Paeans To Brokenness
Half-frozen mud, cold bracing air
A wind that makes my neck aware
That leaves torn from the tree will die
These poor gray strays who tumble by
And like the ghostly light I seek
The morn recedes behind the line
Only of chance to risk a peek
At drifting lives
Like yours
And mine
(“Aware” – 11-19-2014)
I wake to dew; I know the world’s been crying –
We cover all that up with lights, and noise —
Distractions we’ve no trouble in supplying,
Surrounded by our pageantry, and toys —
For every day’s an endless night to someone;
And dreams lie choked, forgotten, in the grass —
I know the world’s been crying, that’s for certain:
With tears turned into bars of
Wire glass
Boys lose much
The day they first learn
Not to cry
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
We cannot find a common ground
To share a point of view,
For I stand here, in judgment, of
The things that make you, you
And you are there, entombed within
That fort of your devising;
That there’s no common ground for us
Just isn’t that surprising
But there’s a universal truth
In all strife to be found:
Our hatreds go with us to graves
Beneath a common
Ground
Sorrow is busy teaching empathy now.
There are classes daily, and nightly —
And we’re all enrolled already:
We just may not
Know it yet
Why won’t you ever show yourself?
She asks, at their low tide —
Why don’t you ever let me see
The man you are inside?
Why must you hide yourself from me?
There must be someone there —
Someone who has real feelings
Who can cry, or who can care
She pauses, and looks straight at him —
To give him time to fill
The silence up with words; alas —
He never
Never
Will
