Joe Hesch

I Belong to Me Why should I care if I belong with some macro or micro “them?”I wasn’t some preteen girl sighinginto the mirror, clouding the viewof what makes her Her behind those sad eyes. And I’m no longer the …

My Magic 8-Ball muse dropped this for me (not for Them) somewhere between the Q and the M on my keyboard. No, I don't write poetry with a pen on paper. I'll never be one of Them.

I Belong to Me
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#poetry

Between Heaney and Hughes I dreamt I was in the library, a pleasant enough locale. Up and down the aisles, I wandered, just observing the thickness and colors of the thousands of volumes. Not once did I stop to read any of …

Yeah, finding one of my books in a public library is some wild fantasy. But a poet can dream. Obviously. Maybe someday you’ll find us...

Between Heaney and Hughes
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The Search I’m searching for a word, one that’s lost to me. Didn’t fly off like a bird,nor head out to sea.But this word has some weight, it’s anchoring my heart.No, it’s nothing like Fate, though determines …

So much of writing really is sitting alone and…

The Search
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Where I Found Them I tried today, I truly did,
to find the words inside to tell you.
But I guess I must have misplaced them
in my move from youngheart to oldsoul.
Been searching for weeks and weeks
and all I’ve found…

I was tired, sore and empty of words for a few weeks. But I felt not so tired and sore while I raked up these words in todays sunshine and autumn breeze.

Where I Found Them
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not much “so what have you done with your life?”and my answer would tumble in a mumble “not much.” because recalling would be lifting more than my ragged memory could heft.i knew i w…

I skipped the reunion, though I doubt I was missed. You see, I lettered in introversion and aced invisibility. And you know what’s changed since then?
not much
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This Poem Is Small (Sad, But True) This poem is small,much like the start of it all,when I wrote haiku,not yet secret odes ‘bout you.They had no rhyming,just beat counts, soul, some timing, and nature, to start.But then soul gave wa…

Like the title says, this was supposed to be a “small” poem, like maybe a micro or #haiku. But the 5-7-5’s ran away with me. So we got this Wednesday poem.

This Poem Is Small (Sad But True)
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We Go By Time The time doesn’t go by so much as we go by time, staring at it like we expect it to fly when it can barely crawl. You’d come by, sit at my shoulder, sharing a stare with me until you needed to go. …

This is what happens when too much time passes between poems...or warm touching warm.

We Go By Time
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Waiting for a Line to Fall The leaves decided to test gravity today, the still-greenish scouts launching themselves into the September breeze.And for a while, they broke laws that Newton enacted, since nobody then wanted to …

Want to thank Gordon Lightfoot for the title, from his song, "Looking at the Rain.” Maybe my favorite. The rest of this pile of not quite poetic enough leaves are all mine.

Waiting for a Line to Fall
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To Sleep, Perchance Cracked open the blinds across my bedroom window last night. Since some invisible thorn was jabbing my sleep-craving mind. Thought I might as well see what stories the moon’s light might carve behi…

Sometimes the writing is as hard as the sleeping. And the sleeping comes hard most nights.

To Sleep, Perchance
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the truth is in the scars the neighborhood was tough enough as i dragged myself across its asphalt six afternoons a week. i saw the sinas we each shed our skin and allfacade was lost. you can read the scars, if i let you. y…

You might be one of the gritty city bards who say I’ve no standing to tell you about the slums and shadows I never told you I grew up with. Well...
the truth is in the scars
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#poetry

Waiting to Measure, Willing to Cut In the washing machine-broken silence,I’ve waited hours for inspiration to call.But inspiration ghosted me years agolike you did once and everyone else has since. Though I was really the ghost.Funn…

Writing #poetry isn’t supposed like breaking wild 2x4s into saw horses or building a barn in rural Pennsylvania, but it kinda is.

Waiting to Measure, Willing to Cut
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I Remember You and Blue Flowers I remember the day you let me in to see your new situation and I was so nervous I’d say the wrong thing, I just ahhh’d dry anxiety out my throat. You still believe I have a way with words. Besides,…

This feels like one of my old #poems. Not one I already wrote, but something like the ones I'd sleep with and hold gently all night, warm and safe next to me on the pillow.

I Remember You and Blue Flowers
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Magical Hoping for an Audience of One I like to think it’s magic I’m making, right here for my rapt audience of one.My kid would think the same of her baking, but who doesn’t love a warm cinnamon bun?Watch, she’ll mix ingredients in me…

Sometimes, when the good stuff feels out of my reach, I still try making diamonds for my special audience.

Magical Hoping for an Audience of One
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What I Found in the River on My Way to You I’ve been avoiding it,jumping in the river again. The water’s frightful cold and the punishing current swift and strong.I’ve seen it carve itself new blue line paths, taking great bites from …

I sometimes wonder if it's worth it, these blind faith dives into the unknown. But, for better or worse, they're my only true adventure. Tomorrow I'll be swimming back.

What I Found in the River on My Way to You
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#poetry

Admission of a Certain Guilt I don’t think you’ll ever admit it,fear tangled over admission like a net, but you do…or did…while lives changed with the years and all those passings.I’ll not engage with that old trope of two shi…

Back in the saddle after much too long in the emotional wasteland. A new #poem.
Admission of a Certain Guilt
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Messages in the Morning I held my breath ’til I’d read it all, not knowing if I’d make it all the way.It wasn’t so much that it was long, but so I mightunderstand your meaning.Punctuating the final line with a gasp,I lie …

Sorry for the absence, but 3 deaths in the family within a weeks’ time tends to focus a body on things beyond need to bleed black and white. I had to write today before I forgot how. I hope this is how.

