From behind the curtain
her voice
holds tremolo and vibrato,
high and clear,
sweet and lilting,
with a hint of poignant sadness.
The drum pushes, pulses
her ululations from underneath,
building the bridge
that connects
the world to the origin
of its song,
evolved,
forgotten, debated,
documented, erased,
burned, rescued,
savaged and salvaged,
but ever
created.
The child and the drum.
Two become one,
and the heartbeat
keeps the time of memory,
even now.
Behind my eyes,
a dream of blue waters,
blue souls,
blue bubbles,
blue hearts,
and blue love
Ethereal,
mysterious,
the essence of floating spirits
and the color of transcendent skies.
It holds a
midnight sorrow
and an afternoon romp
in its hands.
It belongs to all,
but is special to us.
Unleashed, it holds me
enthralled.
She,
kissed of the sun,
birthed of the earth’s red clay,
stands a goddess in the green lush alcove
of branches that arch to protect her.
A sorceress that magic
willingly surrenders
its secrets to,
she only has to turn to me
to enchant me
with silent spells
of regal beauty.
She binds my mortal
heart to hand,
and bids me
love to worship her.
Surrender is all the sweeter then,
and for a time, I too, am kissed of the sun,
yet banished at moonrise
to dream once more
that a goddess
once loved
me.
*art by Charlie Bowater on pinterest.com
The rain strikes,
the clod shifts, opens,
gives access to the seed,
and baptizes it
with water.
The sun,
rising, warm,
tosses javelin rays
to strike through the
blades of grass.
The seed shell warms,
and gives birth.
The sprout breaks free
in jubilant celebration
of its youthful freedom,
and sways in the wind,
as it reaches for the sky.
And winter smiles,
and vanishes
over the sea.
Your guitar
echoed over the ocean,
the melody you played
slow and beautiful,
timeless and flowing
like the small waves,
working slow magic,
only to vanish
with an essence of shore,
of time,
of us,
drawn to your music
for a brief and lively
dance,
waving farewell
in whitecap
whispers.
You opened
your eyes
to find mine,
crossing the bridge to your heart’s chorus,
singing the harmony to your life,
and composing our love,
the song
that only stops,
but never ends.
She stops
as all the other kids
run by.
She sees him in the doorway, a smile on his face,
watching them run.
She smiles at him and waves.
She runs and skips,
and he hears the scratch
of her heels on the sidewalk.
He chuckles, remembers when
he too,
possessed that superpower.
He waves good-bye
to far more
than her fading image.
Though she doesn’t see,
he has no regrets,
and goes inside to the
ponderous ticking
of his dusty
grandfather clock.
*picture by Ethereal Mind at deviantart.com
Shadows on hills,
day’s end.
A persimmon sun sets
in the bosom of a verdant valley,
and the evening star stares
like a curious child at the
lone man walking the road
to darkness.
Your absence is cold space
beside me on
this solitary
twilight stroll.
I miss the glimmer
of your starry eyes.
I miss the skipped beat of your
excited heart.
I miss the anchoring tenderness
of your embrace.
I miss melting into
your kisses.
Your memory fades like a painting,
a haunting last note of a lilting melody,
a classic fallen from grace.
And once more, I’m reminded:
Love will not reciprocate what
she requires to live.
Sleep, my daughter, for I am but a myth,
A Muse, they say.
A thing to make a man’s heart tender,
A creature that veils a woman’s eyes with love.
I know not what I am,
only that I was born to harvest
the very stars I made,
eons before you were born.
Sleep, my son, for I am but a mother,
a deliverer of dreams, they tell me, that bring smiles to infants,
and nightmares to those who see the world
through filters of neglect.
I know not what I am,
only that this light is made to sift
through my fingers and dapple
the clouds with twilight colors.
Sleep, my children, for I am
but a shadowed, masked, and transient being,
I’m told.
A fantasy of space and time,
contained in the imagination,
freed and manifest in the mind.
I know not what I am,
only that this mask
hides me from my own soul,
and the warmth of these clouds
console me in the dark, but are not
a lover’s embrace.
Sleep, my darlings, and know that
you are limitless as stars,
boundless as eternity,
and eternal as love.
I know not what I am,
only that I share my heart
with you, and we are twinned
in mind and purpose.
Take my hand, come with me,
and sleep.
It is here where The Land of Dreams blends in with the Sea of Reality.
I scoop the earth-blackened waters of its banks, only to see it slip through my fingers.
In the distance of my fantasy worlds,
Castles crumble.
Palaces burn.
and things that aren’t pretentious about
their brutality
break the spine of humanity
over their knees.
The crack of shattered, severed bone sounds like an
exclamation mark on the period of life.
No escape.
See? The gift abandons you, as a
faithless priest
his calling.
The candles in the temple are extinguished,
And canticles and prayers rise in supplication,
Only to get trapped in the webs and rooks of
defiled, unholy rubble, and desecrating doubt.
The hand trembles with pain,
wrinkles with age.
The fight is all-encompassing now,
and strength is leeching, leaking, leaving…
The Sea of Reality has the remnants of
wasted time, missed chances, lost loves
in your wake,
even as mines of potential and buoys of pleasure
come into view.
The sun perpetually sets on the horizon.
Fog will coat the water’s surface,
and the stars change position and darken
as you navigate.
The rudder of the pen skips,
The oar of the pencil splinters and cracks
even as it shrinks.
The laptop lighthouse can no longer illuminate
the safe harbor of your hopes.
Mortality and eternity mix and war,
the storm clouds full of nightmares realized,
the cirrus clouds of curried wisps of daydreams
fading to mist in the mind’s ever-changing weather.
A dark and silent bay awaits,
with no guiding stars,
no turning of the hourglass,
no sailing with the tide.
So then, captain, it comes to this:
Do you run aground, leaping safely to shore?
Do you founder and break on the coral and stone,
clinging to what remains?
Do you let go of the wheel of your life,
drifting into nothingness?
Or do you smooth out one last piece of parchment
like a billowing sail,
and once more
take up the stout and stubby oar
for the last voyage?
A powerful and poignant work, written by a 14 year old.
‘Neither will win’, the audience says
Now that the contest starts
For black men move without their heads
And white without their hearts.
‘And if one shall advance’, they said,
‘So much as one short pace,
His fellowmen shall shun him then
A traitor to the race’.
‘You wooden men give up the game,
For what are all these squares
But black and white and black again,
The pattern of your cares?’.
The chessmen quickened into life,
For love has conquered pride,
Those that were angry face to face
Are quiet side by side.
Beyond Panic 