The Poetry of  D.W. Peterson



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Together Hopelessness
Pressure Life
Frost Sand
Last Ride Hope
The Monsterative Winter Rain
Realization Returning
In the Little Things Harsh Words
The Fall With you
Losing Faith Remembrance
Stand Frustration


Together

It’s cold and gray
I’m slippin’ away
Takes only a moment to fall
I close my eyes
And then realize
You were only a heartbeat away
Through madness and misery
We ride through the mist
Of confusion and suffering
Survive through the bliss
Of one sweet moment, come to me
We’ll make it through this
Then you’ll see
So much better days than these
So much better days than these

D.W. Peterson ©1999

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Pressure


Dragged down by the chains
Trying to keep myself from going insane
Pummeled by anger and fear
Till I don’t even realize…
Realize I’m here

Deepening downward remains
A threat to avoid, who’s my name?
And spiraling downwards I crawl
If I spiral too far will I fall?

A lengthy session
With pent up aggression

Did I stand too close to the wall?

Don’t squander your time so they say
My thought always seem, to get in the way
If pressure persists, will it still be ok?
Will someone please try to tell me today

When agonies rise
These times I despise
But what else to do
But hold it inside?

D.W. Peterson ©2000

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Frost


From sunshine’s loving warm silky day
To the winter’s snow
Stripped mankind bare
Limbs shiver leaves against him as colors pale
Sheilding against the fury without furs
Clad in garments bare
From summer’s hot décor
To winter’s endless void
Soft breeze in trees sways limbs to freeze
When golden warmth leaves
Desire arrives
Want driven by soft spring memories
Sun goes pale
Leaving white fleece in trees
Thunder screams
Frozen dreams
The night wind goes pale
Never knowing life could be so frail

D.W. Peterson ©2000

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Last Ride


So parched
So tired, he sighed
Felt as he’d been ravaged by wild dogs
The growling hole in his belly
Was nothing compared to the
Emptiness he felt in his breast
Like a dark and hollow song
Drivin’ on empty fossils of some dead animal that died before man was born
Yet this same beast lives
Resurrected into fire
Fire from the past screams alive
Suddenly accelerating into ear splitting sound
A sudden smell of burning paint and fuel
Vertigo
This screaming world slows
Quiet peacefully floating through the air
Only the emotion of roaring wind
The echoes all fade into a hump
As the machine stops short with a thump
Floating over it all
I hear the call
Please just a little more time
Like a child on the merry-go-round
Please, just one more ride
Mommy’s coming soon

D.W. Peterson ©2000

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The Monsterative


Demonsterative
 Demonstrative
Does it mean a chained beast?
Or does it mean a beast unleashed?
Flailing figures
Signs to wriggle
Time to jump around
Has the beast become unwound?
Or has he tried to test the ground?
If he shudders to the sound
And follows what is found
Do you think that he will be around?

D.W. Peterson ©2000

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Realization


Our somber children
Those eyes ruthlessly quarantined
They played away
Dawn took the night from us
The peaceful dream shattered
Now grey realization
Sullen mourning
Haunted
Fractured
Children’s laughter echoes in dank memory
Shrunken minds mutter incomprehension
The small shielded eyes burn with new realization
The candy-coated playground has become a cesspool
Disillusion sets in
Anger
Outrage
How the lie weaves the snare
Tangled in apathy like a hare
The sting of the bite of the snake of men who just don’t care
Can the loveless blame the world for how they fare?

D.W. Peterson ©2000

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In the Little Things


Tunnel vision…
Or is it indecision
Or something totally else
Is he in derision?
Or is he simply trying to avoid a collision?
Porcupine provision
Portable radio without supervision
Does it need to come to a fruition?
Indecision
Long division
Does his brain have a large incision?
Do you think him guilty of misprision?
Or maybe he didn’t want to be in rescission
A phase of cell division
Splitting hairs without indecision
Do you think that we have risen?
Above the beasts who tear their feasts
Does the sunset come from the distant east?
The world’s not flat!
I bet you that!
A new revision to the old derision
To escape from all the old rescission
Take the time
To wind a dime
And see it’s perfect precision
The beauty of the universal provision

D.W. Peterson ©2000

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The Fall


The fortunate lie tranquil
Facing the disheveled
Embittered prestige tense around polluted squeals of muddled squalor
Thief
Innocent
Confusion
Grief
Fodder for vagabonds
Dawn of darkness descends
Desperate notions relentlessly multiply
Betrayal emblazoned upon failed aristocracy
Desire of glory on creaking bridges
Reverberations
Bullets, bombs, chaos
Despair
Capitalism
Rats go amidst politicians
A beleaguered city coughs
Deals
Times
Guns
Forgotten ones
Love gone
Beware the end comes
The daily rattling cough
Like a sparrow chortle
Mind befuddled
Reminiscent of past times
Beware the deal is done

D.W. Peterson 2000

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Losing Faith


Steeples protrude through sheets of glass
The desolate beast breaths fire
Fear found you
Slowly split your soul
The crawling fever
Tired eyes
Born into this sleep
Never resting
Quest for everlasting peace
Unconditional love
Your desire grows
Only to consume you
Sate every thirst
Till you know not what you hunger for
Only that you hunger
The emptiness caves in on itself
Hunger feeding on pain
Dry as a desert with never a drop of rain

