Nearly noon, but my little ones
Flounce about with nightgowns on
And whisper secrets urgently
While giggling out their symphonies.
They work together with tiny hands
Building tiny, fanciful, foreign lands
Of talking ponies, bears, and beasts,
Cooking huge, fantastic feasts.
All the wild world outside these walls
Spins and misses the best view of all:
Two small girls in tangled tresses
Playing in their sleeping dresses.
Long and familiar, these nights arrive,
And I know the morning sun will sting.
Tomorrow I will fail to do, fail to thrive,
Because this night brings
Wide-eyed wakefulness.
It isn’t from fear or discontent,
Just mindfulness aware, satisfied
To let my sleep dissent
From the ruling rest that gratifies
Weary flesh.
What I have here
Is real, is good,
Is more than I should,
Above what I feared.
What I’ve held all these years
I’ve carried alone
I knew, on my own
My phantom wasn’t so dear.
Now I know the need is near
To cut the suture,
Kill the hope, free the future,
Burn the path clear.
To whom shall I confess this sin?
Who could understand why I, initially,
Preserved this love so artificially?
Why I persevered since then?
I swallowed the idea of you, when
All the world was lost, was dead,
The hope of you somehow fed
All I hoped could be, had been.
You trumped the worst of men
With quiet strength, faith, loyalty.
You were my royalty.
I would have died again, and again,
Death, separation, goodbye,
The best I could give, or you could receive,
Falling muted as an autumn leaf
Caught in the wind’s last sigh.
One hundred public admissions
Confessions, contrition,
Professions, transitions,
Hesitant at first, but resistance
Gives way to persistence-
An outward existence
From quiet submissions.
I type the keys, each letter rings
As piano notes all in ebony,
And I sing
I sing along.
I’ve walked the stanzas, stalked
Definitions until I balked
And revised
And refused.
This weeping language, seeping
Into all, still keeping me
Enthralled
And grounded.
My dead playmates, but I read
All the things they said
While they lived,
And I agreed.
I agreed.
A turn of phrase as a tourniquet.
Words built empires,
Supported spires.
Wisdom reads and learns the writ
Before burning it.
Walls of words, now my own,
Generations of thought
Globally sought.
Their understanding flown
Into my home.
Phonetic currency,
Golden words
Coins of the world
I live in the availability
Of history’s prosperity.
No hand has toiled
To lift a stone or till the soil,
Nor was timber cut and laid
To build a farm or carve a glade,
No one danced in jubilee,
Nor anyone assembled peaceably,
Neither government grasping power,
Nor men banding to build a tower,
But first IDEA has taken root
And pushes men into pursuit.
I thought of you today,
The old times, the way
You steeped in frustration
At my many limitations.
If you cared, I wasn’t sure,
But I knew you’d need more
So bothered by my lack,
The unseemly attacks
You refused to see.
In some ways you punished me
For who I couldn’t be.
I’ve thought of you recently
Conducting yourself so decently
While I lived on the fringe.
I must have been unhinged
To fall in love with you.
A girl like me would never do,
Never blend into your world.
I wore my sins, my flag unfurled,
Against the backdrop of your pedigree.
I was your purgatory.
You were my paradise.
These ancient guttered streets,
Worn signs and pot holes,
Hard to follow with childish feet
Dangerous to patrol,
Spread out into the great unknown
A mission, a compulsion
Tangled with sticks and stones,
Each step its own propulsion.
Running once, and fleeing,
I’ve learned these roads now.
Enemies near and seething
Fall back silenced, disavowed.
Sometimes I still stumble
These roads have deep ruts,
But the nature of the humble
Admits falling, gets up,
Keeps walking.
Time
Finger furled miser,
Stealing, drinking years
Leaving them no wiser.
Ruthless crime.
Time
You promised humanity
You would heal all wounds.
Instead you feed vanity
Then undermine.
Time
Ruler of ruins,
But you will end.
What will you do then,
Be reassigned?
Begin again
Open-handed.
viewingcamelot 