Tag: #AprilCheerPepper

4 insignificant Stanzas

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems8 Comments

Stark and bland and beige and bare:
The rule applies, without, within —
That you can let the light flood in,
And still nobody quite be there

The nights are hard, then comes the day,
For truth is found where it’s not sought:
That love’s a thing that can’t be bought,
Or had much any other way

The same old windows, same old door,
But it is an ironic scene —
That one could be, in quarantine,
No lonelier than before

Online, I sold my emptiness,
But in return, I nothing got:
The right price for a worth of naught
Delivered to the wrong address

The Window of An Age

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems4 Comments

The seal upon the window of an age:
Like lights that glimmer, loosely linked in lines,
The purple calm upon the yellow rage.

Though sighted, still the best we see’s through blinds:
A city skyline and a moldboard plow —
Is that the view that this, our time, defines?

Perspectives, formed by what we will allow
To pass the panes of this, our entryway,
Whose bias we will see, but disavow.

A tension born of cant and cabernet,
That drips along the line of discontent
Where workaround becomes the workaday.

The harmony of all that gets misspent
Upon tomorrows lost in wreck and rage —
Before the time to steel, and reinvent

The seal upon the window of an age…

The Silent Hour

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems4 Comments

The silent hour comes, and when it’s so,
We gaze upon an ever-changing flow
That we can’t comprehend, or quite take in:
But where there are no answers, still we go.

When all the things we thought would give us sway
Within the silent hour slip away,
Then frail and tiny as we are, we stand:
The heritage within, our DNA.

Not every hat’s a crown, nor chair a throne,
And sometimes, weariness strikes heart, and bone,
But do not fear the silent hour’s call:
The stillness has a beauty of its own.

One Old Couple

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems6 Comments

We’d, in summer, see them sitting
In their yard, beyond the hollow,
From our bikes, the rain permitting:
Smiling then, their eyes would follow,
Children done with summer play,
Heading home at fade of day.

One old couple: wrinkled, graying,
Side by side with shadows growing:
That their hearts for us were praying,
We’d no way of really knowing.
But, our youth was not such blindness,
We could not detect their kindness.

Then, new summer on the canyon,
She was in the chair alone, now:
And we saw that her companion,
Must have died. We knew it, somehow.
All us boys took off our caps then,
Age eleven, or perhaps ten.

So she mouthed a thankful greeting;
We, his honor guard, departed.
Hearts that grow with one less beating,
Come from what that first heart started.

Weeds grow thick now in the hollow,
Mockingbird, and jay, and swallow,
Singing: “Life’s a storm, a torrent:
Love’s forever — people aren’t.”

Black and Wide

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems6 Comments

Without, within — from whence comes all the noise?
The inner world is sketchy, black and wide:
To draw it right, you must have equipoise.
The lines need only be as you decide:
No other voice can question, or deride —
So build the landscapes where you’d love to dwell,
And make a temple of your citadel.

Within, without — these words are much the same.
The pale and thin becomes the black and wide;
The waters murmur softly, “none to blame –”
But other whispers follow, amplified.
A loving heart is still the truest guide
To where you’d love to — want to — need to be,
The seeing soul’s lost sanctum by the sea.

Kyrielle at Dawn

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems5 Comments

Across, beyond, and in between,
This is the place where we exist;
These limits we can’t contravene —
  For now, we gaze into the mist.

We see the sunlight on the rise,
But with the day, will it persist?
So much that seems is in disguise:
  For now, we gaze into the mist.

From long ago, the voices tell
The struggles of which lives consist:
To be — it means, to be unwell —
  For now, we gaze into the mist.

In music, and in memory,
In those last-held, and those first-kissed,
Are love and hope, life’s treasury —
  For now, we gaze into the mist.