Tag: depression

“Wildfire”

On By Mike U.In Poetry49 Comments

“Wildfire”
© 2025 by Michael L. Utley

nothing in life occurs
as it does in the
lyrics of songs
it’s all fantasy
all make-believe
carefully orchestrated
a plastic tableau
displayed behind
a plate glass window
look but don’t touch
lest the illusion shatter

her eyes were still open
when I entered the room
her body slowly
giving up its heat
the world had gone silent
save for my father’s
ragged exhalations
a blasted look
in his eyes
panic
dread
the weight of
heaven and hell
threatening to
crush him

there are protocols
for this sort of thing
my mind mumbled dully
lists upon lists
procedures to follow
and don’t skip anything
lest the facade crumble
lest all of creation
come to an end

I watched my hand
touch her wrist
warmth but nothing else
and a door in my mind
swung soundlessly
irrevocably shut
a box checked
I felt my hand
squeeze hers
no response
another box
another check mark
a window in my mind
battened
boarded up
permanently
and her eyes
dazed
tired
confused
staring into her
own private eternity
I tried to brush them
closed
like some celluloid hero
like someone who’s in charge
but they remained exposed
stubbornly resisting
my mind sputtered
clicked
observed
registered
a checkbox left empty
with only one remaining

I pulled the sheet over
my mother’s face
the final act
the list complete
my duty accomplished
my fate sealed

and my mind collapsed

I stood at my
bedroom window
as a misting rain
enfolded the earth
in a hushed dirge
a six a.m. requiem
an epilogue
to a life betrayed
a life cheated
my mother deserved
so much better
and the world
refused to move
its gears stripped
its dynamo fried
as the dawn
held its breath

the ghosts arrived
strangers in
bleak uniforms
muffled voices
latex gloves
clipboards
a gurney
uncanny inhabitants
of some other dimension
performing their
own obscure rituals
drifting room to room
in and out
covert thieves
stealing my mother

and still the rain fell

in my mind
a mantra arose
unbidden
urgent
inexorable
straining against
my temples
my eyeballs
my ears

my mother is dead

over
and over
and over

listen closely
the universe said
listen as you’ve
never listened before
because your life
your sanity
depend upon
this
one
thing
acceptance
now
or risk losing
yourself
forever

the words
pooled
eddied
in my head
swam like
mystical koi
gliding
in arcane murk
and I knelt
at water’s edge
gazing into this
saturnine mere
where my reflection died
and hope dissolved
and I drank
from cupped hands
and choked on
the bitter draught
of reality

and still the rain fell

there are woods
we dare not enter
treelines with teeth
green shadows
with poisonous
beckoning tendrils
restless copses of
voiceless supplication
leading us astray
from the path
numbness
timelessness
and nameless
plutonian pits
of despair
and despite
foreboding warnings
despite all that
screamed
to the contrary
I fled into this
grove of oblivion
where the darkness
promised succor
but instead
stripped me naked
gutted me
flung my entrails
among noxious thickets
and abandoned me
in a clearing
beneath an
eternally
moonless night
eldritch stars overhead
representing
obscene unknown
constellations
another place
another cosmos
another time

eyeless
voiceless
nothing left
of me
but my ears
damned by
deafness
weak
useless
my mother’s voice
no longer audible
her frequency
terminated
a static hum
where her
essence
should be
but I listened
anyway
strained to discern
her closing thoughts
her last whisper
her soul departing
but the only
sounds I heard
were the howl
of white noise
and the
wretched screech
of infinity

another mantra arose
this time a song
from years before
my mind a
musician’s mind
an artist’s mind
always seeking
the flow
the deep
slow currents
the steady stasis
of movement
the only balm
for my soul
a song of death
of sorrow
of loss
of seeking that
which can
never be found

my mother
lost in a June blizzard
chasing Wildfire

and still the rain fell

the sky cried
in my stead
my own tears
locked away
deep inside
far beyond my own
pathetic reach
the incense of
petrichor
and wet sage
lingering
settling upon
my skin
a patina of
unexpected
serenity
a cocoon
of protection
against a
reckless
arbitrary
God
an indifferent
heaven
the senselessness
of it all

weeks passed
but the song remained
and I clung to it
with all my might
I grabbed its reins
dug in my spurs
and rode it out
for all it was worth
for only it could save me
only it could deliver me
from the blackness
of that forest of torment

I said good-bye
to my mother on a
sweltering June day
my broken heart
buried with her
the burden
of her absence
carried with me
for a decade now
I kissed her forehead
gave her my parting gifts
three guitar picks
I love you, Mom
inscribed on each

and asked her
to wait for me

and when the
early snow falls
I shall chase
Wildfire
too

(Author’s note: This poem is inspired by “Wildfire,” a song by Michael Martin Murphey that helped me deal with my mother’s death in June 2015.)

