Tag: Character Sketches

Unremitting, Askance

She looked at me askance and said
That I was unremitting
In trying to bring back the dead
Which, to her, seemed quite fitting

In that my singularity
Was my macabre mind:
A case for prolotherapy
A corpse beneath the rind

Stephanie

I still remember Stephanie,
The music of her hands —
The lyric autumn reverie,
The eyes apart from coterie,
That far horizons scanned

In Stephanie, the day stood still.
The seasons passed beyond her will,
And life was brief, but sweet —
The short years she was here with us:
One up- and one downbeat

Then Stephanie, my sober friend –
She let go of the fragile cord
That kept her holy essence penned,
And found her Springtime, in the end.
Her loving life restored —
Her aching spirit
Soared

Dhami

Her name means “beautiful night”,
And where the spirit of intelligence
Indwells, you’ll find her there.

For joy belongs to the curious:
She seeks to let her mind-wings stretch, take flight,
And every day she searches, is elation.

She asks me, “Owen, tell me,
Can I make a difference? Someone like me?”
And I say, “Dhami, yes you can.
So do not lose your sense
Of urgency.”

Ding An Sich

She first escaped at twenty-three.
A bicycle, a battered van,
A life that she could taste, because
She sampled it, at her own pace and where.

She felt the wind upon her neck,
And her own tongue within her mouth,
The ache of stretching, working limbs
That carried her the whither she would go.

A weathered book of Kierkegaard,
A necklace made of icy gold,
And one September when she had
No answers, nor desire to provide them.

And who was I? Just one regret.
A place she’d traveled to, and cried;
A type of warning of the life
She’d never settle for in place of freedom.

So, now there is a woman grown,
Who owns a bicycle no more,
Who’s seen her own two daughters go
And wanted to impart this gift, this lesson —

But cannot find the proper words
To speak of strength in time alone
That do not sound like hectoring
Or lessons quaint and from an era gone…

For night means nothing
If you’ve missed the day;
And love is only possible
If you have your own self
To give

Away

a winter window

her heart looks through the winter window

wondering, and wandering

in futures yet-to-come or ever be —

the lights are coming down, and she’s

meandering and maundering

out in the cold of irreality

 

her heart is like a broken arrow

still it tries, each waking day, to fly —

and even though

the way be frozen,

she still hears her heart’s soft

lullaby

 

Picture credit : ID 82228349 Tatsiana Hraiko | Dreamstime.com

Generation Kay

In nineteen-hundred-and-sixty-three,
As bold and bright as bright can be,
She saw a generation wake
With no regard for true, or fake:
For what the throng decides, is real,
And she knew what it was to feel.

And now, she lives upon the edge
Of what, at best, she might allege
Were she less cocksure in her ways:
But no one does that nowadays —
For she is Generation Kay:
The one who knows, and owns the day.

And Generation Kay won’t rest
Until she’s proved that she knows best,
And wipes out all who disagree –
Too dumb to know, too blind to see.
She speaks out, now, to give offense,
And claims it’s all
For tolerance