Monthly Archives: October 2022

Look Up

The scaffolding grows in relation to failure
success
is not assumed.
Life grows with this malignancy,
While life after death life
cannot be presumed,
just an afterlife;
where we rise again to meet our every desire
and leave behind a world falling apart.
Our progeny can take shelter in the scaffolding.
Let our lives remind them, this is part of living,
only in death can we find true happiness
as serfs in a higher kingdom;
at least that’s what they tell us
the ones we serve now.

Monolith

The door before me is an absurd sarcasm
designed to be a wall when one can choose
an opening otherwise
but has been a wall for generations now.

All children try the handle once or twice
deceive their friends with curiosity
laughing at themselves echoed.

In the years of life’s setting
we try more often;
with every passing,
hoping now the memories behind us
got it wrong – nothing in between.

All the time from bookend to bookend
we are overwhelmed with openings.
A coliseum leading us deep within
until we are more spectacle than audience
at last.

In youth and uselessness we look eagerly for a way out.

Sayyidina

Sayyidna, my desert flower
the author of this refrain
though it is I that write it,
the ink, as always, bears her name.
The blossom of her life
contrast against the sterile sands
celebrated by each sparkled grain
inspires air to dance about the land.
She tells of water when it is unseen
she gifts color when the world is palid
She is thorns adorned on the defenseless
She is truth amidst the invalid
Where the sun takes all it sees
she will fruit with dew.
Where the sand consumes
she nourishes until I am renewed.
Though the dunes shift eternal
she, as always, will remain;
Sayyidina, my desert flower
the author of this refrain.

Between Lives

The blue light from the dash says it’s 2 am
otherwise it is dark outside of time.
Off the road, lost in nothing
the sounds are relegated to engine tumbles
and words that should have been spoken years ago.
To silence them only raises questions
louder than the answers they beckon.

In a place called home but a few hours past
three beds are filled with dreamers
who will wake to half the house their eyes set upon
while I will be awake still
dreaming of the opportunity to tell a story
where I am not a villain.

I whisper words to them they may never hear,
but deep inside they’ll still know;
though my voice is far away
I am always close.

An Ode to Blinking

The sliver between our open eyes
a slice between frames of light
that go on and on and on
like the water-colored frivolity
that supports those old cartoons;
bright characters in stark contrast
oblivious to the stylistic dysmorphia.

A flash of darkness
quickly set aside by the bookends of life
a pause so faint as to be forgotten
lost in the Kaleidoscope of colors;
the years as shapes, tumbling
on and on and on again
always different, always the same.

The universe moves unchallenged,
pufts of turmoil in the vast darkness,
and in that turmoil
flecks of life – flint sparks
quick flashes of light in the darkness
an irony like blinking
that goes on and on and on.

Good Grief

The day they shot our boy farrow
I did not submit myself before them
a disaster of the loss consumed by tears
nor did I sense any cause to implore them
about what his death might cost.

I was told the weight of his life
surpassed by far the weight of his death
and the space he left in his place
would leave us all bereft
only of the success we lost in his theft.

We could not in good conscience
succumb to the threat implied of his end,
silence ourselves in the loudness of his death,
and in doing, ignore the fortune of finality
to give way to the future and end the past.

Thus, when at last,  our boy farrow died
I, as well as anyone else that day
did celebrate all the rewards that
were said to be coming our way
while the executioner looked
for a new soul to blame for our dismay.

Citizens United

I wish I had enough
to budget for my vote
the cost of the ear
my representative
long since entombed in gold.

While we scrawl on paper
which evil is lesser
our betters tell us
that they are citizens
and they are united

behind something greater
than any we could wield,
as many zeros
trailing as for us lay
ahead, there to impede;

for though voting is free
positions cost money
and it behooves them
to give money power
while we still reward greed.

We too are citizens
but are not united,
we blame each other
for the lack of funding
we would need to contend

but if I could afford
to bend the golden ear,
I’d cry out in pain,
give voice to our freedoms
dying in avarice.

Khaos

Khaos reigned that one great day in June
when the world fell beneath a pall of gloom
while he brought low all that was known
and left only the flowers of violence in bloom

That terrible sound as he traced the ground
with his one companion and friend
a blood-rusted axe that shined where it cut
longing only for flesh to rend

And rend it did until it was sated
by as many souls as there are stars
those struck, expired and those missed, did live
though their hearts were enveloped in scars

For none could stand against those bloodied hands
the day that Khaos reigned,
they died or they fell beneath his knell
and the world remains forever stained.