“Bus Stop”

On By Mike U.In Poetry39 Comments

“Bus Stop”
© 2025 by Michael L. Utley

she stood there
stoic and still
as a river rock cairn
at the crossroads
bus stop
every afternoon
alone
save for her
reluctant shadow
that always seemed
to pull away from her
clawing at the gravel
to unpin itself from this
dirty-faced girl
with willow whip arms
and a mangled knot
of corn silk hair

she stood there
by my grandfather’s
mailbox with the
shot-up targets
and broken beer bottles
glinting dully
in the weeds of the
four o’clock sun like
dusty brown cataracts
and waited for someone
who never arrived
staring soundlessly as the
folding school bus door
juddered shut
and exhaust fumes
enfolded her
in a hydrocarbon miasma

she stood there
in her too-big
ratty plaid jumper
of indeterminate hue
and mismatched sneakers
and scab-caked knees
rooted to the ground
like some obscure totem
some miniature monolith
weather-worn
eroded
her features smoothed
by the passage of eons
at this nowhere bus stop
somewhere east
of benignancy
paused between
moments
stranded between
the dots of the ellipsis…

she stood there
as we piled off the bus
each day
a mass of larval humanity
gummed together
in sweaty profusion
and exquisite ignorance
and ran past her
down red dirt roads
that sliced through
cheat grass and junipers
sage and pines
kicking up dust
in our manic wakes
a mindless stampede
of vacuous hubris
and nascent dark desires
our souls’ eyes shuttered
against grace and mercy
our young hearts
already blackened
by vainglory
we perceived her
incuriously
in our periphery
discerned her
absently
incidentally
our puerile minds
negating her
ripping her brusquely
from the cloth of our
reality

she stood there
waiting
as the cracks
in the world
began to show
arrivals
departures
childhood’s horrors
comings and goings
day and night
week after month
after year
after generation
and I recalled her
vaguely
a tenuous mirage on the
distant silver horizon
of youth
and my children
and their children
spoke cryptically
of the uncanny silent girl
at the bus stop
until her novelty wore off
and she disappeared
from their collective consciousness
as their own childhoods
unwound in a chaotic blur

and the cracks widened
and deepened
and the world spun slowly
to a stop

she stood there
stoic and still
as a river rock cairn
in the withering gloaming
at the end of time
where no bus
had stopped
for millennia
where the damned
no longer
gamboled and
cavorted
where sepulchral silence
clung shroud-like
to the bones
of the earth
waiting for
someone
no one
anyone
and I approached her
my back bent with age
my gait halting
my old man’s eyes
dim and rheumy
my breath a rasping wheeze
and she looked at me
with pallid marbled eyes
and I recognized her
at last
and I sensed
the world sigh
and I took her
cold, ashen hand
as the final
sunset faded
and I waited
with her

“Idyllic”

On By Mike U.In Poetry50 Comments

“Idyllic”
© 2025 by Michael L. Utley

Leroy blew his
fingers off with
blasting caps he stole
from some old granary
and he’d chew on the
blackened stumps
while waiting
for the school bus
like some kind of
hard dude
like he didn’t feel
a thing
I hated him
but I understood
numbness
and I knew he was
dead inside
knowing his
little sisters
were never
coming back
from that long-ago
pile of twisted metal
on the highway
he was sixteen
and already
an old man

Ronnie was a
psycho
and a pusher
and drove a
piece of shit
Chevy truck
with a .30-06
in a window rack
and his eyes
danced with
hellfire
when he wasn’t
shooting up crank
he was shooting up
mailboxes
and stealing anything
that wasn’t nailed down
and one surreal
summer evening
he almost killed me
and I saw the face of
true evil
up close and personal
my old man
would have been proud
Ronnie was already DOA
and he didn’t even
know it
a wraith
barreling down
a midnight country road
with Skynyrd blasting
and his mind
completely blown

Old Bud had a penchant
for booze
and young girls
and enough sway with
the local LEOs
to look the other way
when his granddaughters
came to visit
his self-proclaimed
redneck empire
collapsed one day when
his black heart came a cropper
and his corpulent ass
gave up its ghost
and its secrets
no shame for the shameless
his little kingdom in ruins
but all those skeletons
remain

my old man was
an anomaly
among this
cretin coterie
this hick menagerie
his arrogant bullying
earned him the moniker
“little hitler”
among the Leroys
and Ronnies
and Old Buds
of this nowhere place
this idyllic pastoral
version of hell
his NRA card-waving
wife-beating
chest-thumping
sturm und drang
racist dog and pony show
approach to country life
perhaps a little too much
for their liking
he was a laughingstock
and too proud to know it
hubris is a helluva drug

and one by one
between shoot-outs
and break-ins
and meth labs
and murders
and suicides
and all the
hidden horrors
birthed by the
brackish hearts of men
these restless ghosts
have faded into
oblivion
only barren fields remain
derelict houses
rife with caustic memories
and the soundless hush
of the uneasy dead
listen closely
and steel yourself
against what this
silent place may
tell you

things are never
ever
as they seem

“My Life Reads Like a Suicide Note”

