The Vacant Occupy

The Vacant Occupy

There was never any design

That the line’s end be consigned

To a forgotten museum yard and ravaged.

The once bulwark engine’s roar savaged

To an endless silence from the days of yore

When the iron wheels and rails made for songs of lore

While handsome men and lovely ladies were preoccupied

By the sense of linear movement of the lives they occupied

Together with the hobos and economy class travelers

Off to another place - better suited for dreamers and revelers

And now, a stillness holds the vacant windows blank

Nevermore to engross starry eyes around the next bank

Or anticipate a panoramic scene - nor hold breath across the long iron bridge

That spanned time like a vanishing point moving towards a faraway ridge.   

Photo: BKKrysh

Pathos Finds Ethos

I do not disagree with that man who was once me

And, most certainly no such fool could I ever really be

For all the things prayed for then -  have changed, and he knows -

And now, all those things once mastered are buried treasures - covered in woes

That sit upon a checkered chessboard table - empty of all the pawn pieces;

Devoid of any studied moves - the white knight’s veiled leap - seizes

The black rook’s standing and so, destroys the castle walls

Exposing the black king to the white queen’s mating mauls.

No, I do not know that lost old man in wander

Nor can I speak to his iambic ponder

I see only that the path he walks is one that is long past

And the place he dwells in is a ship - cursed and without a mast;

Wrecked upon the shores of nirvana - as the ancient seas

Have long since receded - beaching the noble Pequod to her knees

Poor Ishmael, he must tell the ghastly tale once more, to a naïf wedding guest

A story of a white whale that lives in our hearts - while the albatross hangs at our chest.

Yes, I can attest to the soul and heart of this man of words

Who once wielded killing swords

Until it made little sense and held even less reason

Behind select uniforms that followed uniformity so to avoid a path of treason

I can confirm that this man stands naked before mother

And that, as mountains and oceans need one another,

The stoic man needs his solitude to feed the quiet madness

And then waits dawn’s tender touch to awaken a recovery of gladness. 

There is a darkness that sits at the core

There is an anxiety that consumes everything – yet, it has never been more

There is however, a way there - to an open peacefulness seeing that time is less

There are regrets that bent the mind and that rage - twisted into a mess

There are all the many stumbles and falls drowned with anise

and green bitters…   The red nurse said, “When you wake - just go ask Alice.”

There is a blindness that feeds his head and keeps him near - fear

I once knew a man who was a lost boy that brought all his tears - here.

Broken

What is a plenary life

if not a collection of broken

pieces; lost parts;

the last shreds

of treasured loves;

a splinter of existence;

a last gasp of resistance

the glowing embers of persistence -

the frozen ground of earth gives way

to Spring’s primordial urgings

as the ancient crocus

breaks the soil’s reach

sprouting yellow saffrons;

its profound existence

an honorable presence

of faith in mother’s persistence -

the sultry winds of Summer

break open the skin’s pores

so, to cool life’s passions

with sweet sweat

beading;

running across the brow

in a lush sense

of verdant intense

and fertile presence -

Autumn’s tapestries

fall across mother’s lap

with colors of many splendor

breaking at the season’s

final breath for one last

banquet of earth’s plenty

in a redemptive presence

of death’s essence -

a grey pallor consumes the landscapes

as white blankets

cover the cold ground

and the winds of November

came early

breaking spirit and flesh

alike and away to a long pretense

that life’s persistence might beget an eternal existence.

Cogito in Contrast

An old pair seeking commonality

Walk the paths of dual reality

Carrying eyepieces that magnify

Foreshadowing calls and birdsongs that cry

Accusations and salutations – wry.

Pleasure and misfortune are duality

For in the middle exists the contrast

Black or white; black and white they seem aghast

Common birds that pray and too, birds of prey

The vernal equinox is this first day.

Walking yonder a young reticent girl

Wearing pretty skirt, coat and hat of reds

Her eyes lower; her head turns like a swirl

And away from any connection to her dreads.

Her steps are cautious, her demeanor sad.

She carries a package perhaps, a diary

Covered in yellow ribbon shreds - it swings

Back and forth flashing hints of her carry.

Now it is clear. A small bird’s flutterings;

Pain’s reality or merely, fallacious mutterings.

