Countess
02-24-2008, 12:20 AM
Tread gently, I'm oozing blood and soul from my veins these days.
The part I'm concerned with goes from ...
"Decaffeinated and disenfranchised" ...to "after all,
it wasn’t always this way.”
I can't figure out how to make it more powerful. This is half-finished - I think. When its done, I can die in peace.
If wise men spoke the truth,
the world would be a different place,
But wise men don’t speak, they listen.
I
The world is filled with the griminess of people,
Hacked and hewn - each of us strewn
With second-hand sentiment and second-rate rhetoric,
Though it is personal experience
That proves our mortal wound.
We are the toil of the earth,
The black tar of highway 101,
The neon traffic lights
With tri-colored eyes,
The dense smog
Smothering the sun.
We are the chosen ones,
With our screaming sirens,
And base-bangin radios,
- the speakers of which
cover the back seat -
We are the cell phone intrusions,
The trash in our cache,
The senseless mess crashing
Our hard drive memory.
We are the information highway,
Reiterating media ideology,
We are the plague of the planet,
We are the wreck of the world.
II
The alarm shrieks, high-pitched and piercing,
“ING! ING!”
A would-be aural injury to meek morning
Save this alarm is damp and cold, permeating
Last nights fresh sheets with musky sweat -
At 38 I’m already centuries old -
Too old to tell time by precise details
Like digital clocks.
Decaffeinated and disenfranchised, I, on
the dazed drive to work am marked
by moments of clarity -
consider the metal machines staring
back at me from across the lawn,
or barking orders from the car-jacked,
traffic-backed boulevard.
More people. People inside people that run on gas.
Must everything we contrive look human?
Last nights restless rest has me hugging the sides,
so I consider a foray into the forest,
a forging of my own unique path as they say
Though the foliage sentinel promises to block
My way, this reincarnated soldier of nature’s fortune.
Would it be so bad to join him,
To end it all at last?
“One day, I promise; till then,
remember the past - after all,
it wasn’t always this way.”
I grew up on marshed farmland on the banks of Gloucester, VA
Resenting my parents for their wherewithal to suggest
A bucolic setting for my early youth.
My first night there was an nightmare’s paradise,
Inside this solar-paneled home with broad, double-decked
Windows I shivered and shrunk beneath the covers,
Watching wide-eyed the gray ghouls that crept and
Surprised, unmoved then metamorphosized,
long-beaked faces lunging and plunging on white walls
Before retreating to laugh. Several moments passed
Before I realized those impish trees had only been
Playing a trick on me.
The second night I spent in detached scrutiny.
The third night I joined them at my window,
A spectator shaman to these spineless porkypines -
These dancing voodoo pagans in psilocybin trance,
zephyr icarous wailing wildly from
The deep, black Chesapeake -
And its psychedelic ecstasy when
the axis mundi descends upon me.
The Northwest howls, a werewolf’s testimony -
Dark, black clouds meet and growl
Like armied phalanx’s for a battle.
Overhead ocean, bright with sea stars,
With celestial cities like crystal eyes of Zion,
- the holy children we celebrate -
Retreat, surrender quietly to the onslaught
Army from the west, and I bow
In dereference to nature’s wrath
Against her enemy - the stark city
Of industry which glows and glowers
Of man fades behind a slate of rain,
And is gone.
I am in awe.
I am in love.
I am a part of her that moves above.
I am part or particle of Whitman’s god.
And so I pray.
III
I never saw a tree insult its neighbor,
to shame it to its feet,
Or a star, jealous for its own glory,
burn brighter to a brother’s defeat.
I never saw the sea, so rich in resources,
Order tribute or a tempest make,
Or the moon, in murderous madness,
Linger too long, or for the sun lie in wait.
I never saw a tiger tear its prey
With a vicious, mortal rage -
But then I’ve never been a
tiger, a tree or a star…
Still, I do see.
The part I'm concerned with goes from ...
"Decaffeinated and disenfranchised" ...to "after all,
it wasn’t always this way.”
I can't figure out how to make it more powerful. This is half-finished - I think. When its done, I can die in peace.
If wise men spoke the truth,
the world would be a different place,
But wise men don’t speak, they listen.
I
The world is filled with the griminess of people,
Hacked and hewn - each of us strewn
With second-hand sentiment and second-rate rhetoric,
Though it is personal experience
That proves our mortal wound.
We are the toil of the earth,
The black tar of highway 101,
The neon traffic lights
With tri-colored eyes,
The dense smog
Smothering the sun.
We are the chosen ones,
With our screaming sirens,
And base-bangin radios,
- the speakers of which
cover the back seat -
We are the cell phone intrusions,
The trash in our cache,
The senseless mess crashing
Our hard drive memory.
We are the information highway,
Reiterating media ideology,
We are the plague of the planet,
We are the wreck of the world.
II
The alarm shrieks, high-pitched and piercing,
“ING! ING!”
A would-be aural injury to meek morning
Save this alarm is damp and cold, permeating
Last nights fresh sheets with musky sweat -
At 38 I’m already centuries old -
Too old to tell time by precise details
Like digital clocks.
Decaffeinated and disenfranchised, I, on
the dazed drive to work am marked
by moments of clarity -
consider the metal machines staring
back at me from across the lawn,
or barking orders from the car-jacked,
traffic-backed boulevard.
More people. People inside people that run on gas.
Must everything we contrive look human?
Last nights restless rest has me hugging the sides,
so I consider a foray into the forest,
a forging of my own unique path as they say
Though the foliage sentinel promises to block
My way, this reincarnated soldier of nature’s fortune.
Would it be so bad to join him,
To end it all at last?
“One day, I promise; till then,
remember the past - after all,
it wasn’t always this way.”
I grew up on marshed farmland on the banks of Gloucester, VA
Resenting my parents for their wherewithal to suggest
A bucolic setting for my early youth.
My first night there was an nightmare’s paradise,
Inside this solar-paneled home with broad, double-decked
Windows I shivered and shrunk beneath the covers,
Watching wide-eyed the gray ghouls that crept and
Surprised, unmoved then metamorphosized,
long-beaked faces lunging and plunging on white walls
Before retreating to laugh. Several moments passed
Before I realized those impish trees had only been
Playing a trick on me.
The second night I spent in detached scrutiny.
The third night I joined them at my window,
A spectator shaman to these spineless porkypines -
These dancing voodoo pagans in psilocybin trance,
zephyr icarous wailing wildly from
The deep, black Chesapeake -
And its psychedelic ecstasy when
the axis mundi descends upon me.
The Northwest howls, a werewolf’s testimony -
Dark, black clouds meet and growl
Like armied phalanx’s for a battle.
Overhead ocean, bright with sea stars,
With celestial cities like crystal eyes of Zion,
- the holy children we celebrate -
Retreat, surrender quietly to the onslaught
Army from the west, and I bow
In dereference to nature’s wrath
Against her enemy - the stark city
Of industry which glows and glowers
Of man fades behind a slate of rain,
And is gone.
I am in awe.
I am in love.
I am a part of her that moves above.
I am part or particle of Whitman’s god.
And so I pray.
III
I never saw a tree insult its neighbor,
to shame it to its feet,
Or a star, jealous for its own glory,
burn brighter to a brother’s defeat.
I never saw the sea, so rich in resources,
Order tribute or a tempest make,
Or the moon, in murderous madness,
Linger too long, or for the sun lie in wait.
I never saw a tiger tear its prey
With a vicious, mortal rage -
But then I’ve never been a
tiger, a tree or a star…
Still, I do see.