Renewing the old Gift

I stand in silent stills,

photographed in black and white

waiting for dreams to coalesce with the spirit

and transform into color.

Waiting, for action.

Action speaks,

but speaking does not action ignite.

A spark. It requires; that infant child

of fire, so often extinguished before it can

fulfill a promise made when Prometheus

first broke the law of Gods and gave hope to man.

But, when a spark serendipitously finds the right dream,

the right idea,

a miracle occurs, small light becomes luminous,

filling not only the surrounding void,

but an unnoticed void in hearts and minds.

True fire spreads.

Our mortal limitations oft prevent us from

seeing the simplicity of change.

We think in grandiose terms,

and with those Titans looming over head,

cower in their shadow and concede that one

soul cannot change the world, cannot cause

the tide to shift and oceans to rise.

Doubt is the devil we have created;

for shame, for convenience and for fear.

Fear of failure and ridicule.

One spark may not immediately proffer

the change our chained souls grave.

But a word, a gesture, can spread

from one fire maker to the next.

And, with time, in time the world

is not as it was before, and we are more

than, in the beginning, we believed we could ever be.

The Things I See When You are Looking Away

I know you now,

not just the landscape of your body

though I know it well.

The twists and turns,

the smooth curves that lead to places

where dreams and visceral reality form a close bond.

I know you,

as the sea knows the beaches it visits

in repetition on constant change.

One continually changing the shape and texture

of the other,

the other changing the flows and force

of the one.

I know the voice that echoes

within the chambers of my heart,

laughter that sprays onto the high, dry places

bringing sweet relief to old sorrows.

I know you, as we dance.

This eternal waltz that has been back and forth

long before my first wave caressed those foreign shores.

I knew you before the first drop that formed me,

before the first grain that formed you.

We have always been, even before we were

and will be, after our memory has dwindled.

Our echoes reach out into the void

in all directions.

Alchemy

Late night sitting,

so much of it consumed

with chipping fragments of stone

from a boulder,

art that bares no consequence.

When the car pulls up, stopping,

one last pack of cigarettes.

The moment presents itself in full clarity.

Four wheels were hugging every curve and

knuckles are still white from death gripping

the stirring wheel.

This is where true laughter begins and ends.

There was no race,

just an intense interest in the moment,

and what of this moment

and those to come.

Promises have been made

and promises have been broken.

If these tumbled walls and fallen rafters

are ever assembled to form a home again,

I will have finally succeeded

in turning lead to gold.

Remembering Gypsy

Memories;

sitting at the kitchen table

with the Philosopher King,

that old, exiled gypsy...

I know you say that you are not photogenic

but your smile,

the way your eyes smile

in that sad way, fruit dying on the vine way.

Picturesque.

Smoking your cigarettes with the right hand

then the left hand

and afterwards the right again.

You would speak to the children

gathered around, sitting at your feet.

Words, 
words that were more than strings of thought.

Tribal spells from an age that will never come again,

the heart’s metal forged with unfiltered spirit

and brought forth imperfect, but perfectly fragile.

Those words would take shape, forming structures inside of us,

solid foundations,

to withstand the ravages of time and disappointment.

Winter is Coming

The knights of Spring, garlands about their necks

and blunt tourney swords in hand

the innocent youth,

having only known the warm kisses of maidens

and the sweet Summer Sun.

This season will pass,

Winter is coming.

A red comet streaks across the azure sky,

turns to blood once the sun has set

and tales dragons begin to spread across the sea.

What was once legend, stories of Grumkins and Snarks

leap from the pages of children’s stories

and into the woods beyond the Wall.

That great expanse of ice, once garrisoned as kingdom would be,

ready to defend, to hold at bay the gathering storm,

has become merely tradition.

A place for murderers and thieves as well as some second sons

and a few knights whom have no hope in owning titles or lands.

The true nature of it, a mystery to those black crowes,

standing vigil against the endless night.

They all speak the words,

“I am the sword in the darkness.

I am the watcher on the walls.

I am the shield that guards the realms of men.”,

but to what end.

Their needs are quickly disregarded by the rest of Westeros

in light of the Game of Thrones being played by so many would-be kings.

Let us pray their warnings are heeded

before that night which has no end engulfs the world

and Winter descends upon us all.

The ashes that hold memories

The old house of our memories home

smolders, now burnt.