La sangre como el universo es infinito

The gentle eye sees; the acute mind contrast of cogito.

Orange Marmalade Man

What is this new reality’s - tonality?

Is it a fact; or merely an augmented reality

With fashions of glitter and blowing balloons in a parade

Led by the strange man of Orange Marmalade.

Reverberating voices prattle on about transparencies

And mix into sounds of confounding frequencies.

Thus, arises the Opus - Right is Wrong, a symphony executed with vagaries;

A prelude to the new order - an act accompanied by the Ride of the Valkyries.

Hear the social drums beat into patterns of dissociative dissonance

And watch the tongues of anger slather up fear and ignorance

Wrong is right and right is wrong – the madness is out of control.

Resist –

Persist –

Consist –

Exist

In the world of the “Alternative Fact” – the purpose forms its own augmented roll.

Protested –

Arrested –

Attested - by the whiten fear

The orange marmalade beast is perched at the outer edges of this new frontier

Listen; listen to the silence, for the maelstrom widens,

The librium in the cabinet leads to the music chambers of Master Haydn.

Sinking into the waters of solitude is an immersing bath

To wash and cleanse away the stains of wrath

And at once, the calmness wraps the vastness of nothingness

Shielding sanity from the onslaught; the atrociousness

Fending off the red; the blue parties of attacking pen swords;

Protecting from righteous regiments with piercing words.

Finding –

Identifying –

Complying –

To the political points of these augmented realities

(that are conformed and transfixed within the mazes of dualities)

Soothes the ego with turns and winds - so to please the Id

Ah! Soy el rey – Soy el Cid.

The exploits of the Orange Marmalade Man

Are rationalized truths resplendent in gold leaf scam

Forms of nonsensical terms; wrapped nicely into silly tweets

and lumps;

and thumps;

and bumps

that suggest the suckle of the orange marmalade’s teats.

Oh, Orange Marmalade Man - what is it that you say?

You’ve sullied the white house promenades – again, today?

Yes, indeed! Nothing else matters for Hetfield and Ulrich – play,

“Never cared for what they say

Never cared for the games they play

Never cared for what they know”

Nothing else matters - you must go

Oh, Orange Marmalade Man – why is your hair aglow?

Marine – Welcome Home to the Dark

The confusing and piercing cracklings, all about the pristine valleys,

Would soon burst into kerosene flames of charred barbeques of human beings

As the HU_1s (the Hueys); flew by - seeking to find soldier body parts blown apart by volleys

Of bullets, shrapnel, lead fire of political misgivings

At 16th parallel; Route 9. the 1^st cav and 9th Marine grunts held ground

Until the last hand of insanity quieted the warrior’s voices to a silent sound …

And for what?  A home country filled with doubts

And to main-street-college kids - confused and full of shouts

Against both the warriors and the purveyors of war

Because no one would accept that no matter how far

The riots projected fear and anger – the wrongness was the lowest bar

That the country would fail at and so, they came home wounded; during moonless evenings.

Angels and Beasts

He turns and glances back at the shadows

That prey upon him when the mind ticks away

At the night’s endless pace;

While, the moon stares out in full face.

This is when solitude must have him

Alone for eternity; a stolen place.

Age stirs him with doubts of grace

As his body and mind bend and break with change;

What were once beautiful dreams

Blossomed now - into twisted screams

Awakening the angels and beasts

That rule his undefined soul – it seems.

Listen, the beasts have something to teach:

That without darkness there are angels

With wings of kindness

To sooth away mother’s hardness

And bring forth dawn’s kind of blue

The keeps hidden the moments of less.

Weighing in On the Last Four-bers

Weighing in On the Last Four-bers

What once was seven

Changed to append

Roman calendars tend

And so, eight became ten

And nine became eleven

And ten now stands last at the end

Of twelve so to contend

With two additions that pretend

That the beginning is now longer then

The original ten with twelve moons to contend

That one year is twelve unless – when

a thirteenth is the once in a blue-moon friend.

Waking the Rains

Something very alluring about brooding

skies

that pries out the best and the worst in me.

