Tag Archives: existentialism

Stagehand

Found
on the ground, a rhythm in the dirt
like a cackling brook beneath the surface
the sound is nervous
confounding any sense of purpose.
Look around
[you];
while you are free most are bound
a town full of brown slacks
round spectacles
all shapes are there on stage,
but the spotlight is on the testicles
because there lies rationality
or so says the old spectacle;
a fashion of resounding sterility.
Anonymity the greatest renown
or so says the celebrity.
So what if it costs our identity?
foster instead gratitude
over an exhausting attitude,
those, “what-ifs” reeling always around the head.
That fish you wish you’d caught?
You’ve already fought before and tossed back.
It wasn’t about what it had
but what you lacked.
Now, you’re on the other side,
more mad than glad that bridge was crossed
yet always
still
lost.

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.

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.

Echoes

I don’t want to be stuck down here
the metal creaking
my form popping into something smaller
               and smaller
                              and smaller.

Without light sound is the last reflection
               I see myself
               I see myself
breaking,
                              like breaths fighting for relevance.

               I see myself
               less than I was when that sound was made
                              and diminishing quickly.

               I see myself
               and no one else
futile, trapped beneath the world.

Love

Major Briggs intones his greatest fear,
tortured, tied up and drained,
“That love is not enough.”

Love is not enough

More is left unsaid than is spoken.
Consider now this mystery,
invoke those dead words.
What shape do they take?
Are they answers or questions?

Perhaps love became too much
and when the heartless could find none within,
they manifested it
a product of those things they could wield.
Wealth, power, fame, control
all the monsters love was meant to shield
instead empowered.

Here now, we retreat- overwhelmed;
our love too hard to bring
en masse against their replacements
Reduced and redundant
in a world that suffers only the effortless to survive.

Major Briggs is dead,
as well as the actor who played him
but his fear is still there in me.