Virginia’s Lover

Virginia’s eyes searched the horizon’s darkening line

As she walked along the shore’s silvery edge

Stepping along carefully - methodically as if at life’s ledge

While the ocean’s thunderous waves pounded out time’s keep

And she synched each her breath to mother’s metronome;

Virginia recited Poe’s Annabel Lee poem

 

The moon darting in and out behind the brigantines; leaving her in the dark alone

To ponder the coldness of the waters below - down deep

Where her lungs fill with the sea’s blood and she tastes the brine

While imagining the dimming lights above in a magnificent view

As Virginia is slowly embraced by a lover she knew

Would keep her secrets without fault or rue

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Broken

 

 

 

Billy is broken more than one can see

with nine sides – each cut into faceless

opposites contorted into lines that entwined

the oddities and the natures of each in a misaligned

narcissistic relationship and with voices of contradicting plea

 

There is Billie, the banshee, whose wailings warn that death nears;

Wiley, the fabricator, has the imagination of Aesop

And tells stories that are necessary to veil the illusionary family;

Willy’s vanity consoles the torments of anomie;

Willis, the abnegator, denies the chimera’s many fears;

 

Wills, the politician, construes the rules of empathy;

Wilson, the eldest of them absorbs all their sins;

while Willie, the youngest, is the sentimental mind

and then, there is William - treacherously unkind

with severe eyes that burn away any sympathy

 

The nine odd lines transect  at the center of the self circle

In entangled trapeze bars sitting at feigned projection points

With each pair of the nine parallel chains consigned to strain at rage

Against each other and yet, each is compromised to exist in one cage

Entrapped by the mirror of Narcissus and the spectre of Virgil.

 

 

“For trust not him that hath once broken faith” -William Shakespeare

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Desolation Served at Seven

 

 

 

 

 

Desolation Served at Seven

 

It is always in the eyes - that is the tell;

there is the callow innocence expressing joy

or the stale darkened blank stare from hell

perhaps, averting eyes darting between purposeful ploy

then again, there are eyes that are desirous and cunning

tracking and playing off a heart that is coveting

 

Harry, had neither of these looks today as he waited

in a languished posture by the exit of his tortured life

as patrons of the house with course of seven sated

brushed by him without noticing he was rife

with remorse and weighted by mental exhaustion

given that his soul was listed on the menu as “done in Faustian”

 

The moniker, Harry, was perfect for such was he - a common man;

that he once owned the streets of the dancing double crosses

where truth was merely a matter of setting a profit plan

was of little note now that the gold leaf buildings were total losses

consumed by the greed and avarice that poured like fine wine

to fill the stemmed glasses with wantonness and to toast the lusted shrine

 

“Hello Harry, it is good to see you after all these years

where have you been – what happened to you – why”

There could have been many reasons with stories full of tears

but, Harry never did explain his turn in place nor did he cry

only that he now lived where desolation was served at seven

and drinks followed into the night before the closing of heaven.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Divergence

Waking from the stupor of a primordial mind

the formless non-identifying self winced in pain

for a pregnant thought was forming in a creature’s brain

 thus, nature would cease to reign

for the self was becoming a presence of a kind

 

These thoughts would exponentially expand

into a matrix of ideas that burst into sounds

of meaningless squeaks and grunts like pigs and hounds

faces contorted by the strange new fears and astounds

as voices arose from their throats to speak opinions of new land

 

Where the self is like and the unlike is not oneself

and divergence takes a different course

from that of the conforms in holy books and doctrines enforce

used by priests, lords and politicians to claim divine source

over the kingdom of flora, fauna, giant beast and lowly elf

 

There is an oddity to behold and a strangeness in the air

words flocking into thoughts that speak of a different way

a growth by separation, distinction from the masses stay;

a convergence back into universal silence - ingress to the formless day

where music and poetry shall return, not in death, but in silent prayer.

 

Heartbeat

 

 

 

 

Heartbeat

 

 

 

Listen to the stop

before the drop

 

Feel for the rhythms

pulsating and coursing

through vessels and across

the spaces of emptiness

 

Where ships and fools

are of a singularity

 

One heartbeat

one beat

beat

 

Each in the  moment -

moment by moment

 

Solitary so solitary

beating beat by beat

 

Until its final movement

move by move

to rejoin the cosmos -

 

The essence of nothingness

where no thing is one thing

and nothingness

is everythingness

 

The silence in the between

is breath becoming serene

and so, ramble on John

for the beat goes on.