Standing alone against the falling

horizon

a son is shaped, by the light and the shadow, into a long black silhouette

against the faceless blue - an incomprehensible form yet, somehow a unique

profile

standing file, a lone soldier, upright against the face of the impending rains.

Yes, those rains, the ones that fill the ageless

river

that quivers and flows from the eyes of mother;

contouring deep gouged channels of rejection – into the sheared rock 

beds

of dreads; forces that rampage life crafts along her raging waters.

One must not fear the rumble of the accusing thunder nor flinch at the stinging

smite

that bites like sharp tongues striking at the highest points with arrays of jagged light.

Sister Torquemada’s sepulchral gaze crosses the room and consumes

the space

her face closes the many blinds - so to shut out the lost years.

Pupils are placed into darkness – sentenced to learn to love

silence

and defiance - becomes a way to see into the darkness of a small cave

where the light is from the candle of self-awareness and the

fire

rises higher from the edges of the night across the mountain side bringing

the valley into the dawn of a new day; a new walk; a new path.

A Moment of Pause

A Moment of Pause

Who are you there?

As time folds upon itself- closed; a prone cocoon.

A mind weighted with the aftermaths

Seeing death as vapid black-waters.

Inertia dulls

And molds the moments into formless

Freaks and demons that dominate

All senses and then chews their desiccated presence.

Something happened

 I am afraid to remember;

 for the night keeps my secrets

 and the day discusses my faults.

Heavy darkness

Evaporated as dawn’s light blinked

Awake the bemused butterfly

With wings colored of splendid rainbows.

Something happened

 I am afraid to remember;

And the wounds will all heal into scared

Lines of poetry that portray joy and pain.

Never A Dull Moment

Say do you have a moment?

No, I have not. I can not offer a moment to give; why do you ask?

Because I have lost the time.

Hmmm … and so, what time did you once have?

No-no, I mean I have the time however, I do not know the time.

Ahh – I see.  You wish for a moment from me – so to understand the time?

Yes – yes, that is exactly it; a timely point please!

Just a moment then - if you please to wait for just one more moment…

There.

There is your moment and the time is now relative, half past existential.

Was there anything else now?

Sorry, you misunderstand me.  May I have your moment at this moment?

You mean to take my momentum so to move your moment of inertia?

Well yes, but it will be momentarily – nothing more – nothing less.

I can see that we have arrived at a moment of truth; you have a moment and

you also want my moment?

Yes, any moment now will do.

You want to cease the moment.

Indeed, however only in this very moment.

Fine we will have a moment of truth while the butterfly lights upon your blooming thoughts.

Just a moment please …

There.

There is your second moment; never less a moment and never more a moment.

Thank you!  There is never a dull moment with butterflies.

              Your observation is a matter of perception for the obtuse transformation

   of the chrysalis becomes a keen moment for the butterfly. 

More or Less a Moment

More or Less a Moment  

How does being lost fit within the ancient map lines?

Grids and contours that vicariously form the directions and paths to take leave

Or plot out the forgotten places with the unfamiliar names

To forget once again - in the blink of a moment.

And, if in that moment 

One escapes from the present moment –

Then is now more

Or less then existence?

Saving time to have more; 

Or killing time to have less?

The insanity of those notions allows for the deception

That ego somehow controls time with invention of the clock dial

And that somehow time has a face and hands

That tell of time and measure life – nice and neatly.

When indeed, the bull will gore you;

The bear will consume you;

The fall will maim you.

And yet, waiting will waste you

While anticipating a pot to boil.

However, on the other hand, time flies

When the executioner counts the seconds

To complete the appointed deed.

It is often quoted, “Carpe Diem”

Cease the moment!

As if it were an ice cream cone

Or the verge of a leap that invites

Carefree or careless; Impulse…

I suppose that the consequence or outcome

Determines whether damnation or praise will be eulogized.

The view and sentiment is all arbitrary

And completely contrary!

Because being in the moment 

Is when one becomes one

With unreachable forces such as

The Wind - Blue Skies - the Song of birds.

These each are however attainable - romantically,

With love and respect of the moment

And the place

On this infinite timeline

That exists only in the sentient mind.

An imaginary moment

Of the moment

At the moment.

Listen, silence is the speak of the universe

And nothingness is never more

Or is ever less than this very moment.