TRANCING

Sound!
Cadence shifting through impermanent memory
so cavernous, so filling
echoing drums overtake her mind
pulsating-
beating back through abstraction... through time
she- deeply into trance
rhythmic tones pulse onto verging horizons
she listens to the dark lexis-
sinking-
the orchestration composed of the very sinews of
thought
the sensuous timbre,
dripping-
twining through her
resonance spirals into strands of audible pleasure
Slowly she falls away…
and thinks
magic in the music




SOFTLY NEGLECT

The beady, coal eyes and lashes permanently cast upward
gazed vacantly at their surrounding fellows
all gathered in a circle of innocence around their peeling table.

Exposed fluff and missing buttons composed the quiet
decay of the stuffed menagerie, left propped up
among dust and teacups. They formed such a sad
ring of forgotten teddy bears, cracked porcelain dolls,
and faded wooden soldiers.

Resigned to their slowly encroaching demise, they sit
around and watch the cobwebs grow,
destined to spread out and down upon them,
to smother them in the sweetly silky threads.

In dirt and shadows the motionless procession watches the thread
unravel, the seams come slowly apart, and the teddy
bear filler spill out. Even the forever-last glue that holds
the shattered porcelain pieces together begins to dissolve.

How horrible it must be to watch oneself fall apart, but
the passive menagerie knew little fear or loneliness.
Only silence and time occupied their hollowed minds.




SHE WAS NOTHING

An attempt was made once,
By her,
a frail, pathetic thing it was too,
barely straining past audible.
She was nothing,
quite literally, you see, for
She never
accomplished much and wasn't ambitious
enough to fail, must of been for lack
of trying.
She cared,
but only one time, and old habits
soon destroyed that. It's sad really,
when parents were praying
She'd just do something,
anything... but it was inevitable-
She had to let them down.
It was her way of life, sad and lonely.
Perhaps the only thing that could be
said is that
She lived it.
In the end, I guess that's something
after all.



ASHES, ASHES

She bit back the disappointment,
Swallowed it tightly and turned away
No one will ever know
She felt the loss burning, slithering down her
throat, sticking
Cutting off the air, making it hard for her to breathe
But she smiled-
Blinked away the swelling in her eyes-
And smiled
No one will ever know
She choked down the ashes caught tightly in the back
of her mouth,
Pushed down the rising wail
No one will ever know
She’d be sure of that
Bitter, bitter disappointment
No one would ever know
And those tears never fell…



BEFORE, AFTER, AND ALWAYS

Before man, there was wind…
The creation of man brought time…
Turning again, spinning still, another revolution finished
And everything changes, and everything remains the same.
It’s only the passage of man-made time,
Just another grain of sand slipping past the neck of
it’s rusted hourglass, It’s another moment closer to the last.
It’s the clock ticking backwards, counting down the days,
Until there’s nothing to do but wait.
It’s revolving still, moving on again, another year past
And nothing remains the same and nothing ever changes.
It’s only youth dreaming, maturity regretting, and age dying.
It’s only you realizing your part is so small, so short, and belatedly, so wasted
In this circle, in this cycle, in this endless waltz…
And the wind is still blowing…



Fascination…
dark’s punctual resistance to see
murmurs of dreams
profusely confused in colored whirlwinds
of the day’s promises
relived, encompassed, numbered events
and the names and the reasons sink into black dominance-
unable to see
sight takes breath.




Time unwinds into thickened, drawn out words
of all those things we should have done.
We are left only some darkened hallway,
maybe a broken, solitary staircase,
one last unstained page
leading us deep into this absent nowhere,
bringing us back to this point
in-between decision and revision
where life crumbles like ash
and nothing is left in this empty room
where we can’t remember all
the things that could have been.
And no one learns in a broken cycle
That nothing hurts worse than silence.

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