Once I loved a lass
capricious as the sun;
Equal quick to pass,
and equal dark when done.
What was her name, I wonder?
Time grinds regret to dust;
The stone that she lies under
Will tell me, if it must.
-
January 24, 2013 / Writing
-
September 5, 2012 / Writing
You sleep in silence ceaseless,
A never-ending when;
Whole as broken bodies
Will never be again.Laid out in rows you number
A geometric span;
Six feet measures dread
In the souls of man.Dreams and hopes and hates
All perish just the same;
The dusty dark envelops
Pride as well as shame.Each gravestone encompasses
A boundless world of hurt;
And silently we envy
Those fled below the dirt. -
August 29, 2012 / Writing
The steeple screams in glory
Up in the boundless sky;
‘The Beast is dead!’ bells thunder
And all rejoice but I.Sweet wine from ceaseless toasts
Pours out a drowning flood;
But the glasses crimson-crusted
Seem clotted thick with blood.The day is won; his bones
Moulder in the dark unknown.
In a daze under the stormclouds,
I am with him, and alone.Justice sprung from murder,
Salvation bought with sin;
The Beast is dead, long live the Beast,
His new home is within. -
I want… everything to go smooth for just a little while. That’s all I ask, Lord. Please. A little while? A month, even, just one month?
Yeah, fat chance. But at least the things that matter – the people that matter – are still with me. I can endure anything with the help of the ones I love.
Lien did a charming job of trying to make me food for my birthday. I mean, it was disgusting, but that’s hardly what matters. I was just… so overwhelmed by the gesture. Trying to cook for the very first time, for me? I’d have swallowed poison in those circumstances. And then throwing me a surprise birthday party… I could have used less surprise so I was wearing more than a towel when everyone showed up, but the thought is what counts.
I just… wish that what had happened afterward… hadn’t. But it did, and all I can do is try not to dwell on it. Like I said before, at least the people that matter are still with me.
On a happier note, I found a poem I wrote… oh, it must have been two years ago now? I was seized with inspiration and wrote it on the back of a piece of mail, and thankfully I never throw out my substantive letters. LEt me copy it here just in case, though:
Swallows
Some call a bard a fool who’s fancy free,
good for naught but gossip and a song;
for an ale-drenched evening, pleasant company,
but useless when the night work’s hard and long.Myself, I say the value of a smile
Is reckoned best by those who went without;
The champions of art have oft stood trial
Within the courts of misery and doubt.Our backs are strong and work has crafted leather
Of hands that write or draw or pluck the strings;
In service to our craft we often weather
A myriad of strange and subtle stings.So laugh with us, or smile or cry or gawk –
tis how we please our hearts and earn our bread.
But if you disdain, you know not what you mock;
For bards have danced where others fear to tread.…right, I’d best stop writing in this and start writing a few letters instead, then get back to Southside. Their need for medical care, even inexpert medical care, is too extreme to go unaddressed.
-
April 11, 2012 / Writing
The Lost Women I have known
an endless string of paper cutouts
fluttering in the breeze
Touch them and they bruise in colors
that lay in wait all along
underneath the smooth white surface;
touch them and they draw blood
with perfect precision,
though it stains them also.The Lost Women I have known
Such pleasing displays when viewed head-on;
such a razor-thin sharpness when you slide
around to a vulnerable side.
From that angle they are all the same,
cut from a pattern written to wound.It paralyzes me now, this feeling
That now I know to sidestep the crackle,
the sweet dry rustle of papery laughs;
that now I must always hunt for the trail
of two-dimensional betrayal.
It paralyzes me to know I must circle
like a wary predator, because otherwise
I am prey.It paralyzes me because knowledge
is worse than ignorance;
because knowledge means I -must- touch,
disturb the placid surface with purple ripples.
Knowledge makes you my enemy,
means that things sever, and fall apart;Knowledge makes you Lost.
-
March 15, 2012 / Writing
I thought I’d know what to say about it by now. But I don’t – not in prose.
She lies enshrined in secrets in her grave,
beneath six feet of cloying, veiling soil;
the ‘whore’, the innocent they could not save,
the temptess torn from this cruel mortal coil.None can know her failed and final aim,
and none can disentangle truth from art;
She lived and died in chaos none could tame,
with none the more acquainted with her heart.Those who claim truth but grasp at brittle straws,
in desperate meaning-making of her deeds –
She sleeps within the Urth’s devouring maw,
and none can cipher what her lost heart reads.So let her rest in shrouded mystery
and label not her deepest loyalties;
To the Lord her soul; her motives, history,
the rest of us keep naught but memories. -
March 12, 2012 / Writing
The board is laid
With pieces made
Solely for their roles.Born a pawn
I soldiered on
A king deep in my soul.I won each square –
Means foul or fair –
My foes I drove before me.The lords and knights
applaud my fights
and silently deplore me;“For all his heart
and subtle art
We cannot change our birth;Cross the board,
become a Lord?
Aye, you have the worth –But know you stand
In foreign land
And don’t forget your blood.Drink the wine,
in silk recline,
But you suckled in the mud.” -
February 10, 2012 / Writing
We are the same, she and I
Two broken bottles after the barfight;
We shatter skulls.
Though side by side,
companionable on the counter,
grind us together and edges only shriek-
Always a half-step apart.We are so different, she and I
Silk all the way through or on the surface,
a shining veneer.
Though of two worlds,
the coarse and the supple,
we cleave into something extraordinary-
An interval of harmony.
