Tag Archives: Kindness

last october

i will always love you
mother, who carried me
it’s been a year since you’ve gone
i feel your smile lingering on
& i still don’t know why
you won’t let me lay down & cry

i miss you more now, it’s true
& still don’t know what i’m to do
guess i could pass your kindness on
instead of waiting for death erelong
for as long as i’ve left to live
i guess i’ll learn to let it be

‘don’t go near the frangipani tree’
this is what you would say to me
then i‘d try to be your good boy
won’t you let me cry now please

i never did learn to see you true
never did wonder if you felt rue
a lifetime of days before i was born
like petals fallen in the dawn
it feels like i hardly knew you
now i’m here too late… & waiting

& yet i will always love you
mother, who carried me
i miss you more each passing day
& now i find there’s less to say
with this vast space between us
i hope i was your good boy

‘don’t go near the frangipani tree’
this is what you would say to me
i don’t think your boy can smile any more
won’t somebody let me cry now please

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2025

TATI’s & TONY’s DEAD POET TOUR // Why I Voted the Socialist Ticket by Vachel Lindsay

I am unjust, but I can strive for justice.
My life’s unkind, but I can vote for kindness.
I, the unloving, say life should be lovely.
I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.

Man is a curious brute – he pets his fancies –
Fighting mankind, to win sweet luxury.
So he will be, tho’ law be clear as crystal,
Tho’ all men plan to live in harmony.

Come, let us vote against our human nature,
Crying to God in all the polling places
To heal our everlasting sinfulness
And make us sages with transfigured faces.

by VACHEL LINDSAY (1879-1931)
Public Domain Poetry

wakensong

if theirs was the path not followed
then how could we have ever known
of their hopes veiled, atwist in shame
yet now we know
departing eden saved our lives
from the tyrant we thought we knew
meta alpha spitting swords of flame

pious choirs cleaved to the throne
he churned their psalms into a voice of ruin
his shadow sloped through every heartland
so now we know
that whenever he swore to bury us
each variance of will collapsed their brains
they tore themselves on the teeth that hound

we truly blest have truly moved on
presuming to carry gentle our selves
’til we wake to say the soft parts loud
it’s all we know
that if you’re enough then i am too
so will you be my hello for the last time
and tell everyone i love them

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2022

intimacy porn

i ring their bell ends
it’s what i was made for
nothing in my head but head
making a dull sound
making the right sound

since when did we become so familiar?

i’m just an udder with dicks
expressing the milk of human kindness
but to them it’s only wankery
making a dull sound
making the wrong sound

since when did i earn such contempt?

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2020

Mother Love

This is a tribute to my Mother.

My Mother, who has always been there, for my Father, for my Sister. For me.

As I edge towards the end of my fifth decade of life, I find myself thinking about all that she must have done and seen, all that she must have lived through that I will never know about. What was it like for her before me? And what was it like having to give birth to a deformed child? And yet she nursed me. She raised me. She taught me to be a good boy. She loved my face.

She was there the day I discovered my Father could cry. My Sister poked gentle fun at her for falling asleep watching television. And she’d listen patiently as I babbled everything I thought my teenaged self needed to say. Of course, I’d figure it out eventually, whatever it was. It was just nice to know that someone cared.

My Mother.

She welcomed my soon to be Wife with open arms. She grieved on the day I married and left the nest. We continued to hold hands over the telephone. Her heart never abandoned me, my Mother, who was kindness personified. Who I strive to emulate.

And now I see that time has caught up with her. Now she’s a ghost of her former self, no longer the woman I grew up with, looked up to. Kindness personified has become a slow and drawn out forgetting. She is reduced to haunting the shadowed halls of her oldest memories. I hope at least it’s beautiful there.

Is it supposed to be like this? Is it not enough that we die? Must we also be stripped of everything we are and hold dear? Must we be taken away before we’re truly taken away? Yet we live like there will be a tomorrow, hopeful in the face of certain oblivion.

For my birthday this year I want the impossible gift. I want her disease to be lifted, thrown away. I want my Mother to live well into her nineties, happy and full of years. I’m not ready to let go.

I wish you could have met my Mother, back when her spark was compassionate and bright. But she is fading now, and most likely won’t remember you. My Mother, who loved my face. Who stooped low for me. Who fed me watermelon.

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2020