Messages in the Morning
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#poetry

skipping six-letter stones in the rain the day has not dawned, clouds holding back the sun, rain anchoring them to the flooded slow lane east.in the distance, the grumblestormy cumulonimbus stomachs make when they’ve consumed too much s…

So I spent 20 minutes free-writing something about this dark, sorta stormy Saturday, because I felt the urge. Never fight the urge, even if it feels like...

skipping six-letter stones in the rain
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Inexorable. Us How is it, we come from different worlds, yet understand each other so well?I think you know.And who in whatever world are we to deserve someone like each other,our sins and sorrows included,our sc…

It’s been too long since my last #poem. Maybe I’ve been posing too many question of myself, of us, #poetry can’t answer. Probably because we don’t need an answer.

Inexorable. Us
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A new #poem.

Maybe I didn’t say goodbye because I wanted to stay with them but didn’t know how.
How to stay or how to say goodbye, I’m not sure.

Never Said Goodbye
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What’s Just a Little? It seems a waste to hope for morewhen more’s always been less than enough.But I don’t know much about thatsince all my life I hovered around any. But I’d always scramble for some, which is mo…

A new #poem that ponders, “How much love?”.
None? Any? Some? Enough? Too much? More?
Or maybe just the question of...
What’s Just a Little?
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time is a vandal time is a vandal, i said to the face i no longer can hear. run your finger over the cracks and sags i’ve found in the face i haven’t seen since…the last time i dared take a close listen.time’ll lea…

Just wait, you’ll see how that quality of life criminal trashes the temple of your soul. And most every other part of the vessel you call you. But I fight back. Just not how you might.

time is a vandal
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A ❤️ for the Rebel of Vlamingstraat The Vermeer girls should be more famous,since they grace so many of their dad’s paintings. As she sits there at that bright east-facing window, every boy in Delft could stroll by like they’d scroll…

The Vermeer sisters weren’t born when we had Instagram, but maybe they were born FOR it.

A ❤️ for the Rebel of Vlamingstraat
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#poem #art #150words #painting #TheGuitarPlayer

I Forgot Where I Live I forgot where I live, the memory slipped from my mind like the coverlet off the end of this bed. But I didn’t get lost.That map rests on my pillow.I forgot where I live when I awakened at 3:00the …

A “memory” poem. Afraid I took the prompt too literally. Just flip through the other 1,800 pieces of me on my site and you’ll see more memories than you might care to. I can’t remember which off the top of my head.

I Forgot Where I Live
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I Forgot Where I Live I forgot where I live, the memory slipped from my mind like the coverlet off the end of this bed. But I didn’t get lost.That map rests on my pillow.I forgot where I live when I awakened at 3:00the …

A “memory” poem. Afraid I took the prompt too literally. Just flip through the other 1,800 pieces of me on my site and you’ll see more memories than you might care to. I can’t remember which off the top of my head.

I Forgot Where I Live
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Some Day

When you’re a wisher like me, there’s always a day out there you’re hoping will come. Let’s call it Some Day.Some day some something will come, will happen,will make all of this worth it. But, more often than not, Some Day doesn’t come.Or worse, maybe once, it did, which is…

Whispers on an April Morning Breeze “What if the world is holding its breath — waiting for you to take the place that only you can fill?” David Whyte The standoff had not gone on for long, just after the sun began coming up over the …

From my archives, when I still believed in Joe the Writer.
On the 250th anniversary of “The Shot Heard Round the World,” a first and only draft of a story peering through the smoke of centuries and imagining who actually fired first, and why.

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Erato on Line 2 Zeus help me, but this man just won’t listen,I’ve left him clues to follow like spotlights.I’d give up if it wasn’t my mission,but he thinks his own muse lights what he writes. He’ll just sit there…

Day 19 of #NaPoWriMo was a combo platter of two prompts: a poem as another persona and a poem as another culture’s god or goddess.
Here’s Saturday’s creation. Thank you, Muse. (And Erato.)

Erato on Line 2
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Nashville Skyline With a Girl From the North Country What do you say we climb in my new jetand you spin the wheel there next to your chair?“Where to?” I’ll ask and she’ll lie and say “Nashville.”And I think, “Again?” but really, I don’t care.Climbing…

NaPoWriMo Day 16. A “fantastic” poem. That’s as in fantasy.

Nashville Skyline With a Girl From the North Country
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To Risk It All How close to the edge should we go today? To the deathwish step out into the void, reckless, with eyes closed over what I’ll say?Lines begging for hermeneutics by Freud?Or shall I stand back and co…

Today, a “risky” poem. And #risk is something I do every time I sit at this keyboard and turn loose my longing creative wolf.

To Risk It All
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Too Late to the Dance The men defy laws Newton enacted,amended by some whose names I don’t know.Why to this art was I so attracted?(I think I know why.)There they go again, gliding to and fro.(For the chance to fly?)The…

NaPoWriMo Day 9, combining two prompts:
1) an #ekphrastic #poem, and
2) a poem that uses #rhyme, but without adhering to specific line lengths.
Hell yeah I cheated!

Too Late to the Dance

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