Talismans of Life and Fortune
The arrogance of avarice
Is known to all humanity,
And yet, it hasn’t slowed a bit,
No decrease in cupidity
As every day, we read again,
Of twisted, dark, venality:
But empty and esurient
We bumble toward mortality
Here in the houses of the dead
We see the sheer insanity
Of filling days with emptiness
And shallow dreams
And vanity
For truly base profanity
Behold now human vanity:
You set your stall
To know it all —
It’s nothing but insanity
You seek to teach sagacity
Far past your poor capacity;
And so the young
Are therefore hung
By daft obscene audacity
You should then be more circumspect
In viewing things in retrospect;
If house and hall
Should start to fall
You might have been
The architect
… it’s a sad day, indeed
The old jokes do not make him laugh
The old dress doesn’t make him look
The old him was all into her
The lapse of time was all it took
The vanity she entertained
The love she thought forever true
The hollowness we come to see
In who we are
And what
We do
A life led by blind desire,
Lurching toward the funeral pyre
Happenstance spun into meaning,
Private times spent posing, preening
Strings of words on worthless air,
Tableaus struck with no one there
Emptiness and vanity,
Sheltered by insanity
Carved from cells once formed by bliss:
So familiar
All of this
How this house sits empty,
That was full of people;
She is now like
Someone bereaved
She that was great
In our community
The princess of all palaces
Is now good for nothing
But taxes
Somebody sped up time.
The station full, and I was young
And then somebody sped up time:
The years whirled by and now I’m here
Alone and in a desert. I’m
Surprised at how the years have flown
And how the glory I had known
Could be reduced to scrap and rust,
And affluence decay
To dust
How desolate this spot is now.
I walk around the emptiness –
What once was meant as life support
Lies dead among the quietness
And as the summer shadows move,
I hear the evening start its song;
The sun is headed home to rest,
And I should head home too,
Ere long
= = = = =
(I actually took this photo, which is a rarity. – Owen)
