Palpable shame demands a distraction
Same old reactions, and inaction allows
The ember to sear into flesh,
Toss it around to remember it less,
To arouse less suspicion
Or delay the imposition of conscience
And whatever legal terms apply.
A nonsense-binge denies the evident,
But hinges on turning a blind-eye
To the relevant and essential.
An element of dismissal
In the realm of consequential.
Half the pleasure is in the hope
The child awake on Christmas night
Envisioning some unknown heights
Of bliss, awaiting first light
To awaken their scope.
Half the agony is in the fear,
The woman on the edge of labor pains,
With everything to lose, or to gain,
On the other end of unsustained,
Unmeasured anguish drawing near.
All that we anticipate
Always becoming half our fate.
There was a time when you were near,
And our tender years unsung
All my love was in my heart,
But never on my tongue
And shadows fell on quiet thoughts
Before our years were wrung.
Many times my blood’s been hot
Deafening in my ear,
I spoke the things I never ought,
And you never ought to hear
And distance wrapped its scaly tail
Around my words severe.
Regret is grown from planted seeds,
And blooms on either side
The stream of man’s timeline
His cowardice and pride
Fertilizes his fruitful ground
Reaping woe betide
And who can say what yields more dread
The gush of malice spoken
Or the love that’s left unsaid?
I waited for you
When the night stretched his spine,
I left a light burning
Sleepless at your shrine
Are you still mine?
Who am I
If I’m more myself without you?
All I’ve known follows me to bed,
But I’m a stranger to the view
And I’m afraid to pursue.
We don’t slough off our stories
As a snake’s skin is shed,
We are still standing
Wherever we’ve tread
And wherever lies ahead.
The minimalist in me still calls
To trim the fat from every hall
Purging until I scrape the walls
Eliminating the clutter sprawl.
But the mom in me says stay,
A toy in the hall is a toy still in play,
And one by one each toy gives way
To dreadfully quiet days.
I am a Protestant daughter;
My Catholic mother
Birthed me in the water
And I drifted farther
Than she would reach.
I washed up on Neverland.
I read the works of the lost boys
Who also traveled unmanned
Bereft of the pride and poise
That mitigates confession.
An orphan community
A ragamuffin clan,
Who found unity in the impunity
They drank from the hand
Of their Father.
The fear that rides upon my back
And chews upon my ear
Holds me still, holds me here
To feed his next attack
And I must act
I know it well, be it a stranger
But all at risk, all in danger
I cling to as intact
Even if it leaves me sterile
And is it the fear I’ve worn
Or the mass that gives it form
That puts me in this peril?
Every voice begs to be heard,
And what have I to provide?
More of the same old absurd
Verses misapplied,
Thank you, sir, I tried.
Every platform speaks aloud
Of the author’s expertise,
But I live under a shroud
Ignorance by degrees
Silence Please
For remembrance of the nearly lost
Are pangs severe to feel,
But there is payment for the cost,
It clatters through the coffer seal
And echoes whence it has been tossed.
How alike we must have been,
Two fraternals in our mother’s womb
Which is the watered earth that spins
‘Til parasites of sin consumed
The features we once shared akin.
We pause on our reflection:
The dam of time.
I flinch at your inflection;
I see you glare at mine.
We pray in different directions
And the sublime quality of similarity
Is strangled with our spacious disparity.
There are things in life
We cannot change,
Cannot bear, cannot
Resist to rearrange.
I throw myself upon hard facts,
But even as I concentrate
On the general consensus view
Hard facts can never compensate
For the fathomless and unfading
Longing of the soul.
Reason has been my closest friend,
But does not leave me whole.
These things I cannot change
I treat as foreign and bizarre,
But they are not so strange:
They are a part of who we are,
These wild souls spinning on a ball-
And hard facts really aren’t quite so hard after all.
viewingcamelot 