Requiem

Untitled by Eugene Ivanov

 

what altar will cradle your bones
anoint them in wine
when already red-soaked
infested with vines
they want no redemption
and couldn’t care less
if they’re damned

will they dance their escape
from an ill-fitting grave
or stumble and fall
with a rickety clamor
out of all visual memory

so tearlessly sad
those bones
didn’t live long enough
to lie in an elderly coffin
didn’t live strong enough
to make deep impression
leaving instead
mere dents on some minds
from cirrhotic splinters
you turned into
soft mealy knives

make an exit
one way or another
too quiet, too soon
too alone and ungrieved
or robust and riotous
dying out loud
leaving long wrinkled trails
of wailing and gnashing
and legacies
hot enough
to burn up the world

 

 

From my book Range of Motion

Requiem

“Cemetery” by Childe Hassam

what altar will cradle your bones
anoint them in wine
when already red-soaked
infested with vines
they want no redemption
and couldn’t care less
if they’re damned

will they dance their escape
from an ill-fitting grave
or stumble and fall
with a rickety clamor
out of all visual memory

so tearlessly sad
those bones
didn’t live long enough
to lie in an elderly coffin
didn’t live strong enough
to make deep impression
leaving instead
mere dents on some minds
from cirrhotic splinters
you turned into
soft mealy knives

make an exit
one way or another
too quiet, too soon
too alone and ungrieved
or robust and riotous
dying out loud
leaving long wrinkled trails
of wailing and gnashing
and legacies
hot enough
to burn up the world

 

 

(originally posted April 2013)

Terrible Truth

 

“Grief” by Vrindavan Das

a presence of absence
exists in the waiting
a thing of departure
that lives within hope
in the ache for return
a thing solid and stout
as the summer tree
felled for the firewood
wanted by winter

a tangible emptiness
stands in the space
of what recently was
but which no longer is
in the chair where he
lived and endured
all those difficult years
sits the substance of
yearning to have him
returning a need with
dimension and weight

such is artifact hunger
comprising the wait for
beginning of something
for ending of nothing
a desperate desire for
reprise of a yesterday
fulsome again with
good wood and good
blood in appreciable
bones of extravagant
blatant reality

heady persistent
corporeal memory
shimmers and shines
as a mocking affront
to the logical lucid
acceptance of loss
for she has neither
stomach nor spleen
for the terrible truth

 

Holes

“Grief” by Vrindavan Das

empty spaces
in places where
laughter and life
never needed
much thought
blood and bone
disaffected
abandoned to deep
metaphysical wounds
of fierce absence

we miss them
the dead and the gone
voices vanished
the echoes that loved us
attenuate time
washed out images slip
from the eyes of the mind
fade from pages of
notional scrapbooks
unfinished relationships

sadness resigned with
reluctant acceptance
of loss in a rich blend
of memories forming
a tincture of grief
an emotional balm
made to infill the holes
left in souls that might
otherwise die
incomplete and alone

Applause

Photo from ‘The Guardian’

(Originally posted February 2014)

(For Philip Seymour Hoffman 1967-2014)

what agony pierces the veins
with such pleasure that art
must be murdered by muscle
and malice self-loathing the
criminal mastermind inside
the psycho-biology tortured
by exquisite talent and pain
breaks the hearts that erupt
in applause moved and lifted
aloft by a consummate body
of work time and over again
left to grieve and consider why
some gifts are so ill-endowed
with inherently punishing
conflict of blessing and curse

Gold Stars

Gold Star Mother’s Banner

 

carried by the flood
all the life that might have been
tears of mothers

No Poetry Today

Thin Blue Line Candle

The terrible events in Dallas have rendered me unable to write poetry these last few days. I am filled with anger and despair.

My son is a decorated police officer, a police academy instructor, an EMT, a former member of the Civil Air Patrol, and a United States Navy veteran.

He is a man born to a noble ethic who enthusiastically swore a somber duty to serve and protect his fellow citizens – ALL of them – regardless of race or creed or character.

My entire family shares the grief suffered by him and by all of his brothers-and-sisters-in-arms around the country, as a result of the cowardly acts of those utterly despicable Dallas assassins.

We pray that he stays ever alert – keeps safe – and remains undeterred from his mission. We are exceedingly proud of him – and deeply grateful for the service of everyone in uniform – all of whom are increasingly in harm’s way.

The American social fabric continues to shred against the sharp edges of malicious factions. And now, more than ever in tatters, appears unmendable.

Wake

“Banquo’s Funeral” by Tony Scherman

 

orchestras of flowers
petals scented with music
arouse mourners
lifting languor of loss
up on bright blooms of memory
redolent moments
silent songs smiling life
into vibrant vignettes
not a casket in sight
softly staunching the
whelming parlor of tears
freshened eyes
lilt with gratitude
glistening orbs
rapt in garden sweet colors
no longer in throes
of discordant sorrow

Threes

“Three Musicians” from hdwallpapers

 

holes ripped in the heart
absence filling each space
with afflictions of grief

love comes one at a time
each unique of affection
joined to a corpus of joys

death still comes in threes
lately three times more often
the great anguish of aging

Legacies

“Feuertanz” by Nele Kugler

feed him to the flames

keep the darkness at bay

brilliant bones

flagrant light for her grief

leads her unto tomorrow

strength gained from the loss

from remembering

posture of singleton pride

how to stand under weight

of dead gravity

confidence culled

from astonishing anguish

the means to become

all the better from worse

gifts bequeathed by the fire