Pizza and pirate ships
Laughing lights
Prizes tickets and toys
Children gambling tokens
Prayers for a jackpot
Top shelf mocking
Happiness unrequited
For their devotion
Laughy taffy
And a whoopie cushion
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Old War-Dreams”)
Cheers to future memories
The ghosts not yet dead
To ruddy limbs and fairy dreams
To due dates still outstanding
To incubating miseries
Regrets waiting to be hatched
To gestating happy times
To braveries and cowardices
Seeking simple zygote union
To the world we will never know
And the one we’ll soon remember
-T. Weeks
(A response to “From Far Dakota’s Canyons [June 25, 1876]”)
Sitting by an angry current
Complacent toes dip
Cold inertia shocks
Recoil and reconsider
Perhaps we wait
Before we dive
How hot must the sun be
Yesterday we enjoyed the shore
Today feels different
Maybe tomorrow we’ll get in
-T. Weeks
(A response to “By Broad Potomac’s Shore”)
Stale and brittle this ice has overstayed its welcome
A week ago the cold descended
Snow alighting on branches roofs and roads
We awoke to a world metamorphosed
Familiar colors and daily routines disrupted
We laughed at the spectacle and giggled at the chill
Now the novelty is turned slushy and grey
Piled high along disrupted roads in refrozen lumps
Tomorrow will be warmer
Tomorrow the rain will come and melt the ice
But the cold isn’t done yet
We long for spring
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Spain, 1873-74”)
In this place in the snow stuck in the house
No applause pattering a path to the door
No smiling handshakes or job-well-dones
No shrines to accomplishment lining the way
Only an enlightened soul silently practicing
Facets sparkle and race across walls and ceilings
Inspiration shines through the windows
And out into the empty frozen streets
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Weave in, My Hardy Life”)
Look at all these lines on the floor
Half circles and circles
Dashes and rectangles in rectangles
Marking boundaries and forbidden zones
From here we throw this ball up
From there you throw it to me
We must throw the ball well
Beware of the rules
We must follow the rules
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Mediums”)
Clocks ratchet righty tighty
Minds race back
Sight scans the horizon
Searching for the thread
The one to tie it all together
A year is gone
A new one draws into view
Novice hands adjust the focus
Finding clarity in detail
Seeking purpose in struggle
One thing seems certain
Soon I will eat a meal
Lie down for the evening
And awake to a day
Never seen before
Never to be seen again
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Thought”)
Where is that soliloquy of dissent
Fossils of triumph and assent
My buried determination unblinking
Where are the bones of my skeleton
Arcade and trusses and scaffolding
Holding me head to the sky
Where are the hallucinations
Painted mirages flickering
Fantasies drawing me across the desert
Where is the necromancer
That will brush away ennui and dust
Or must I resurrect me
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Ah Poverties, Wincings, and Sulky Retreats”)
The bridge to nowhere towers
Spans my window and the Columbia
Tessellations of steel triangles
Support lonely headlights flying south
From a silhouetted shore
Meanwhile giant steel barges hoof silent
Below this gate to nowhere
Ferrying boxes from shores more distant yet
And in the east rises a purple sun
Returning from some other shore
Beyond overcast evening twilight
Spilling sunrise over nowhere
-T. Weeks
(A response “Excelsior”)
Standing at an intersection
I weighed my options
Guessing at the best way to go
Next to me was a man
He told me how he had become lost
One wrong turn had led to another
Now he did not know where he was
Or how to find where he had been going
I tried to help him and point the way
He just smiled and thanked me for the kindness
Taking a breath he started in a new direction
“Where are you going” I called after
“Over there” he responded
“How do you know that’s the right street”
“I don’t”
“What if you end up someplace you don’t like”
“Then I’ll choose a new way to go”
“You’ll never get unlost that way”
“Wonderful
Since I’ve been lost
I’ve been free to move in any direction”
-T. Weeks
(A response to “A Riddle Song”)
Life Immense 