Wretched thing.
scratching,
nails against stone,
the howls of one breaking;
tumbling up the long hollow
thrashing weakly against the wood.
My fists thrash back,
“Die”
[that wretched thing] screeches a reply,
languishing miserably amidst echoes.
drowning in shallow waters of anguish and hostility;
request denied.
No
is a trimmed tree
groomed grass
and smooth round rocks
choreographed through shadows and sunlight
so the errant eye can rest
where they may not.
No
is a deep breath
to fuel questing thoughts
that birth a flood of words
crashing against the levees built by time
slowly chipping away
what years could not.
No
is a thin line
then many
a stroke of color
careful cut stone
the complexities of life expressed
when words will not.
No
is a new way to know
what no one knew
or could have known
before they were shown.
No
is an excuse to say yes.
A turmoil off in the distance,
far away and behind me,
sends intensity over his coat;
even the dew drops stand on end.
How far that gaze must travel,
the sun, the world set alight;
all the big things that begat the little,
all the little things that begat the big.
Against the dawn his silhouette remains,
captured by some concern that is not me,
while I ponder, what could it be?
in all the world, what could it be?
But the song of now plays strong.
Cold air, low clouds, joyous trees;
the both of us passive members;
in the ambience of that ensemble.
A loud break cracks behind me,
his head drops quickly to his breast.
Dew shakes loose from the antlers
like diamonds discarded to the ground.
He raises his leg slowly
as I raise my sights,
both of us anxious;
for the end that is coming.
It strikes like lightning.
The profound shape of courage
timeless and tangible.
Curiosity,
the spoken word;
like a warm meal,
patient
and kind;
attentive and passionate.
The optimism of a past still strong
pulsing an infectious rhythm,
ripples in a pond;
echoes,
harmony,
song.
Define emptiness.
Take from it that terrifying essence
the void-
leave nothing that was
and replace it all with truth.
Your truth,
as well as you know it.
The shape of the earth,
the way light works,
right,
wrong,
what direction to face-
when all is lost.
Find any truth to place there
and keep it from getting cold.
That chill-
is cancerous.
Though you can take on the abyss
none can suffer its existence
in the periphery.
Reflected sarcasm
the deep inhale between bouts of laughter-
cancerous.
Find hope among the crested waves
laughing
searching for a shore they cannot see
but knowing…
Find courage among the giant beetles
raging
their short lives only deadlines
but fulfilled…
Find love among the sober stars
burning
giving of themselves unconditionally
but radiant…
Find purpose among the moments lived
spooling
the ebb and flow crashing, waning
but thriving…
The fog that hides the day as night retires,
shades of sunlight grasping for purchase
struggling in undulating swirls,
hoping to find in ambiguity, some purpose.
The rising darkness from the depths of fire
billowing into the night to throttle the stars,
like open mouths cradling soundless screams
or the profound words of a dead man’s memoirs.
The way a tree feels when bound to expire,
stripped of all its lush extravagance
the machinations of a world that brought it life,
now turned to break it beneath those same elements.
The slow pyrotechnics of stagnant air’s attire
sustained in sanguine starlight while time drifts away,
held like the pot won in a game of marbles,
careful hands celebrating their display.
The decisions we unearth in quagmire
seeking more an end than a right or wrong,
transfixed by distant familiarity
the difference lost in the chorus of the song.
The way our histories resurface as satire
courage marred by fear, the bold now timid and pale
those truths that hide in the present revealed
once pitted against the rest and placed on a scale.
The thoughts that in twilight give cause to perspire
when the permanence of absence is paramount,
trickling through the cracks in our confidence
though it is only ourselves we need to surmount.
Teeth grind against time, older than heart beats;
bury themselves in the nape of the world
and through that grit they grunt back, “I dare you,”
so in droves we come to mine from them ‘truth.’
But ‘truth’ does not move through time as we do.
Desperate for relevance in our space,
we seek stability in the journey;
while what is true finds no movement worthy.
Thus those mandibles remain static
while we struggle for purchase against them;
should we win, overcoming their long face
we will have, in the end, lost the race.
The drums of victory may course in our veins
as we stand atop the corpse of impulse
to reflect on the unconquerable
hoping someday to be ponderable,
yet our triumph is too brief a passing
to reconcile against the scales of time,
like a flash of lightning through the night sky;
radiance wasted in a blink of an eye.
Fire surges us forward at speed
piercing clouds and comprehension
threading violently through the chaotic cotton
eluding any eyes that would dare to follow.
A monstrous arch that frowns against the world
all the fruited things now rotten
corrupt with anima and conflict
warring over what little remains of Apollo.
Human nature is to define and to contradict
and they do so with unquenchable bloodlust
condemning their opposition without discourse
at a pace that leaves their memories shallow.
We crash to the earth, nowhere they could predict
a bedlam of the horrors willfully forgotten.
Not for caution
the rain
like water toiling away
at the bottom of a black pot
heavy with industry
an entire era of invention
crashing to the earth
burning away the weeds
with acid and ash
taking everything else with it
while we dance and sing,
make love
until at last we drift away into sadness.
again.
that rain…
even on sunny days
is always seeping deeper beneath the surface.
Grow Gray With Me 