Tag Archives: death

Nova

Those eyes so oft transfixed
by only things they lorded over
would but on occasion dane
to dine on the extravagance above;
a passing glance at the moon,
a brief aside with the procession of stars,
the fascinating contemplations of ephemeral comets,
or the longing gaze into the darkness of an eclipse.

Long ago we could not afford this appreciation.
The stars were savage campfires,
the moon a wrathful god.
Comets would herald the end of man,
and an eclipse would end all else.
We could do no more than look away and feel safe
or look on in horror of what future we baited.

Stronger minds however were not sated,
and shackled those monsters to reality,
tearing them from the bosom of imagination,
so the world above could be a safer space to ruminate;
as long as we could make sense of the light and dark,
and still find comfort in the ground.

It was good,
until the darkness was swept away,
and all that is was light, be it day or night.
The sky, no more a blanket
but a bright bag zipped up tight
while we fought against it,
none of us ready to die.

Leaning in the Corner at a Dance Recital

I’m not sure now why it didn’t break,
beneath the days – turned years – turned decades,
beneath three children, four grandkids,
beneath a 50 year marriage that almost ended twice,
beneath two tours in foreign nations,
beneath coffins filled with pieces of his heart,
peppered here and there while he lived on.

Beneath countless bouts with viruses,
an embarrassing number of hangovers,
and one exchange with polio.
Beneath all the nameless failures;
the guilt, regrets and losses.
Beneath all the great successes;
the pride and the accomplishments.

Beneath every memory whether faded or strong,
it held…
he leaned on his cane to watch another memory made
                                                                  …it did not break;
and for a moment he even looked rested.

C

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.

Grow Gray With Me

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.

Dashed Against the Rocks

What prizes satin words afford!
our foreign ears made to boiling
with those that dine on finer things
describing our future delights
in fly by night campaign speeches.

Not David, but Goliaths chord
booms over the gathering throng
praising what god is left to us.
The world razed, we in its ashes,
they tell us that we are adored,

that they are umbilical cords
feeding us and making us strong.
The hollow message would echo
if the acoustics weren’t so wrong
resonating against the horde.

Insecurities long ignored
now awoken and brought along
to territories unexplored
carried away by sirens song
to rage and die on their own swords.

Caprice

Why go planting rocks to build walls
when all you want is the space between?

The borders we design around ourselves
we hope will limit us to a successful path
advancing past options that otherwise distract.
The walls that line the road ahead
lead everyone down beneath the ground dead.

The way forward is a dream of the people
the sleepless nights of the nation
and the slumbering horror of the ego.

Venture forward no longer, enjoy the empty moments;
forward is inevitable, let it come to you.
Pursue instead the present, hunt it down
track it through the vibrations of entropy
and subdue it beneath the canopy of mortality;
that dark carapace that keeps us writhing.

The victory may cost you success
but it will birth in you the knowledge
of what success really is.

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.

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.

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.