Tag: Blank Verse

Across the White Abyss

A shade I see, across the white abyss…

Does love tell tales, or does it silent stride
Across the frozen yard in wintertime?

I know of fires, burning lower now,
That still retain the passion in their smoke,
Although their coals be few, and scattered poor.

Though breath be seen, it is a ghost’s lament:
To see what can’t be felt, to hear a voice,
But know that feelings shall no more have sway,
And have life without living, night and day.

The pain may not be felt, but still be there —
What’s true of pain is also true of hope,
But that is more than twice as hard to know.

But even still, the boiling kettle needs
The water we must fetch from down the way…

… across the white abyss, into the void

the truth, it breathes but briefly

the truth, it breathes but briefly on the march,
the eyes, they scan so quickly for the dream;
you sat, ensconced, beneath the tree of peace,
the years of fear now ripples passed away.

take love from off the dresser where ’twas left:
(if you’ve the heart to grow a little smile)
then send me news, from underneath the tree
of how you’ve grown, and how your heart has leapt.

for valentines and bears and father’s tears,
for mysteries that flow, to flow again;
the truth, it breathes but briefly on this earth —
but love is all, as it was all… back then

snow-cherries

the queens of meritocracy, who sing
of shortness in the lifespan, and the fall
of capillaries once encumbered flush,
the way that halls for Kostelanetz filled,
when everyone who knew was frozen red.

hereby the wind, afraid it might be late,
takes bits of snow with it, to reassign
a crinoline escape to stalk and stem,
a baritonal escapade in frost,
and caravan of jesters in the snow.

Driving Through Villages

They drove through villages for hours, and he
Was just a boy, but still he watched, enthralled.
What seemed like sameness wasn’t so to him,
Like models come to life, this row of toys.

The roofs, the windows, factories, and spires,
The bits of grass and trees, the shops and cars,
The animals, the kids out playing football,
The houses, big and grand, or small and fine —

His eyes, so sharp, discerning, saw it all:
The artist loves much others might find dull

Sunday Morning, 6 A.M.

Surrounded gray by interlocking noise,
Across the chasm bridge and moving moat,
Into the pointed teeth of the abyss,
A crosswind stinging high, and slipping low,
A traveler: a wanderer, a waif,
Amid the pilgrims, frozen, bent, or warped,
Lopsided and misshapen with their loads.

How few there are who hear for stopping ears
With sounds of luxury from far away —
A few more who might see, with heads unbowed —
The slow advance of many into one,
Like dust motes on a sunbeam, settling
Into an attic, locked away and lost,
Forgotten, hopeless, locked away and lost.

Depressive Thoughts – 3

The woods are bright here, in the autumn sunshine;
This old, abandoned place way off the road —
I think about the old ones, long forgotten;
Their many faces crowd into my mind

That they were babies, kids – had youth and passion –
Before the stretching years gave them to me;
They’d seen their ardor out of fashion falling,
The wise among us: petrified, ignored

Who owned this lonely cottage I can’t Google,
Although, upon their maps, I see it’s there —
Technology knows everything and nothing
That matters anyway, why we should care

For most do not – don’t care – and never have done;
We live within a blind, selfish desire —
And life leads onto life, with old life dying;
So few that will remember we were here

This old, abandoned building, my companion;
The long-forgotten ones, they are my friends —
This old, abandoned building in the sunshine:
The end of all our damp
And empty
Lives

drank the shadows

the night came fast, and so they drank the shadows;

then woke to light that stung and scratched their eyes.

a gallery now stripped of all its paintings,

uncluttered with the evidence that they

had ever changed or terraformed surroundings.

the day had poured into each crack and crevasse,

the floor seemed new again, as though to say

“you had your fill of dark, the spring is coming:

come feel the possibilities and go.”

but they no longer heeded to the light,

but lingered just to taste the last few dregs