongue elongation by way of this device, the ‘Tongue Twister’, apparently couldn’t hurt. Continue reading “Tongue Twister”

Summer Wind

Early summer
Not too hot
Strong breeze
From the south
Crosses the wide river

Through the trees
Into the window
Billowing curtains
Dancing shadows
Beige pill carpet

Wind on water
Wind swept leaves
Shimmering cacophony
Natural windchimes
Rush

Liquid against liquid
Liquid against life
Life must bend
Or break and snap
Against the invisible

Corner Café

It was a small, tickling idea in the back of her mind. It was a dream so close to her heart she never noticed it clinging there. It just moved with her through the day, through the years of working in various restaurants. She’d put in her time until she could no longer stand the management, then move on to another place. She was making money. She was trading a service, relaxation to others for their dollars, a paid ‘mother’ to businessmen or first dates or families with a bunch of kids needing a break.

The green leatherette booths that lined the café had thousands of people occupy them over the years, thousands of conversations about misinformed current affairs, what homework was due tomorrow, which bitch he was fucking now. Thousands of people from every station of life. Donny Osmond had even eaten here once, a little reflected glory, a story, something to talk about when the conversation about the weather was exhausted and the people didn’t enjoy enough of the same television programs to share their exasperation over the most recent plot developments. Continue reading “Corner Café”