Monolith

This is another heated ember, pleading. A future perhaps, a present to some, the bleak shadow of what looms and directs, disillusions, and controls. This came during the Bush regime and stands, still looming and fortified by a new force of will.

Monolith

Do you feel me far away?
Do you want to know my name?
Can you understand the notion
of the man that fills this frame?

Do you know my pain far out there?
Can you please ask someone “why?”
When all we do
is work and bleed for you,
why must we die?

We can understand so little,
yet much there is to learn,
and, in the pain of life, we squander,
all we have it seems we burn.

A puzzle in a cycle,
a rhythm no one hears,
only falling over footfalls
that we’ve fallen on for years.

No joints to turn around again,
no way to understand,
no one left to comprehend
this length of breaking land.

We’ve won our free illusion
that our freedom can be had,
but freedom’s held by no one
and our system’s going mad.

Now we bite our nails.
Now we’re bleeding from the gum,
we beckon blindly all this pain
for some thing else to come.

But we’ve spent our bitter tears away
on things that matter not
and what we’ve won again, I say,
a fistful full of rot.

Nothing’s coming for us,
our heroes in the dust,
we’ve murdered all our allies now,
the gears of home are rust.

The great machine in shiny paint
is falling to the ground
and all the things she built are faint,
so nothing can be found.

The ink and blood that made her run
have all but run their course,
now she barrels through the world
like clockwork, no remorse.

Decaying teeth
Decaying breath
Decaying life she took and left
Decaying leg
Decaying feet
Decaying, rotting, throne and seat
Decaying words
Decaying life
Decaying freedom fraught with strife

If we are a land that God does bless,
then why are our children motherless?
If we are land that’s made to lead,
then why do we let our brothers bleed?
If we are a land on truth is bent,
then why are we left so ignorant?
If we are a land with an open heart,
then why do our doors of love not part?

We are the people no one saves,
the lessons no one knows.
A threshold of a thousand graves
where nothing ever grows.

We sit in silence and wish to speak
but words mean nothing here,
and the things they tell us, though are bleak,
the truth is not so clear,

the only one’s who could understand
are sleeping soundless in the sand
while we sit silent in the hand
of an ever falling length of land,
an ever burning pop-up book
some child now has surely took.

A Word In The Sand (…Ancient Embers)

Yet another simmering ember of my past, this plea was again to love, a love that I had to let go. I sat and watched all my chances to rebuild the bridges I was burning go up with the flame, but it was a controlled burn, a preening of my heart, and a disintegration of the selfish loneliness that begged me to reel that love back in and laud over it in my cozy cave, comfortable with the rot of it in my arms, slowly decaying for my own self pleasure. So, without further bittersweet adieu, here is the poetic sequel to “Goodbye”.

A Word In The Sand

Goodbye, again, Goodbye,
floating faraway
Seems that every time I try
“Goodbye” is what I say

He never found my island,
though I know he tried.
I’d leave him letters in the sand
before I’d run and hide

Pretty words on sandy turf
that faded with the waving surf
If you read it, if you’d try
You’d only see my sad goodbye
Did you hear my muffled cry?
was what I’d wished I wrote a lie?
I don’t know.

No man is an island
and that No Man is me,
No Man waiting in the fog,
waving like the sea.
No Man sitting on a log,
immovable as me.

I can see you searching still,
leaving from my piers,
but soon I know you never will,
words will wash with tears.

My last chance soon will see me,
turning like a light,
with warnings of the rocks ahead
at dimming, fading height.

You’re turning one last time to talk
and soon will turn around.
You’re screaming from your Widow’s Walk
and I hear not a sound.

You were a grace I could not pray,
a path that I did gladly stray,
a cold shock on a summer’s day
that woke me from this listless fray,
and as I let you go today
my heart said words I wouldn’t say.
Wants that bid me ask you stay,
selfish words I put away.

A treasure trove of silly thoughts,
for only me to see,
full of “could haves” and “could nots”
and dreams that would not be.

A hearth of fiery regret,
books of what I’ve learned,
things I will not soon forget
and what we both have burned.

I hide here in my treasure cave,
you’re searching one last round.
The S.O.S. you cannot save
will never now be found.

I feel the glow you lit here,
It warms me in the cold.
I know your way will soon be clear,
I pray you can be bold.

We sailed the great expanse, we did.
We blazed the blue, like sky.
I hope it never changes, kid,
I hope you never try.
I hope the sky of sea we sailed
caused a title wave.
I hope the ship we two availed
is never ever saved.

The pirate’s life in love we lived,
the pirate gods we thank,
with not a sin we’ve done forgived,
I gladly walk the plank.

So on my island I will stay,
sad to watch you go
and knowing, some how, in a way,
that, yes, it must be so.

