Category: Verse

Verse

The Struggle

As of late, I am struggling with hope
As I think we all are, our persona
Is under strain, powerful conflict
Raging between what is right
Not left, not left, but what is easy
Rage expounds, it impounds, develops
It’s own cells of water boarded isolation
And we stand, amok, impotent and wondering
What things can be done, proposed
Without the amygdalial response, pulsing
The fervent push of defensive anger
What can be done when no one seems
To listen?

As of late, I am struggling with hope
As I know we all are, our people
Cowing to the lowest, accepting trash
Eugenics are frowned upon, racism is
Undeniable sin, we are capable of rational
Thought, wrapping us, binding us up
I posit that souls from heaven lined
We do not decide our birthright or family
But society should value the new souls
See the gold, from the silver, from bronze
Outside of circumstance, skin, economics
I ask the impossible, demand it wholly
With reverence?

As of late, I am struggling with hope
As I see that you are, yourself
Looking for purpose among services
Seeking value among things without such
Measure, and you look upwards, hoping
A plan exists, and all is inevitable
But we were not allowed this existence
With the shallow plan of death on earth
Such cowardice! Such idiocy! Such
Unbelief, in what the possibility is
Don’t you see it now? The incredible
Do not be incredulous, do not
Doubt us?

As of late, we should not struggle hope
Downwards into the dirt where we wallow
She is beautiful, timeless, and whole
No matter what evils we may attempt to
Assign or attribute, we do not gain
In the assignation of poor labels
She is a brilliant glorious goddess
And our duty is to look to her light
It is said, Hope Springs Eternal
But I argue that Hope springs within
From all of us, it is humanity
Our nature to strive, overcome
No question.

Verse

A Forest Clearing in the Tetons

Dappled light through the dark egresses
Shafts of brilliance falling immeasurably
A disservice to measure such a thing
By divisive terms not accurate enough
To explain the possibilities contained within
The dark folds of evergreens and undergrowth
Expansive for the soul, such nature unbinds
The heart, the being, and the mind
Freeing the spirit within to witness God
Fingers of creation reaching for the sky
Crag covered majesty stretching ever
Folds of ancient hardened earth demanding
For us minute creatures to witness it
To take upon its view and be humbled
For such majesty has a cost eternal
And we pay willingly, without reservation.

This place is not our own, it is borrowed
Earth surrounds us and we declared ourselves
Masters and owners and drivers and destructors
But no thing such as that can be owned by man
Our ancestors knew, they intuitively understood
That holy places do not fall under deeds
Nor are they contained in writ or word of law
Except to except them from such things
No treasure this great can be owned by man
Tetons laugh in their ancient grinding tongue
As their arms spread wide to the universe
Wheeling above them in matching grand majesty
We pave roads, we build lodges, we find paths
But all of it is temporary, an itch, a fever
That the earth must endure, but will surpass
We are nothing but witnesses to their glory.

The lift is heavier for my children
Than it should have been for my myself
Than it could have been for my parents
I saw an article from 1900 saying coal
Could end this civilization, and even then
What? Apathy? Dismissal and scoffs?
Men in walnut paneled rooms not caring
For a future they would never see
For an impossible possibility ignored
They carried on, pushed further
For human progress was the greater goal
Could they know that there is no other
There is not another step, there is
Nothing beyond the edges, around corners
This is all there will ever be
And the mountains shall not mourn our passing.

Now, forests burn uncontrolled world-round
The darkness is encroaching on us now
Pushing further on, embittering us to a future
That no one wants but few stand against
Deniers and apotheosis of ignorance
Elevating opinion to beyond science
They revel in their misinformation
Finding destruction preferred to acceptance
Resolute in their mud prisons of idiocy
They wallow in their filth of usage
Discarding trash unrecoverable, surmountable
Eating acres of flesh in their desire
For comfort and fulfillment within, bottomless
They are depths of pits without end
And we all carry the cross which we will hang
How will this not lead to the end?

Such questions are fraught with uncertainty
Such concerns are shot through with fear
But what are we, not improbable creatures
To pull ourselves from the soup
From the impossible aims of dumb evolution
From the mired counter of human driven
Pressures of hate and tribalism, unbound
Yet we gather, we sing, we alight
To a shared human experience, inescapable
We are the same at our cores, in our hearts
We love, we care, we share along our tables
We must surpass our tribes and banners
We shall cast our flags to the fires
We must forget our mirrors and remove
Our own that create such prejudice and division
We must incrementally craft hope within.

