Tag Archives: history
Secrets
Butterflies are mysterious,
latticework wings, pumped by a corset of conduits beneath,
beauty-
locked in a history of back, forth and
back again.
Internment
Progress is measured in the present,
though it is dependent on the past.
While the future remains
blinded and bound in chains,
today,
is cold silence.
The Rain Barrel
Hard times like wine on the skin,
some blush between the discarded inhibitions.
Verdant memories soaking in slowly,
like ancient intercontinental trade routes;
the silent contents growing louder with history,
as too the benefits.
On sunny days, while grace shines upon us,
the vessel looks out of place.
Less than useless, an abuse of the time we have,
to remind us of the times we hate.
It aches in the light, becoming brittle planks,
on which our eyes will walk briefly,
and plunge into the depths of the day,
escape or drown, it’s all the same.
But on those rainy days they come to collect
all our troubles overflowing,
and they tell stories only the rain can hear;
thunderous applause after each quiet punchline.
It is dangerous to consume what the sky gives us,
for it may return our own gifts.
Cardboard Boxes
It’s not trash, but it should be.
I want it to be,
but someone out there;
a memory,
would hold it against me,
that tangible though brief history
discarded.
as if it didn’t live up to
some archaic pedigree
that would otherwise sustain it
unto antiquity.
Is it not enough that we lived our lives?
Survived?
Survive still,
to store those moments in boxes
or lay them amongst the refuse
and save instead that space?
How do we value emptiness
against all the time that we’ve forgotten?
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.
Conquering Mt Katahdin
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.
I’m Not Coming Home
Matted felt holds tight against the skin
the candles that light the night
have cried themselves to stubs
flickering their last efforts
against the tired authors eyes.
The words he writes seep out like sweat
something pushed through the pores
that in their passing cools the flesh
and leaves a heavy weight to the air
growing darker.
The paper beneath his heavy arm
is folded meticulously for the future
it takes the ink like a dead thing
pecked apart by carrion birds
the message he writes, hidden bones
beneath pulpy flesh.
Mumbling the shadows of those scribbled prose
he tears up against the weakness of his voice
recognizing it now as an alien thing
only to be heard again as an echo
on some other minds gramophone.
When the words run out
he will seal it with wax
a few months later it will be read
by which time he will be dead
resurrected only in those words
written, though, unsaid
played like an old record
from memories of higher fidelity.
The Forest Through the Trees
Approaching a House in the Cool Evening
I’m caught, mid step, by the lattice work
tiny wood planks interlocked
holding hands, passing over and under
form and function in tandem
drowning in green chaos, unaware
of the waxy verdant tendons
strangling them.
Desperately those vines climb
towards a sun they anticipate
but cannot know in this darkness,
the ambitions of the young – the restless
trapezing over the dormant dreams
of the old dead gods that once stood
tall
proud
fierce
and free
that once reached for the same sun
for a life that could never be.
Ode to the Pen
To you who are so confident in the sharp angles
who will not bend by force
but will shape the mind,
the scales by which our history is judged
the catalyst for all intellect divined,
I ask, what shape would be made of us otherwise?
Through you we’ve explored our history
Through you we’ve reached
Out
into the future
and found a place there
Whether
Quiet
Or loud.
Through you we have a voice that
transcends
our isolation.
Grow Gray With Me 