It is just a hull, ravaged from the inside out

The first room to go, that sacred place

where she would sit in her recliner

peeling oranges in Winter time,

sucking the juice out and tossing the pulpy Rhine

only wanting the juice,

life giving manna that staved off

sickness during the cold Kentucky Winters.

This house,

Where generations of children were raised;

those of the great mother

and later her children's children.

The front is gone, the porch

where so many seasons

beans were hulled and broke

to the sweet sound or her singing

and the stories she would tell

of family, known by many only name.

The kettle that once stood;

a cast iron cauldron

where food was canned

and mutton made.

All gone.

The grapevine, that we all raided time and again

despite the sourness of the grape

and the consequent belly ache;

purple giving away to a vibrant green,

and the sour taste would

cause a curious puckering of the lips

and uncontrollable cringe

yet we would go back for another and yet another.

Memories:

the pop of the electric fence

and the way that electricity felt

as the youngest of us were tricked into

testing to see if it was on,

as the task always fell on the youngest

time and time again.

Memories:

Sitting in the backyard by a wooden picnic table,

digging through the soft mud

and making mud pies to cook on that old

wood cook stove,

that stood in the backyard for as long

as grand kids can remember.

The dying of her house,

like losing a member of the family.

From the youngest to the oldest,

we all ran barefoot through that house at one time.

When the sun went down

and He-Haw had gone off the air

we would crawl on top of feather beads,

chins tucked neatly under homemade quilts,

trying not to move, so that our warmth would

soak deep in the feather bed.

The house is now gone and with it

the paths worn by dozens of children

from the living room to the back rooms.

Never have I seen so many beds crammed in to such a small house.

But, as a child that house seemed immense.

And now, what is left, seems so small

and the relics we once held so dear have floated

to the sky, not quite to heaven, but at a height where they will never be seen again.

The tears we shed could have quenched that fire,

the memories remain but the rooms in which we made them

are now gone;

Cast iron skillets, Red Eye Gravy, the sight of grandma

eating crackers in her coffee at the kitchen table.

So many of us still run barefoot through those halls.

Dodging fly swats and that dreaded paddle

that sat just around the corner as a reminder

the fly swat was a mercy compared to what we could have gotten.

Memories, there are so many.

And those are just mine.

The well water was so cold, but you couldn't

drink a drop until grandma scooped out

all the germs from the water bucket.

My recollections are but a drop in that bucket.

And the memories go back, back before me

before my mother.

Back to when the house was built

and the youngest child was just a baby.

Mirrors and What to do With Them

A shattered looking glass, oft the result
of a decline in respect for the visage staring back.
Shattering a looking glass results in a fragmented
image that once gazed back from a perfectly polished surface.

All the time and effort mending broken glass,
a result of deceit.
Recovering that old aspect is foolish pride,
but what is a reflection?

It is simply the throwing back, by a surface of light
without absorbing it.
Reflection has no depth, no memory,
conscience or redeeming quality.

Reflection is a sideways, casting glance.
A vision to be interpreted, not taken in the literal.
The result of a shining lie
held in place for both subjection and objection alike.

Reflections are often more distortion than validity.

They show us what we want to see at times
while there are quiet and hard moments when they
show us an image we wished we had never gazed upon;
Dorian tricked and thus vanity meets reality.

Breaking mirrors serves no purpose
the mirror, only an instrument.
The true fractures occur not in the ephemeral vessel
but in the soul.
Beginning minute, undetectable; festering begins
with the emotionless ticking of a second hand.
They start when lies are used to construct a pseudo countenance,
innately more pleasing and grow when lies
take root and become a truth;  a truth inevitable as the season’s cycles..

The diluted self has no foresight, nor a desire to ponder past lives.
Self loses meaning, direction; becoming much like
“wandering stars for whom the gloom of darkness
has been reserved forever”
Lost; no rhyme nor reason.  
A heartbeat away from chaos.


So we mend what has been broken
taking care to patch the gaping hole,
so as not to offend or to reveal,
reveal any cracks in our carefully crafted masquerade.

The mirror is for the surface, reflection.
The back of the eyelids, soul’s introspection;
a much better gauge of the human condition.

Leave the mirror, forget what you see
focus on your hands, the actions taken during any given day.
Reflect on your promises, those you broke
as well as the ones you kept.
Reflect on your dreams, discard the clutter
embrace those filled with light, insight and
“consider the lilies, they neither toil nor spin.”