Addled by my mortality,
I retreat from reality;
Let it rest for the day,
As would I if I could again,
Let this new become what has been,
And leave my mind to play.
What dreams I had when I was young!
Songs of color my mind had sung,
Vague thoughts caught in fugue state.
All I dream now is darkness,
Strapped inside this drifting harness,
As life and death debate.
He had pictures in a dusty stack,
Joy flowed out from every frozen stance
As he leapt full meters dancing the gopak.
I often think about that,
Everything I loved about him,
My favorite moments and most influential chats,
The smoke of an empty shell casing expressed as his whim.
Poor man drank himself dead
All while entertaining my young self.
More than most, his imprint is pressed upon my head,
His humor and wisdom were both top shelf;
He offered so much guidance through film and book,
When I needed it/him more than I knew,
We stayed up all night discussing his life, what it took,
And thus I learned about mine and grew.
Coy was I in response to his caring stance,
Until he took his own life, and it destroyed me, but…
Boy, let me tell you, that man could dance.
“My god, why hast thou forsaken me?”
A call heard throughout history,
Always desperate to solve this unspoken mystery,
As if we’ve glimpsed the last page,
And yet were met with a different end.
Did we read the wrong book?
Or were those pages torn out because we dared to look?
We reach the end, our end, the end and as always,
It ends in a shout,
“My god, why hast thou forsaken me?”
I hear it through the threads of time,
Wrapped, quilted, packaged in plastic,
However you’ll take it,
If you can take it.
But you won’t,
Unless you were the one to make it.
Those women tied to stakes,
Burned battered and stoned,
Still tried to atone, refusing truth for punishment,
Punished even for that sentiment,
Then died, screaming,
“My god, why hast thou forsaken me?”
The sound echoes ever on,
Called up through the ages like water in an oasis,
An alien thing that lives in absurd places,
A geographical red flag that you refuse to drink.
Oh, but you’ll brag about the dehydration,
Carry your cross loud on dubs and hydraulics,
With a pair of truck nuts
And your moms name spelled out in guns.
While 10,000 children each day die from your exaggeration,
Drinking deep while they thirst for water,
Through parched lips they sputter:
“My god, why hast thou forsaken me.”
Do you hear it too,
The unholy fugue?
The dirge that’s been stuck in your playlist,
But you always skip;
To listen to some other tune dropping from dead lips.
It’s always there, I promise you,
Like the sound of gas seeping in through a shower head,
In a room full of the dead,
Or soon to be dead anyway,
Removing their clothes, and whispering quietly
As not to shake the others,
“My god, why hast thou forsaken me?”
The sound is probably so loud at this point,
And you’ve ignored it so long,
That to recognize it would be like a fish cataloging the water,
Quantifying, tagging, and reselling to those who would bother,
Looking for the finer things,
When the finer things are just the things possessed by another.
But the children hear it clearly,
It’s still fresh to them for a while,
It takes years of parents and owners telling them shut their ears,
Telling them what they really hear,
But when those same kids are locked in cages, dungeons, or in the arms of the vile,
They hear it clearly, and no one is there to plug their ears,
So they whimper through tears,
“My god, why hast thou forsaken me?”
If you hear it now,
You’re in good company,
Even the man Jesus died on the cross,
Or so they say,
With the sound resounding loud in his ears,
as he looked up to the heavens and asked,
“My god, why hast thou forsaken me?”
To no response.
The fire burns absurd colors and strange dances,
Bringing life low, with death it enhances,
Even the lives that were static,
Its embrace can make emphatic,
Oft rekindling ancient romances.
That place, thick with green, where the deer prances,
Where people sing a chorus in stances,
The house between floor and attic,
The fire burns.
After all the slings, arrows and lances,
After all the last great performances,
After all the plans pragmatic,
And madness born from lunatic,
After all is gone save parting glances,
The fire burns.
The fields will grow no more in this cold place
The flora, the fauna, silenced and still.
While the wind hesitates,
The sounds left are hollow and shrill;
The noise of things poised for a world dying,
Cadavers scavenged, ravaged, defying,
“Give life to those that kill!”
Cry the dreams that iron and concrete have erased.
“I am something within this void,”
I have to tell myself
without feeling
An audible smudge on a glass ceiling.
My timid voice scares me more, so I scream,
“I am something within this void!”
…Not even an echo;
Drops in a stream.
I’ve lost the bout.
Beneath the vastness of time I cry out,
“I am something within this void!”
Then it is gone from me.
My time, like glass shatters,
Consuming all.
Mocking me from the infinite, it calls,
“I aM sOmeThiNg WiThiN tHiS vOiD!”
How can we bend like this?
Something is amiss, surely.
T’was signed prematurely,
This “Pure”-ly presented contract;
All words in abstract phrasing,
Written with poor pacing
But customer facing, for sure.
How else could we be lured?
And now we must endure this world,
We recklessly unfurled.
The same that once was hurled on them,
So we shouldn’t condemn,
Let’s relieve this mayhem somehow…
I think I’ve got it now!
Why should we pull the plow once more?
There are people less soar,
Comfortable with chores and dumb,
I bet they’ll work for crumbs,
Maybe even just some honey!
Kids these days are funny,
“Do you want some money, as such?”
Fair wage?! Entitled much?!
Era
Upon era built with
ideas made stone by
those who knew only
how to use them,
on orders from those who
knew only how to swing them,
as opposed as the digits are,
coming together to grasp
the world and create
structures so great
that no one sees
the sadness
the blood
or the guilt
thick within
the substrate.
The light is gone,
Words fall on swords;
All pawns are cleared,
Those we feared wake,
Revered now for our own sake.
Who among us
Would suspect,
Discuss; decide-
We died that day
Inside the womb where dreams play.
That endless night,
Makes low-light loud,
And sight fleeting,
Retreating, black,
Seeking there the light we lack.
Morning; I stare out the window,
Watching the dawn drenched city grow,
Sharp edges in repose stretch against light,
Wrapped in the wind as it listlessly blows.
My mind; pulled like thread through last night,
Weaving together thoughts in plight,
Suddenly stops; shocked by abstract static;
Two separate acts of will locked in fight.
One; against the wind and frantic,
A fit of limbs lost in panic,
Save for a lit cigarette and its core,
The stick on a spinning plate, all manic.
The other; the same, and no more,
But held still. Down to the last pore.
Perhaps a mime in study, petrified,
Yet- even the wind and smoke would not war.
It was all wrong; “move!” my mind cried,
Could it be time itself had died?
I set my drink down to shout some protest.
As if heard, I watched as their eyes complied.
They pierced; with a twinkle of jest,
Surely, a sparked light to impress,
And the ember core laughed a brighter red,
Stagnant smoke blossoming in the egress.
In that small space; all else seemed dead,
The wind there could not come to head,
Rather it would bend over and around,
As not to touch form or smoke as it fled.
Still; the core burned something profound,
Until that twinkled eye was drowned,
A stream of tears that would not stop once freed.
Poor soul was not frozen, but instead bound.
And then; I felt in me his need,
A ravenous little red seed,
That burned like a cigarette set to fire,
And consumed my mind with an intense greed.
Bring this to end; spoke my desire,
Movement is all that you require.
But was I speaking to them or to me?
How could I ever let this transpire?
I breathe; but my lungs won’t agree,
Nothing inside of me is free,
Until my foot burns hot from dropped coffee.
I scream; look down. Look up. Nothing to see.
Grow Gray With Me 