She sent me her soul,
Her song, and I sing it
In the dark I linger
Ancient sparks flowing
Lost years crooning
The vibrato rythyms we all
Tapped out on our prison walls
Our stretched voices in tune
Sing.
Sing these lost years,
Like velvet green leaves
Ripped from spring trees
The storms appear,
And we dissipate, but
We do not disappear.
We suffer loss, yes, and torn limbs,
But we live again, and
Our song is here.
All my life I’ve heard
Who I ought to be,
What I must deserve,
And how I should believe
And believe, I do
From the core of who I am
Whatever facets I eschew
Change not the slightest gram
Of the rock that won’t erode,
And the hand that can’t release-
I know that I know that I know;
I believe what I believe.
Then why don’t I conform?
This I cannot say.
The world, to me, feels worn-
And an infantile display
Of youthful promenading
Feathers flaunting wide
Perpetual self-serenading:
A ballad of blinded pride.
I don’t have the energy,
Nor the desire,
To bow to pop-liturgy
Or lift myself higher-
All my oddities abound,
I see they keep me alone.
I wander the hard ground
Ever out of home-
Even these I speak of plainly
I do not dream as accusation
The lone state that pains me
Is of my own creation
Unwilling, or else unable,
To put aside where I am bent-
I don’t fit into the label-
Does that mean I can’t be sent?
Yet in my diminished condition-
Here am I.
Beyond trend or tradition,
I ever testify.
It all boils down to these:
I am, I exist as I, and I believe.
Whatever else they may say of me
Cannot negate these three.
Precious little moments
Strung together, one by one
Like popcorn chains on Christmas trees,
Like dress-up beads,
Or bubbles dancing in the sun.
They need little exposition
Just an inhale, a pause, a smile
There’s no simpler machine of insight
Than the filter of pure delight-
Joy is forthright
In all her wiles.
How quietly she rises-
No posterity screaming off the dark
She listens more than she speaks
I listen to her: I seek
Her beauty in the broken bleak
Waiting to embark
On popcorn strings
And the harmonies
Of love, and hope, and now.
He loves you.
Quietly I came these many miles,
In the dark and nameless,
Wringing out my smiles
In shameless complacency
To hear someone say to me,
“He loves you.”
He’s been saying it for years.
Too good to be true some days,
But that can’t undo His decision
Who am I to appraise
His vision of devotion
Or the ocean of His patience
I’ve been swimming in for years,
Treading through
For the glimpse, the whisper,
“He loves you.”
Fear is the beast that ever gnaws
A gaping, jagged throat
Churning and swallowing,
In salivating gloat
Over the next meal.
Walking again in the familiar skin
Of my own isolation.
I commence lobbing Hail Marys over the fence
Against my own common sense.
I can’t be sure what crosses over, or
What falls to the floor.
I’ve tried to resist, but I subsist
On this persistence.
Maybe I was never meant to oppose this
Maybe this silence composes
Some clarity of purpose.
New Life, so seemingly fragile,
Blooms, stretches, yawns into existence
Her entire cycle ahead still,
As she tries on her persistence,
And sleeps off her resistance.
The beauty in the fresh blossom
Sings of hope and resurrection,
Winter left us solid, solemn,
Frozen in derelict dejection,
Seeking warmer affections.
New Life breaks like sunrise,
Like a thief into the strongman’s purse,
Bringing a swift demise
To the fallow curse:
The icy hearse.
Sometimes I go down to the water
And I plunge myself underneath
Where the noises won’t follow
And I won’t speak
To see what will die,
And what can’t.
When the fog was lightly lifting,
And the sun came stretching through,
Like some ancient seed of hope
Breaking ground and blooming new,
The fresh life in my arms
Brought back forgotten days with you
I yearned to answer light with light,
To lift the mist atop your years
Returning kindness, even joy,
As the confident victor over fear
And in the silence of my words,
I reached to pull you near.
Three days past:
Remembrances of why we sever ties.
Three days past,
You sent the threats and lies
The creeping fog
Which has capsized us.
How can any sunrise break
Into the fog that takes you?
It isn’t fair of frame.
There must have been a day
You wiped drool from my face
And I’m not there to do the same.
It isn’t sound.
You must have stooped to ground
When I toddled down
Below the crowds.
It stands askew.
Before I ate solid foods,
I subsisted off you
And who leads you through?
It’s enough cost:
The years we’ve lost
After the bottles were tossed
And before your vigor exhausted.
It totters in the wind.
Inequalities sting like sin-
Yours or mine, I can’t defend-
But I see all that’s bent
And bowed low.
viewingcamelot 