D.W. Peterson ©1999

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Stand


The anguish I feel
The pain makes it real
More real than I ever wanted to be
Slack minded daydreams
In chains so they seem
A bird without wings can fly not
And meat left to spoil will certainly rot
So gather thyself
While still there is health
And tarry ye not in dreams made of wealth
Yet take life in stride
The waves which to ride
And when they break you shall fall
But to stand you must crawl
To get back and ride the next one

D.W. Peterson ©2000

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Hopelessness


Dreams die and so will I
I hang my head and breathe a sigh
So much for a single soul to bear
I run my fingers through my falling hair
My brothers only sit and mock and stare
They know not the bitter feelings boiling there
Without words they taunt and scream and stare
I wish to fly away, to somewhere
Even if I have to spend my days so bare
Anything is better
Than a soul torn in fetters
The choices of this world would make one simply stop and stare
A blank soulless stare
With such an eye a tear would share
A pitiful hungry empty pot
Dwindling feelings of sorrow and rot
Bleeding of soul till there’s nothing left but pain
Not even a drop
To wash it down the drain

D.W. Peterson ©2000

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Life


By some way
Lifetimes changing
Reaching within
Inwards to reason
Who to be?
Who but we?
The moon in my desires
To years within loves fire
Some see out
Others see in
Hardly to stop
And start to begin

D.W. Peterson ©2000

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Sand


No telling where he went?
No telling what he meant?
The madmen all have gone away
What time has he spent?
What sense could he have meant?
His mind has surely gone astray
When wind and fortunes mean the same
And the champions lose in this foolish game
What does the Wiseman have to say?
Nothing
They all have been led astray
And all the fools have simply gone away
No one cares for the misfortunate ones
We’re all too busy becoming undone
As life detaches by it’s only single strand
We all thought it was a stronger band
A spider’s thread is much much thicker than sand

D.W. Peterson ©2000

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Hope


Wanting
Wished in vain
Missing thoughts
The clock’s spring winding down
Words now tumble in his soul
Hands crinkled
Worried silence
A desire for hope
He felt for the locked door
Silent screams resounding without sounding
Bittersweet whiskey stings
Anticipation of bliss
Incarceration of self
Again surrounded by haunting past
Answered flatly from the floor
Never laugh
Drop silent
Falling heart splash
Demanding love
Crumpled softly
Falling before he’d heard the sound
Scarred
Hoping to wake before life was finished
So ends the demanding
So ends the understanding
Wondering why they lied
Dancing over lonely bits of time
The mourning cry of a dove breaks the silence
Over the soft whisper of cobwebs breaking
Hated hand
Fingers tore
Love could be no more
Lonely thoughts falling freely
He will begin again
Left alone where she found him
He remembers her silky kiss
Elation
He’d wake before life was finished

D.W. Peterson ©2000

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Winter Rain


Cold & gray, what an unfeeling day
Like the apathy I live
All the while, this bitter smile
To this callous world I give
Buffeted by storms
A whirlwind confusion
Stifles my thoughts so cold
As the lack of sunshine
Stifled by gloom
Leaves the day with a pallor untold

D.W. Peterson ©1998

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Returning


Eyes, the truest voice
Inside, find, bruised mind
Bring something, need
Know not years
Draw his trials
When would he know?
Tests
Worn
Thinking
Is
Was
Did
Without his lover
Love is not alive
Silky hands
Soft delicious arms
Shape found desire
Would again his long wounded heart know love?
Something returned

D.W. Peterson ©2000

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Harsh Words


You’re ranting in frustration
You yell it when I say
All the things that are on my mind
In anger I turn away
Now I do know why
You say the things you do
The wound shall heal
But scars remain
I’m still here feelin’ blue
Do you ever stop to think of why
You say the things you do?
Or is it that your stress
Has taken hold of you?
A calm and peaceful word
Amidst this storm of strife
A sapling in a hurricane
Is this how we live our life?

D.W. Peterson ©2000

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With you


Teetering
On who I am
And what I am
Do you understand?
I don’t think I do
All that’s me is what’s left of me
Sometimes it makes me blue
Sometimes the dark doesn’t seem so dark
Sometimes when I’m with you
But the darkest dark
The starkest
Dankest darkest
Is when I’m without you
Nothing could ever be so blue
I’ll never stop loving you

D.W. Peterson ©2000

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Remembrance


Uncertain fragments
Recollections
Unrestrained images
Wispy threads
Scattered remembrance dances over memory’s past
Fleeting emotions
Tragedy
Ecstasy
Troubles
Dreams
Illusion weaving through non-remembrances
Seemingly steeped in indecision
Drifting
Dragging anchor
Rhythms constantly emerging
Bottomless moments
Plotting progress
Stepping stones
Occasionally chasms
Happenings required actions
Blending beliefs into believability
Sometimes adjusting with precision
Inertia shall freeze
Tumbling energies
Immediately recall each action
Surviving through living
Living through survival

D.W. Peterson ©2000

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Frustration


Today I aspire to greatness
Too late it has begun to rain
Tonight I dwell in sadness
A hundred things
Nothing became
I sit and ponder the irony
In this warped maniacal game
Too many thoughts laid to waste
Before they had taken form
A thousand things that could have become
Is this to be the norm?
Day after day I sit and I think
A thousand thoughts every way
But nigh not a one
Seems to return
To me another day

D.W. Peterson ©2000

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