We must find ourselves again, hidden now
Our natures are here, among us all, our hands
Need to feel the earth again, we must touch
Like an eager lover, full of anticipation
The turn of the dark soil under our blackened
Fingernails, and we must fill our neighbor’s
Bowls, ensuring they can eat with us
That we can serve them our labors and loves
And they can care for us when we struggle
We must find the sparks of hope within
Pull them from the husk covered shells
Breathe upon them shallowly, give them breath
And speak to them of love, unbound
Agape of the soil, of our neighbor, ourselves
We isolate the sparks, blowing into fires
And bring our hope brilliantly into the future.

Will the mountain care for such things?
Will it speak of us in its ancient language
As the planet continues onwards its journey
Interminable, hurtling billions of miles forward
But our children and their children can
See all of this, and marvel upon the glories
That we managed not to destroy and remove
They can stand upon this clearing
They will take this sight and internalize it
Weeping at the glory discovered
The sight now fulfilled and brought home
To share with their hope filled friends
Their loves and their passions
Apart of this earth, hands feeling warmth
Of stone and soil, sun and stars
All of them, made ours, true progress found.

Verse

Hindsights

The gray cat squalor of rubbish ruined
Looking back on my closeted output
It was forlorn in its horribleness
Desperate scratching of an inkless pen
Thrumming upon narrow ruled paper 
Sounding like an old guitar 
Half unwound strings, metal frayed
Looking nearly suicidal on the fretboard
I worry that my past self was depressed
I look back, cringing in horror
Will upon my review of my current self
Shrink into the grave unbidden
Wary to relieve myself ostentatiously
Pretentious, my own corpse shrugs
Such things are left to my children
To make that face, the squished eyebrows
And curled nose, over a filled diaper
Invisible threads of disaster, present
To think I called it poetry, verse, rhyme
Time machines were invented to kill ourselves
Mercifully
I sat across a table today from a young man
He is brash to rough, and bold as brass
Wondering where his earned dues are from all
As if he is God's gift, expecting reward
Hand outstretched, placatingly seeking nothing
Nothing that I can provide, evaporating
Glances, furtive eye contact, desperation stinks
It is in my nose, I can feel it on my skin
He got it all over me, and showering fails
But my time machine of my inner mind 
Fired up, the time rods shifted upwards
Humming, thrumming, turning about, thrusting upon
And I found myself, there… on the other side
A young man, a rock star, god's very own gift
Blessed upon the earth with aplomb and gusto
Circumstance for pomp and praises trumpeted
Aloud, that is where I was, deserving
Palms wide to outstretched, expecting gifts
To think I was him once, the verve, the noise
I spent twenty years to abandon him
Thankfully
Grace is the gift of the elder, given graciously
Wisdom is the curse to know it takes precedence
Over anything else.  Kindness matters, once
But in these things, I am certain most soundly
No emergency flare will light, no alarm will sound
Canaries might die in their cages at the mines
But the messenger will not notice their passing
They will only notice danger when it is bare
Present, bearing its teeth eagerly
Who was I all those years ago? 
This very question prompts me to think 
Of the moments spread in morning to night
I am what I have pretended the longest
Conning even myself with some actual progress
That kid, man. That kid, he scares me
Writing poetry on beat nights, caffeinated 
Being miserable without license and fee
Carrying a mountain of self invented shit
Life is nothing but irony illustrated
Truth laid bare, barren, exposed and shirking 
Unforgivably
Verse

