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
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.
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
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
See where the morning wakes on smoky clouds
The world continues even though we sleep
Last night the pores the skin the hair the beard
Refused to stop their work despite the heart
That emptied with the hollow cries of night
A stabbing pain the realization cold
The way that shadows lose significance
And even dreams fold back onto despair
But eyes will open drearily it’s true
And feet walk out into the gath’ring day
The body yet may struggle, quitting ne’er
As sleep, we grow, the living flesh
Must try
So I was with my friends, and just sixteen.
We hung out at the the beach and watched the girls;
It struck me, none of us were really “tens” –
Nor arguably, the best more than a five
So who were we to sit and judge the world?
This thought, once I’d conceived it, never left;
It separated me from other guys
And in their club, I never fit again —
At least, not insofar as dating went.
I came to see things from the other side;
And though I’ve had my share of selfishness
I lost my double-standard on that day
Which I can still recall, through many years;
A sense of justice overcame my pride.
At sixteen, I was hopeless with ideals,
But why this one stayed with me
I can’t
Say
I wish that things were simple, but they’re not.
For life is like a test, a spelling bee:
With one mistake, we see our fortunes fall,
And slump back down to rue our own disgrace.
Or maybe, we’re delusional. That works.
The world is always someone else’s fault:
As stand there, our rectitude intact,
Among the ruins enemies create.
Or we can be aggressive in our ire:
And reach and grasp and grab and steal and take
Whatever we might hanker for, or want,
And maybe think, “Well, circumstance be damned.”
For we can wanton lust, or wanton hate,
And we can take our time or run around,
And try to make thinks simple for our minds
By falsifying evidence of eyes.
I wish that things were simple, but they’re not.
The good and bad are mixed up in this world,
And it is hard to separate them here:
All we can do is see things
As they are
the best days that we ever have and know
are just so many heartbeats in a span
we have to form a story from such things
as are to hand within our daily dance
a thousand different ways i could have said
the things that now lie choked amid the weeds
and you, a steeple, torn from off a roof
aren’t meant to point the way you’re pointed now
the best days are a tangle on a bed
and laughter so ridiculous it hurts
but you must feel the hot earth on your feet
and give away the things you never had
The joy of climbing that far off the ground,
The taste of fruit you have picked yourself;
Most children, still, these real things want to feel,
More than mere images, or bits of light.
It’s we that cloak in artificial ways
Experience that they are born to want:
By hiding in our plastic fortresses
Protecting them from being who they are.
The apple trees are there; the rivers too —
The dirt, the grass, the water, and the sky:
The joy of all that they might learn to do,
In all the simple things we keep them from