On By Mike U.In Poetry65 Comments

“My Life Reads Like a Suicide Note”
© 2025 by Michael L. Utley

my old man died alone
on a busted sofa
on a September farm
in the middle
of nowhere
with a gut full of
prescription drugs
and a poorly scrawled note
left on the kitchen table

“something went wrong
in my head”

it said

he checked out
without tipping
the bellboy
the cheap fuck
remorseless
to the end

and in his
final act
on planet earth
he also killed
me

closure
wasn’t in
his 10th grade
drop-out
vocabulary
neither were
compassion
decency
empathy
love
his lexicon
was one of
unfettered cruelty
willful ignorance
narcissistic dominance
bigotry
hate
violence

closure?
there is no closure
when the bad guys
get away with murder
and speed outta town
at midnight
in black-windowed
coupes with fat tires
and skulls painted
on the hoods
glasspacks roaring
tearing the world
to pieces

there is no closure
when the deceased
can’t sleep
and bones rattle
restlessly
in coffins
and closets
and all
you can see
on the insides
of your eyelids
is the haggard face
of a seven-year-old kid
staring back
at you

so tell me
do you know
what it’s like
to be a ghost?
to lurk in
sunless corners
among dust motes
and spider webs
and choke
on the cloying darkness
that surrounds you
permeates you
to see horrors but
never be seen
to know fey secrets
that should
never be known
to hear with
deafened ears
silent whisperings
best left unheard
do you?

I’ve been gone
a long time
my father’s
smudged and bloody
fingerprints
all over
my cheap headstone
the desiccated yellow turf
of my plot
beaten to dust
beneath his
boot prints
isn’t it funny
how the dead persist?
you’d almost think
he mourned my passing
if it weren’t for his
soft laughter that
sounds more like
the cries of jackals

sometimes
in the wan hours
when the world
is asleep
and all is quiet
I push through
the sod
and float
on night breezes
navigating by
starlight and
moonbeams
among the
crooked marble crosses
and faded plastic flowers
of lost souls
and settle down
on cold dewy grass
and reach out
tentatively
toward my headstone
and weep
for that seven-year-old kid
who never had a chance
that child who died
and was reincarnated
as his mother’s protector
his father’s enemy
his fate written
in the blood
of the wound
he inflicted on his
father’s forehead
the scar that remained
until the old man
killed himself
alone
on a busted sofa
on a September farm
in the middle of
nowhere

“From Tsukiko, While Watching the Moon”

On By Mike U.In Poetry48 Comments

“From Tsukiko, While Watching the Moon”
© 2025 by Michael L. Utley

I have waited long enough
among midnight forests
and somnolent bamboo groves
the furtive whispers
of pensive yurei
a forlorn supplication
to dissolve further
into the rayless world
of lost souls
to seek the sleep
of bōkyaku

cloistered among
susurrating reeds
I bathe my feet
in Sanzu’s nocturnal tears
adorned in fragrant
willow shadows
as koi drowse
in the depths of dreams
and kitsune slink
clandestinely
their night-thoughts
unfathomable

the red footbridge
dun and sullen
in this half-light
recedes into nothingness
an abandoned relic
leading to nowhere
its purpose forgotten
another ghost in this
world of ghosts

beyond the bridge
emptiness

somewhere out there
lies a buried memory
the bones of a life
once lived
once lost
forever regretted
a recollection unknown to all
but mindless breeze
and insentient earth

above
insensate stars spin
upon eternal axes
their astral trajectories
a testament to futility
their presence neither
proof nor denial
of divinity
alignment
retrogradation
degradation
collapse
blackness
silence
eternity in the
blink of an eye

oh, but you, arrogant moon
gōman’na tsuki
skulking through the trees
your cold light casting you
as villainous
your spectral aria
a surreptitious siren-song
I must resist
oh, moon
your dubious countenance
burned into my soul
your serrated sickle’s
jagged tracks still scarred
across my pallid wrists

you don’t know me, moon
in your hubris
you assume all things
in your haughtiness
you presume to decide
the fates of men
your judgments
surpassing Enma’s
in their brackish cruelty
your domain the darkness
and all who dwell within
you of many faces
and the tongues of serpents
beguiler of hearts and minds
you don’t know me, moon

but I know you

you named me Tsukiko
birthed me in
the gloom of obscurity
flung me upon Fuji’s flanks
and fled
moon-child
daughter of Tsuki
I have watched you
all my life
from afar I contemplated
your shifting phases
your covert risings and fallings
your feckless betrayals
your eldritch gleam

and I waited
for acknowledgment
for recognition
for the simple pleasure
of moon-dapples
on lotus ponds
and still I wait

you don’t know me, moon
and you never shall
for now I embrace my fate
and begin my journey
into the tenebrous aether
of oblivion
no more shall I hope
for that which you cannot give
no more shall my tears
blind me to the truth
no more shall my dead heart
ache from your rejection

