Faute de Mieux

[Pendragon]

Faute de Mieux

It is a morning like any other in the shadows left by passing time,
When one asks the same old questions knowing answers are not forthcoming.
One has sought again the solace of the verity that lies in well-aged wine,
And awakened with a wicked hangover, but not much else one can summon.
One stares into a mirror and relies the halcyon days of youth are now gone,
And silver lines the temples and across the brow but doesn’t line one’s pockets.
One is very tired as if most of a race were already behind and deeds already done,
But where, where the reward for the toil and trouble, who has taken it? Who’s got it?
One stares about with wild eyes, even friends become suspected n’er-do-wells.
The one trusts only the Lady in Red, the hourglass figure of wine as she moves in the glass,
Everyone else one drives away to be alone with one’s chosen mistress consigning others to various hells,
Til the day that the one slips and notes that his fresh blood resembles greatly his love in the glass.
I have written a case history of one’s descent into paranoia, total insanity, and what may have be his end
Rich was he, eccentric beyond imagination, brilliant, mad. I wrote because I had nothing better to send.

Dale Harris
© 12/12/07

[motherhubbard]

Pen, I picked a good day to get caught up on the personal poetry section. This was sad and stirring and then sad again. Not a piteous kind of sad, but an empathetic sorrow that recognizes ones own face in the mirror.


I think this is beautifully written


It is a morning like any other in the shadows left by passing time,
When one asks the same old questions knowing answers are not forthcoming.


and this- Wonderfully subtle imagery



One stares into a mirror and relies the halcyon days of youth are now gone,
And silver lines the temples and across the brow but doesn’t line one’s pockets.
One is very tired as if most of a race were already behind and deeds already done,
But where, where the reward for the toil and trouble, who has taken it? Who’s got it?

[Pendragon]

Pen, I picked a good day to get caught up on the personal poetry section. This was sad and stirring and then sad again. Not a piteous kind of sad, but an empathetic sorrow that recognizes ones own face in the mirror.


I think this is beautifully written


and this- Wonderfully subtle imageryI am glad you liked it. The title is French for "For Want of Something Better." I am slowly writing my way through the alphabet using the odd phrases that I find in the dictionary as poem titles and finding a way to make them live. This poem is based on the latter life of a very famous person, except for the girlfriend wine, I do not think he drank. He did the mirror stuff and the wondering who was stealing and so forth. Died a recluse, a wealthy, very lonely, very unbalanced man.

Pen