I only ask, that it may be,
that sometimes when you see the sea,
for just one moment think of me,
a single moment, full and free

Not one second ever more,
just enough to crack a smile,
just a-glance the lonely shore,
one moment in a while

to remember, maybe, how we dreamed,
how we laughed and fought so wild,
even when we sometimes screamed
like some little angry child.

How every word and each complaint
was just another stroke of paint
on the canvas that is you
and now, in part, am I there too,

painted pictures of the sea,
treasure maps of you and me,
and though I still am here, it’s true.
Apart of me ’s a part of you

Now as you turn your head to sea
and sail by stars alight above,
I write upon the sand again,
by moon, my one last word is
“LOVE”

Killing Romance

This is another excerpt from Ancient Embers. It is a sort of throw back to the beat nick poet of the 1950’s. It is a bit different for me, but definitely fun for the mouth. I like to read it out loud as fast as I can, try it. Why not? Enjoy!

Killing Romance

This, my romance that I weave
to give this life a chance to breathe.
The written word I write, my symbol
I pray my Pilot pen be nimble

Mind synapses spark increases
try to comprehend these pieces,
quick as bullets from my heart
young love’s pain should be an art.

The bull’s eye centers his ignition,
beating, pulsing
repetition
This quixotic motion
Flip and flow
Bass line beating
Run and go
Don’t be afraid
or scared to know
The mess you’ve made
These tragedies laid
In clandestine motion
To derive the notion
“Lonely ones, you’re not alone
we all receive the things we’ve sown”
Pick up your life,
hang up the phone,
no more listening
Just do
what it takes
to learn something from these mistakes
and brace this heart of stone
Broken in the wake
Of this gaping life
My heart’s mistake
Of waking strife
Your eyes, the weapon,
Stabbing knife
Open up and end my Life

This death
of romance
Is my plea
To push you off
the throne of me
near sighted cupid
let me be
why can’t you see
you’ve poisoned me
your venom dart
that rips this brittle heart apart
then in flame and lightening stricken
it’s no game, the stakes that quicken
the light
gives sight
to guide me through the darkest night
my poison
my antidote
to swallow all these words
I wrote
And let them,
Toxic,
Rip my soul
To leave a hollow gaping hole
And never feel a thing again
please give me strength
To be your friend
And please,
die romance,
let this
end

A Lie and Goodbye

Another poem from A Plea To Ancient Embers. Two poems about a rough spot of life, unrequited love, and a farewell, fun fun fun.

Lie

Far, far away from the view of  your face
yet still looking on,
remembering the want for your embrace.
Running away from you,
wishing I could run from heart ache,
looking on to view
the distant image of an assumed mistake.
If my feet could take me where I wish to be,
then I’d be walking with you next to me.

Running won’t help, this I know well,
when I run, I just run into you, into hell
but gotta keep moving,
gotta go fast,
gotta run hard ‘til the feeling’s have past.
But how can you run as you sleep at night?
How can you win against dreams that fight,
that fearlessly show you the wishes you seek,
demons of sleep that let you be weak?

That let you fall in the embrace of thought
and help you forget the battles you’ve fought,
Let you believe the deceit of your heart.
Let you think deep you’ve not fallen apart.

But as cold morning light comes to sting and to wake,
and the world of my dreams starts to crack and to break.
I see myself broken, again betrayed
by the will of my heart,
and the dreams that it made.

Then I beg, like a child, for the arms of the night,
for the cradle of dark and the cease of the fight.
To live in the lie of belief, unknowing,
without a thought or a care of where we are going,
as long as I know I am going with you
it’s okay to be thoughtless of what we will do.

In the darkness unstrewn is the broken heart,
in the swoon of our moonlit lie.
Where nothing there ever can pull us apart,
in our comatose heaven we’ll fly.

So, I pine for the night in my daylight tomb
and remember the world of your smile,
I pray in the dark for a lie to be true
for even a little while.

Goodbye

is a difficult thing,
harsh in the mourning of winter.
Goodbye is a song we all must sing,
bleeding out from the heart
removing the splinter
and falling apart.

But goodbye is a lesson we learn.
Goodbye is a tutelage of pain
in the secret way we all burn,
drenched in the flames of the rain.

Once I walked far in the distance
on the road that left me alone
and loved hard at least for an instance
but my love turned slowly to stone.

Goodbye can be forever,
it can lose you out in the night.
Goodbye can also mean never
walking away from leaving the fight.

The stone was cold, far away,
when, silent I went through the door.
I left for Sorrow that day
and I fear I shall leave it no more.

”Goodbye” says the love I left,
the pages are rent of their ink.
”Goodbye” says the time you theft,
of a life beginning to sink.

Walking up hill in the winter
on the road that has no end,
the stone begins to splinter
and break where no one can mend.

Goodbye is a harsh work we toil
and steep, and burn, and pry.
Goodbye is the sacrament oil,
anointing each tear we must cry.