I am Tsukiko no more

“How Swift the Stream”

On By Mike U.In Poetry34 Comments

“How Swift the Stream”
© 2025 by Michael L. Utley

as gloaming eventide stalks dying light
to ambuscade the remnants of the day
diurnal requiems give way to night
how quick the gloom
eviscerates its prey

regretful skiffs of shame contuse the dusk
as shadows skulking on earth’s wretched rind
asphyxiate its palpitating husk
how cruel the dark
and all it renders blind

the dreams of men have withered into dross
the fruits of hope lie rotting on the vine
of apathy and existential loss
how foul the taste
of sorrow’s bitter wine

the torrents of the years in all their guile
and surreptitious whisperings betray
compassion’s current flows but for a while
how swift the stream
and all it sweeps away

“The Daisy Ring” published at Hotel by Masticadores

On By Mike U.In Poetry36 Comments

I’d like to let you know my poem “The Daisy Ring” has been published at Hotel by Masticadores. Many thanks to Editor Michelle Navajas for sharing this poem. I’m truly grateful for your kindness, Michelle.

“The Daisy Ring”
(c) 2021 by Michael L. Utley

“I found thee in a faerie copse…”

“Hmm?” she murmured
Her gaze caught somewhere
In the rainy neon night-world
Beyond the coffee shop window
Her fingers weightless
Feather-like
In my hand
Ethereal
Furnace-hot

“I found thee in a faerie copse
Alighting on each flower fair
And as I ‘proached thee in the hopes
Of snaring thee in lovers’ ropes
Thou disappeared into thin air…”

She looked at me then
A faint smile teasing
Her lips
“Your poetry is terrible,” she said…”

You can read the rest of my poem here:

“The Daisy Ring” by Michael L. Utley

Also, please consider following and subscribing to Hotel by Masticadores, where you’ll discover a world of wonderfully imaginative and profound writing.

“A Few Haiku & Senryu (62)”

On By Mike U.In Poetry21 Comments

© 2024 by Michael L. Utley

(#367)

river stone cairn
serenity in chaos
as life flows past

…..

(#368)

deathbed
her soul cleansed by
early morning rain

…..

(#369)

in my stillness
I become the mountain
winter squall

…..

(#370)

oneness with nothingness
this world can no longer
touch me

…..

(#371)

my silent world
sound dies
and I die with it

…..

(#372)

my essence diffused
I’m no longer here nor there
a crow’s cry

“A Few Haiku & Senryu (61)”

On By Mike U.In Poetry45 Comments

(c) 2024 by Michael L. Utley

(#361)

November stubble
she tills the field
of memories

…..

(#362)

sorrow’s journey
drifting on the breeze
a sparrow’s plume

…..

(#363)

her sundered smile
picking up the pieces
of my heart

…..

(#364)

seeds of yesterdays
watered by the tears of years
memory garden

…..

(#365)

stream ice cracks
beneath the red footbridge
the hush of rushes

…..

(#366)

dip my bones in blood
etch my life across the stars
a soul’s journey

“I Can Hear the Water Cry”

On By Mike U.In Poetry34 Comments

“I Can Hear the Water Cry”
(c) 2024 by Michael L. Utley

misty river bank
I can hear the water cry
through its mournful veil

from whence your tears
my friend
from whence your sorrow
the stream of life
long and arduous
promises nothing
takes wantonly
yet gives freely
drowns dreams
yet slakes hope’s thirst
erodes time
yet blesses leas
with hue and humor

I have bathed my feet
in your cool waters
drunk from cupped hands
of your living essence
and watched
as villages flood
and crops perish
your fickle nature
both boon and bane
the rage of winter’s run-off
the futility of summer’s drought
the chaos of confusion
the trauma of neglect

regrets eddy
among the reeds
koi doze in shadow-torpor
levitating dragonflies iridesce
oblivious to your siren-song
your current inexorable
immutable
fate’s dynamo

what of your sadness
what fears drive you
what memories haunt
your hidden heart
speak to me, friend
share your burden
help me understand
your tears

there is purity
in kindness
absolution in love
such a pity
a solitary meadow’s stream
a rill of life
darkened by despair

I see you, stream
I hear your halting whisperings
I smell your vital fragrance
I feel your urgent motion
I sense your profound depth
you are not alone
my friend
the mountain cradles you
the forest shades you
the flowers dance
to your melody
let the sun gild your surface
let the moon caress you
let your heart be
unencumbered
flow, my friend
just flow

and all
will be forgiven