Tag: Despair

The Ugliness of Life

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The ugliness of life, it waits
Around the corner, in the dark;
For all we might procrastinate,
The ugliness of life will leave it’s mark.

For long with patience will it seek
The moments we are down, or weak,
And scour down the shores and docks,
The country roads, or city blocks,
Or happy pathways in the mist
That we might hap to walk upon.
The ugliness of life, it sits
And from its hiding place, it won’t be drawn.

Until the moment it might choose
To show itself, to our regret:
When all we seem to have, we lose,
And our few certainties, upset.
Yet still we travel, as we must,
Our meagre stock of hope and pride,
With ugliness around, we trust
It’s sister, loveliness, is just outside…

The ugliness of life is there,
Around the corner, every day;
In all we seek, for all we dare,
The ugliness of life won’t
Go away

To My Friend (Who I Do Not Yet Know)

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems10 Comments

When I was in my twenties
My body fell apart
And inflammation spread down to
The lining on my heart

I started to have seizures
My platelet count was low
I was awash in bruises
From my head down to my toe

They had to take out part of
The structure of my back
My spleen was then the next to go
And what else? I lost track

I had to go on steroids
And gained X million pounds
Believe me when I tell you
It was worse than it sounds

The guy I asked to watch my house
Cleaned out my bank account
While I was in the hospital
With all this to surmount

And I was so depressed
I wanted all to end —
But what I want to tell you
My still yet unmet friend,

Is sometimes good things happen
That we cannot explain;
That I, somehow, got better
And found relief from pain

I wish that I could guarantee
A bolt out of the blue
But healing one day came to me
And could still come to you

Connected

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The emptiness that is my soul,
The hopelessness that lies this way,
Are each a temporary thing:
For moods are minutes in a day,

The day that life is in this span,
And questions come as answers flee,
As dreaming hovers, like the clouds
That swirl around us restlessly.

These chemicals that we call “us”
Are scattered bits of foreign stars,
With each a flickering, at best,
That maybe lights, or maybe mars

The footsteps of some other’s way.
This is the truth that solace knows:
That where we go, some other’s gone,
And someone in the future goes,

For we’re connected, though we feel
Apart, alone, and frankly, lost —
For empty roads and searching hearts
Both find the ones who life has tossed

About. Like you. I know it’s true,
For every bit of warm regard
You send my way, there is the trace
Of how well you know, “life is hard.”

But out there, on the road you’re on,
Are different detours and travails,
For though you’ve been rerouted, it
Cannot be truly said, “she fails –”

As long as you – and me as well –
Can be true to our loves, our friends,
And try our best from where we are,
And when we ought to, make amends,

Then barren times, and barren earth,
Need not dismay or set us back.
For every path is different, every
Surplus is a kind of lack

And it’s our choices make us, us.
Not circumstance, or skill, or looks,
What kind of car we own or drive,
How many cats, how many books —

Our character they say’s our fate.
I have not always welcomed this:
But I have seen the sunrise smile,
And I have felt my true love’s kiss,

So empty roads need not be so.
If I perspective take, and keep,
I can adjust to hills and turns
And when I stop, relax, and sleep,

And know, that though we be but mist,
We have a purpose here, today,
And that each cloud that wanders, will
Get lost, sometimes, along the way.

Charcoal

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems3 Comments

Every Saturday, her dad
Would grill in their backyard;
With charcoal hot on cinder blocks,
While she kept watch and guard.

And savory and sapid-sweet
Were those times without care;
Until the day the grill went cold,
And her dad wasn’t there.

See, no one lit those coals again,
Although she looked in vain;
In bars and underneath soft sheets
She sought that taste again.

She could not find her lost charcoal;
Her desperate search – no trace –
Till she woke in a small white room
With charcoal on her face

Storms May Rage

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems3 Comments

She’s abandoned, wild, uncertain
Tearing up the winding stairs;
Through the backroom’s secret curtain
Up past all the lifted prayers

Dark the angry night is screaming
All she had is lost and gone:
Lightning flashing, rain is streaming
One last task that she’s bent on

But the tower’s not deserted
One old woman there’s withdrawn:
Calmly looks up, as alerted
Says, “I know what’s going on.

I know what has happened, dearest –
And this way is not the way:
There’s a future still ahead, much
Better than your yesterday.”

That was forty years ago and
Now she waits within the tower:
For the young girl broken-hearted
Who she’ll give a bit of power

Just to know that life’s not ending
Just to show what’s yet-to-be:
Storms may rage, with doom impending
But there’s hope
Past what
We see

The Cheerless Road of Winter

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The saddest day I’ve ever had
Lies shrouded there, in time;
The nights I spent among the mad,
These are not yet in rhyme

The cheerless road of winter, where
Despair was born of doubt –
Just like the greatest loss I’ve known
That I don’t write about

Yet, I hope what I do not say’s
Relatable, somehow –
There’s madness in the very air,
It’s all around us now

Still there, within the frozen past,
The branches bare I see;
A lonely road in winter, where
I lost the best
Of me

a dancer by the sea

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems2 Comments

he walked a lonely concrete stair
surrounded by barbed wire;
the things he thought he knew were gone,
and joy had gotten shyer

he felt despair, and anger, and
a soreness in one knee,
when, breathless, at the top, he found
a dancer by the sea

the music, and her moves, bespoke
the truth behind the veil,
of joy and sadness, love and hope,
that beauty can avail —

her movements were the ocean, in
totality – and parts –
salvation there in abstract form,
a rescue by the arts —

and when at last he did descend,
a new life had found birth:
and consolation’s many forms
had given his life worth

for there is ugliness, it’s true,
but reasons, yet, to be:
in music, and in stories, and
in dancers by
the sea