Rowing Till The Riverbed

Let me fall now, no
Let me fade away instead
I am tired of being ever alone
Of being always afraid

I was a fool to grapple with the dark, you know,
A fool to light my heart on fire
A fool to eat the wounded ashes
To taste the honey of that sweet desire

I was blind with my eyes open
Blind to the water rising around my waist
Blind to see that I with my words
Was no different than the rest

So here I am now, here,
A face amongst other faces:
All fools condemned henceforth
To die; by hanging on her tresses

I should have known it, I should have
For it was no secret after all
That there was magic in her voice
And that it was a siren’s call

It was this damned dream, you see,
To be together in the end
So surreal that I forgot
It was all make-believe, a pretend

I am going now, I am gone
There are other lovers in the line
They ask me if she is a goddess
And I answer: Yes, if the Devil’s Divine…

Mosaics

Image by Drew Collins @unsplash

I wish to speak with myself
The conversation
Neither a monologue nor a soliloquy
But I am afraid I would not allow
My own confessions
This heart knows far too much
Of envy and hate
And much too less
Of chance and fate; those dark mistresses
Pulling and pushing
The tide of each rebirth
Should I excuse myself within reason then
And let the age that passes through each of us
Sunder me to atoms
Annihilating; once and for all
Each kingly cause
And gangrene dream
Festering upon the thin skin of mind;
For the soul in the end is nothing more
Than a shadow aware of it’s own existence.
Or should I in opus thoughts claim
The Midas Touch
And let the pleasure and pain
Every loss and gain, ravage me alive
Into my own version of heaven and hell
Beyond resistance and repercussions
Or time and it’s tale
And dare to be free
For once all of me?
Alas the soul cannot know
Of which the mind did not sow
Thus I remain here
Within this blindness which seek
The mirror left behind;
And await my reflection to speak.

The Men Behind Monuments

Image by Jiyad Nassar @unsplash

In this sudden stillness
A final silence grows
From beneath the dead branches
Enveloping ants and Angels alike

The dry mist of purpose
That once haunted men
Now haunts their monuments
The mindless mortar
Made and remade
For each thought
And every contour
Which seeks in itself
The forever form
That everlasting aspiration
Of becoming a being

But the Promethean promises
Are but promises
Just as the silhouette stems from the shape
So does the shape is rooted in the silhouette
Like a circle trapped
Within its own circumference
Sans a seen beginning
Sans any unseen end

There is a witness
For every arrival
Till no one arrives anymore
And then the fishes are left alone in the desert
To drown in the mirage of memories
The breathing carcass
Reminiscent of living
In an abandoned womb
Never to awake
Never to walk
Like ages unspent
Upon the faces of the rock

Remains of the Rain

Image by Mehrsad Rajabi@unsplash

I saw my children standing in the rain
Their faces lined with age and late reason
Watched the abandoned bicycles
And broken seesaws
Being pulled down by the weight of raindrops
Their hands, long and thin, like dead seaweed in the summer wind
Their legs green and gold, like new leaves suddenly old
Seemed painted
In the moist color of quiet
The abandoned delight
Having dissolved
In the lament of the rain
They turn; the motion a sad song
An unfinished lullaby
To look at me with eyes
Half awake but never asleep
As if I with my window earned wisdom
Would know
Why all things grow
Only to die
If life in the very virtue of living
Is a lie
But they know the answer
As well as me
It is better to forget than to believe what we see
In the everyday aftermath
Of the daily demise
Of choices left to chances
And promises made before goodbyes
For in the end all paths
Shall return where they began
Even the oceans with all their eternity
Are but remains of the rain…

An Answer to the Abyss

This moment
It is endless
There is nothing more to be
It is the past you predicted
And future you didn’t see…

Marmalade

Pieces of sunlight on my shirt
Golden flakes caught unawares in snow
I wear the world
As a witness upon my eyebrow

Pendulum thoughts, mine,
Rising to always fall, falling to ever rise
A deaf dance; this one legged tango
Should I mourn
The forgotten remembrance
Of irony bound in common things
Like water buried in a coconut or born in one who knows what it means to be a child
Without being none
I, myself, was born skinless
In a seed of wild fern
Wordless they named me; those voices in my head,
Till I spoke and my friends began to fade
One after another
Like orange in marmalade

The wind upon the canvas do not dry the paint
Nor a fire miles away
Help me find my feet
Of all the pain in the world; it’s the loss that alone tastes sweet
With syrup on my bruise
And sugar on my wound
I limp away
From weeping windows and waking walls
For I heard my cupboard say the other day
Wear less and be more
Was that a dream, a dream
Like Dali high on sour cream?
I wish only to know
Can my hand reach out to my heart and squeeze
The last drops of Carpe Diem to please
My soul; that cotton candy wrapped in light and luck
Made In Bed after a night of soft….

Dear Diary
I am exhausted
Ginsberg and Sexton, Whitman and Poe
Conrad, Tolstoy, Orwell and Thoreau
I read about them all
Copperfield and Twist
And Einstein’s Relativity and Marie Antoinette’s false feast
Should I sleep now
Will the night ask me no more
Questions and answers
Legends and lores

There is a spider on the bed
(Yes, it’s a thought in my head)
Should I scream or be quiet
(There is nothing to be said)
So twinkle twinkle little star
There are bottles in the hotel bar
And many miles to drink before I sleep
Till the laughter stops and it soothes to weep…