Close Your Eyes and Think of Cleveland
Last night when I struggled to close the blinds,
I promised myself: “Tomorrow when I reopen these
I'll see clusters of evergreens and a cloudless sky
mirrored in an inland sea.” This morning’s yank
uncovered the same old stark cement,
same unobstructed view of disappointment
undisturbed, still parked there.
Magic thoughts ride horses wishing for a longer road,
which winds up looking at a dead-end. Change,
that engine of desire, stalls, chokes. It’s no
game, this life, yet we cheer it on, like fans
watching their team lose, season after season.
We tell ourselves next year will be different,
and all the while, we wait.
We're all lined up, it’s said, on the same shore; it’s not
supposed to matter which side of the lake we're on.
Next door to mansions, shacks should know their place.
In squalid cities, trash cans overflow
with the waste of crumpled dreams. Tidy
is the sentiment that failure and a lack
of success are not the same.
Who still believes that sarcasm has no soul
or sincerity necessarily has a heart,
when earnestly we're always told
we're not alone; we do not suffer alone?
For amid the dust of a darkened room
each one of us knows that we are,
and we do.
Being and not having is no curse, and hope
beats memory any day. Alive or not
there are some I once knew well, and some
I no longer know, yet still remember,
and others I have never met at all
but somehow know. With any of them
there’s nothing that I'd want to share –
–except the thought that next time they open
their blinds their sorrow-laden eyes will rally
with a brighter glimpse; and for you, this drink
from an imaginary well is on me, peeking
through a knothole in the left field wall. Let’s
raise an empty glass and toast the sky.
(You know who you are.)
by AuntShecky
In this poem, AuntShecky says she is asking: In a world of failure and squalor are we asking to much of hope and imagination?
I reply: not with poetry like this. Thank You AuntShecky; I raise a glass to you.
The Circumference, by Qimmisung
Quote:
Originally Posted by
qimissung
It was in the night that I dreamed
And in the dreaming saw myself
Young and golden and free
I awoke smiling at my innocent self
And stepped unthinkingly across
The circumference of that life and this
A rope of evil binds me, breathes
Its excoriating breathe upon my cheek
Inhales my youth and cherished naiveté
Takes it unto himself as if he had the right
To step into my world with his cloven
Hooves and ill-gotten power and take,
And take, and take again, to exercise
His will, his hubris, his misbegotten soul on me
I will survive
I am strong
But this is not what my potters’ hands envisioned
And the little voice that says not this, no, not this
I cradle her to my breast very tenderly now
I wish she could forget
Unfortunately she can’t
How vivid and strong, Qimmisung!