Obed Ladiny - Ordinary Days: A Poetry Collection

ORDINARY DAYS ALSO BY OBED LADINY One Flesh: Poems Cracked Flutes: Blues from the Soul Poems vol.1 Cracked Flutes: Blues from the Soul Poems vol.2 ORDINARY DAYS A Poetry Collection Obed Ladiny Copyright 2021 by Obed Ladiny All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher or author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. ISBN: 979-8-469-23818-8 (Paperback) Published September 15, 2021 for daughters Deborah, Lauren, & Rebecca ____________________________________ ordinary moments are especially treasured CONTENTS / ORDINARY DAYS In the age of extreme politics begging for the Second Coming, why not go to playgrounds the parks of innocents, to the swings or lose our minds in slides? Today turns gray like a junkyard accumulating rusting metals. Tomorrow strikes lightning inches from our feet. , you were even greater in size than Saturn and the sun at one time. , you were even greater in size than Saturn and the sun at one time.

Tap! tap! tap! for an hour or two? They go in the two improvisational buckets underneath the window. The bookshelf towers over encroaching water. my bed stands safe on the shore's edge. tap! tap! tap! and sometimes tap! pling! tap! twok! for an hour or two? like a public gathering all speaking and crying at once, knocking against the window, diving in the buckets. I lay watching the fading moon and listening to the crowds talking in the buckets. This foreigner penning these words would pick up your pride meshed in flames off the ground to wear it with all its sole marks in smoke, even in the vulnerable hours when saluting your colors has become a bold endeavor.

The shouting stars in the night could be angry or grateful depending on who sets them ablaze to wake the world. not much should stand in the way want you in my web of diction greedy to wall-in your pulsating heart a bite for the nerves to awake your eardrums dazed in essence of garden flowers mixing colors on canvass and running river otherwise never-mind a recluse in the S T A C K S my world boomeranged o u t these windows... ......................................................................... ......................................................................... ............................................................... .................................... abandoned...
w i t h i n maze of ink leaves His woman seems to be going mad. abandoned...
w i t h i n maze of ink leaves His woman seems to be going mad.

Last night he discovered a foot-long kitchen knife under her pillowso he claims. He said he would leave but did not. She claims, it's a lie. He traveled out of the U.S. to marry anotherso she claims. She said, someone showed her the bride and the photosthe wine was the best. She's a liar and crazy so he claims, and for locking him out their room after his long weary trip abroad.

I have no keys, only underwear, no sandalshe complained. I do have photosof her with some guy he claims. Door finally opens. He threatens to leave and packs a bag. Front door shuts behind him. She follows him out of the home unto the sidewalk for who knows how many times.

Later, they walk back to their home. Easy to hear them behind closed doors. I'm a molten rock of a volcano these days. A ruptured heart of earth stands out like a splintered bone having a resolution with dry, red, ever-fresh roses. My hands envision breaking love arrows, pluck violets into scattered petals, and retire all cupids and their spells. Many hearts freely partake of forbidden fruits; they are fearless and at home with themselves.

Life is the streets. The streets in their veins teaches them a love. They are cunning clippers hunting for green trees of luscious fruits to squeeze into their bottles, like collectors gathering memorabilia. Every life in their hands is only a high when the stems were supposed to run deep into earth's soil. I'm not the Messiah who rose on an early Sunday morning with an earthquake, but I got places to go & a life to live. Up from my pillow sitting, thinking about possibilities.

Tradition says intentional yet different; pleading opportunities. you will rise above the chaos of those arms as you walk towards your long-lost self to rebuild this time with a high sensory for bull miles away in a world where fading naivety learn to cherish loneliness first What about words? Seem the only thing left to remind me I am alive. My heart gets big with ink. Words are my mirrors, my current letters to self showing me there is that impenetrable spirit of who I am still. Seems like the heart laughs with defiance even when it has been walked on, left for dead and alone. every ounce of lava feeds my resolve to smile and take bold steps marching in each coming day. every ounce of lava feeds my resolve to smile and take bold steps marching in each coming day.

Two brown Sparrows land near my sitting shadow. One drops yellow crumb into the opened mouth of the other. How human is this? Pull out my cellphone camera they fly away. Time on my watch begs me to leave. Yellow DO NOT CROSS tapes surround these blocks. Con Ed employees move about their posts.

A breezy early morning November. Sparks fly from a manhole and ear drums take cover. Verbal vulgarity decorates the air. Scaffolds hold temporary wooden platforms painted blue, a dusty radio plays classic love songs. Ketchup juices out from sandwiches of socialites in hard hats. The bang was heard from several blocks away last week.

Was it some psychopath causing a circuit to explode? The company's trailers are lined up in perfect symmetry like towers lined up throughout the Island. An awful season it turned out to be, one worker says, while a beauty and blond strolled in eye-catching silk chemise of gold, warming the hearts of many married hard hats in unlawful smiles. I enter the land of ink leaves without the slightest idea of what I will have from its menu. much to choose, many avenues. delicious leaves await my perusal. up the stairs, eyes at the floors, sit at tables, travel in the elevator, out to enter other mazes into more, without the slightest idea of what I will have from the menu. much to choose, many avenues the world I know boomeranged out these large rectangular windows and left me here a lost youth in its well. much to choose, many avenues the world I know boomeranged out these large rectangular windows and left me here a lost youth in its well.

It's eating me alive and slowly. I know it is. I dread it. It's there there to devour me alive and slowly. Its incisions run deep, snipping and slicing, slowly but surely into my memory, eating away the wealth of recollections there, eating away at the present and bubbling up my tranquil stream. I curl to hide and bury this mass of intricate cords! ...and shade it with black cloth.

Where would I be without its haunting voice? I'll doodle something, something that makes absolutely no sense and I'll betcha. crap is precious these days, a two-year-old can be a genius, go viral with a million hits by doing abstract art with a crayon, receives offers and gets a check in the mail I'll betcha. don't have to rack your brain and come up with the next big thing, relax, be stupid, let it flow, don't plan it, nor take yourself or it seriously, then wait, and I'll betcha. success overnight, everybody's raving about your next piece, the one you don't care for, the one you'll stumble upon, the one you're fooling around with, the one you plan to trash. you'll get a note from a reader in your inbox stating welcome to another room of serious artists. happens all the time, you see it with your own eyes, art becomes art when we don't care, watch, you watch and see what becomes of this, and I'll betcha.