Walking and working so hard
on what I must give,
at least I must try
and even if I’m just a shard
of stone
I must live to give you
“Goodbye”.

A Plea To Ancient Embers

This is an except from a book of poetry I compiled from poems I’ve written over many years. I originally posted the book in it’s entirety but that was a bit daunting of a read. So I’ve resigned to post one at a time. Here is A Plea To Ancient In Embers, bite sized. Do enjoy and please let me know your thoughts.

Love. Just Love.

When I was a baby
I felt your sweet caress.
I’d never heard of maybe
and knew not of distress.

The warmth of you pervade me
like a gentle lullaby
of the hand that tried to save me
and wipe the tears I’d cry.

Your autumn cooled my heartbeat
in smearing, fading hue
and each white flake on snowy feet
reminded me of you.

But snow, like embers, fall and fade
to bleed at rose’s feet,
and who can see the marvels made
when Persephone walks the street

to shatter years of icy glass,
pierce infant snow with blades of grass,
bleeding winter’s swaddling green,
and ripping blue from cloudy seem,

until the pattern was a boy,
ravaged by his naked dream,
tossed by Eros like a toy,
living like a dying scream,

laboring in child birth,
and bleeding in it’s strife,
pushing hard for all he’s worth
then crowning him with life.

But the crown has blossomed thorn
and everyone he’s showed
has raised him highest in their scorn,
nailed him to the crossroad.

Ever standing in the strife
of the path I wish to trod
of living now or choosing life
in finding me or God.

The book that tells us who he is
was written by our hand
but that the words were ours or his
is hard to understand.

I feel Promethean tissues came
when spring ransacked my soul.
It walks the earth with my good name
and seeks to be made whole.

All I wish to do is live
and be like mortal man.
I fear this wish God won’t forgive,
it’s not part of his plan.

Trudge the earth in mortal skin
to find the place we can begin
to recompense the world our strife
and ask forgive for living life.

Why did Adam take this seed
and bury it in blood
to grow a man with any need
for blossoming in mud?

Can this Hyacinth become a tree
where golden apples hide,
or shall I simply crimson be
to mark the place Ive died?

Can I live unchained by word,
of script they wrote to free,
or shall my dream songs be unheard
that I may holy be?

What I am I am and so
now what then shall I be,
blessed and cursed to always know
I’m bound to be set free?

Winter comes and always will
to greet me at the door
but when the spring’s at windowsill
my heart is on the floor.

The tissue of my heart is spent
wiping little tears
that come from friends in deep lament
of winter wonder years.

Knowing just enough to know
I’ll always be confused.
Coming just enough to go
’till every tissue’s used.

But life’s not lived for answers,
it’s a quest of questions asked,
and spreading like a cancer,
each one comes from each one’s past.

My question is:
“Can we survive
and truly be called one alive
if we seek to truly thrive
in a place where none may strive
to seek the living truth?

For every truth that ever sung
was sung from some imperfect tongue
that sprayed it’s venom where it hung
that rung in ears of all our young,
wounding every youth.

How can it then ever be
to survive and be set free
of the words washed over me
like sour foam from off the sea,
salt for wounds as soothe?

When my heart cannot deny
the seeming presence of an eye,
looming like a starry spy
to watch with hunger in the sky
with seeming thought and couth.

Perhaps the secrets come with age,
years to settle youthful rage,
to halt the wrestling rustling page,
this fitful fray, this play on stage,
director in a curtained booth.

For two thousand years we all have fought
A war against our self and God,
of blinded faith and bitter thought.
I stand in aw and think its odd.

And even God said long ago,
in his curtained booth above,
that man himself will never know,
so all I ask you do is love.

Who, heaven bent, can even tell
what certain path may lead to hell?
Though they know and read “The Word”
who may say they’ve really heard
all the secrets hidden there?
How many truths they know are lie?
How many of them really care
if what they speak cause men to die?
Is that the whole or just a part?
Who really hears God’s beating heart?
And yet I feel it beats with mine.
Well, maybe just to feel is fine.”

Well, if someone is really there,
then I hope they hear my prayer:

That we do what we understand,
when the world may come to shove,
to do the things we know we can,
for God, you see, they’ve said, is love.

Don’t populate the world with hate,
the ministry of men.
The ways of God uncomplicate
and too the ways of sin.

Run from dens where scarring sleeps,
leave the place where inner weeps
and just today allow your heart
the room to play the smallest part
to sooth the world of hurt with love,
find the strength to lift above
the length of space in pain we hide
to break away and look inside.
Find the courage to see clear
in past the things we feign and fear.
The world of pain we must forgive
to see it plain what is to live.

In this, though little time you’ve spent,
if you can learn but one thing of,
the greatest thing God ever meant,
inside we know
is love, just
Love.