Monday, November 17, 2008

Sadness

This is a VERY changed version of something I wrote a while back. Some might not like the changes. I'm sorry. Whereas it was once abstract prose, it is now semi-narrative poetry. I hope you like it, but this one is mostly for me.




sadness

to find beauty for that one i’ve yet to meet
i went one overcast twilight
through spacious flowered fields
past bubbling streams
that never reminded me of love
into the shade of murky wood
i came upon a pansy wilted
gray
forlorn and choked
springing impossibly from hard granite
there i sat and pondered

on the beauty of
tear-stained tracks down children’s dusty faces
weeks of rain
strong battered women
fancy melting candles
and darkwood rooms done up in red velvet
sputtering stars fighting to shine their light through earth's twinkly muggy atmosphere
and wildflowers growing raggedly from a crack in barren rock

i want to make someone's sadness my own
cup a fallen star in my hand as it burns
shelter it from tempestuous winds
shade it from the garish glare of sunshine

on summer nights i lie in the crunchy golden grass
look at the ghosts of giants
placed in the night sky to remind us
we all must pass on
we are only visitors here in this strange land
i love them
their tragic stories
heroes fallen in crumpled heaps
mythical beasts slain in fields of blood
tiny cold lights their most eloquent “in memoriam”

the sun comes out
stories fade to soothing baby blue
heroes and their eulogies forgotten
their wonders exist only in darkness

will heaven be all light all the time
will there be the dark spaces between the stars or
will they be filled in with such blinding light that there won't be any stars at all
will there be shadows dancing from the fireplace onto cozy earthen walls
will the forest still hold its dark secretive appeal or
will the leaves in the canopies be forced to move aside
let in the light
reveal her secret places
will all music be in major chords
all clouds cumulus
all stories have happy endings
will we mourn our damned loved ones or
will our grief be enough to save them
or
will we have to forget in our happiness that we ever loved them at all

when we are stars ourselves
will we all shine the same stark white
can I shine burgundy
olive or
burnt sienna
let my dark desires be the catalysts that make me more like god
let my self burn up beautifully like a meteor as I near perfection
let the forest shelter foxes in her secret places and murky mysteries
let the gnarled roots of this old oak tree hold the branches high
let my scars
be
my beauty
or i’ll choose to stay right here in the gloom of cloudy dusk
a wizened and bent old beggar man
who can’t bring himself to pick one sad little flower
who will have to bring that one he’s yet to meet down here instead
who has maybe found a new kind of grace