Forbidden Knowledge

You are standing in a library, the shelves silent and wary of your presence
They ponder upon the actions to be taken, the arm to be outstretched
What binding will be caressed, which embossed letter tentatively outlined
What feather light nock of a fingertip in the curve of the binding gap
Pulling the book out of alignment slightly, the cover glanced upon briefly
And suddenly disregarded, shoved without grace or care back to its place
As you walk down the aisle, the lights reaching only the spines
Eyes flickering up and down, back and forth, looking for something
A special thing, a hidden thing, a thing that belies its existence
Tells of it from far away, a spoken whisper of a secret carried by the wind
The scent of a loaded cast iron skillet humming away on its stove
Sizzling, the popping, the hiss, aromatics being carried to every corner
The knowledge is floating on the wind, the words, the secrets, the power
It caresses your cheek, as your four fingers brush the shelves as you walk
The smells of paper and parchment, leather and string, folded press works
Between it all the effervescence of the new thing, the strange thing
The book that hides its secret, sitting on a shelf unreachable
Its binding is black, with no letters, no marker, plain and simple
True knowledge is plain and simple.  It requires no magic of its own
It is built upon the things that came before it, the shoulders and shelves
Of other works and other obvious things that required only understanding
This black book is such a thing, risen above your shoulders, riding a precipice
Astride the gulf of learning, one foot planted in ignorance, the other, more
Questions waiting to be asked, and felt, and explored to other questions
Somehow, you manage to climb the shelves, starting with a simple stool below
And relieve the black book from its wary sleepy sisters and brothers
A fine coating of dust slipping from its compressed pages, the silt of time
And books that came before, explorers alone, looking for their new secrets
You flip open the hard earned prize, and find the words you felt reaching
Out to you, they are open to you, they are yours for the taking
Experience begets satisfaction, then it delivers momentary relief
Like an insatiable lover that can never be truly pleased, the need is
All consuming, and pushes relentlessly for more, for more, for more
The exploration of this new knowledge blossoms within and starts to consume
It brings sadness, it brings guilt, its own presents that were not obvious
Or expected, but that does not make anything less real for the recipient
Hands are shaking, pupils pin point like an opioid addict ignoring the pain 
This new experience is not what you wanted, but yet it is, this dichotomy
Of split facades between what was and what is and what shouldn't be
The burden of your new knowledge is not the insight you sought, you craved
It is not the release you were looking for, or the answer you needed
Instead it is all the things you wanted to avoid in the first place by looking
Irony in the forbidden knowledge as it suffuses your person and shifts
Your views, shattering in slow motion, cascading like a waterfall of reflections
Inferred, but not seen, observed, but not measured, taken, yet let loose
This terrible curse rides your shoulders now, a jockey on your neck, slapping
A crop against your cheek, jeering and kicking heels, waiting for movement
As you stand there, riven, paralyzed by the wisdom that you should not have looked
The audacity of the seeking is rewarded by the damning of your past self
You now know that the future self is tainted by the currency of the moment
Your mind trading information with it's own states in perpetual shame and fear
The whisper of the books is taken from you, the smells fade towards the light
And you still remain, the fingers clutching the edges of the black book
The stages of grief becoming all the more real by the moment, acceptance
It is yours now.  This thing.  This thing you wanted and sought so dearly for
This bit of madness wrapped in plastic, shrouded like a corpse of something
Desired and rejected, lusted for and replaced, desperately sought and never
Forgotten, will it ever be? It cannot, since it is now know, it is in the light
The kings and queens look upon thee, and weigh, measure, and have found wanting
This is the dark fear, the deep one, the one that compels to all action
It pushes on you still, a fire behind and below, the pinch of the pitchforks
The steam, guttural and pitching, upwards as the pressure increases
The scream touches off, the whistle of the engine announcing its birth, its
Presence in and of itself, the dangers of the fire contained within, maelstrom
Rage is there, yes, Fear is there, undoubtedly, the dangers of this simple
Thing is not simple, it is not measurable, but it will crush you under itself
You hoped for something else this time, something different, but it does not
Change like the seasons, or like the tide, or like a temporary event, it is
Now, present, here and now, but behind like your solemn chanting footsteps
And before you, a lit path of stumbling rocks and hidden holes, evergreens
On either side, encompassing you, the dark of the trees, their whispered secrets
And this is your library, these are your shelves, and they judge not
Everything is temporary.  Even this.  Even now.  Everything is forgotten.
You scream, you fight, it matters not. You rage against the dying of the light
But this matters only to the shadows waiting to build encompassing dark
And then something extraordinary happens, like the moment a black hole is born
Out of nothing, something, a raging inferno of energy, a fount unlimited
Hope becomes, Hope builds, and Hope exists because everything is temporary.