Reminder

“Vanishing Point” by Michael Lang

news of death unexpected

a colleague from heydays

a merciless storm of old

memories lashes the mind

heaving clouds come to clash

with a violence that bleakens

the internal sky sending bolts

of electrical sorrow to strike

at the heart halt its beat

for a moment of painful

arrhythmic condolence

a permanent brand left behind

one more lesion to join all the

other memorial burn marks

that uglify tremulous skin

of a pulsing organic affinity

weathered and wearied by loss

bradycardic by tenebrous time

spirit woeful and indolent

wary of clocks trying hard

to remember the chimes of a

friendship now come to its end

news of death unexpected

recurring reminder that hours

and heartbeats diminish

with increasing speed

in approach of their

time and space

vanishing

points

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

Brutal Mercy

 

I laid down with you
warm in my arms
you as big as a colt
still possessed of a
steed’s mature grace
unaware of the grief in
my desperate embrace
nose to nuzzling nose
loyal lush-as-mink fur
to my guilt-ridden skin
I dropped tears on the
cold stainless steel
antiseptically morbid
but ringing with trust
in each thump of your
pain-flaunting tail we
were close we were
closer than ever in
eighteen sweet years
as the vet at my nod
pushed the plunger that
instantly stilled the soft
smile of your brows and
extinguished your eyes

Sudden Death

 

“Queen Anne Lace” by Jan Allmon

 

 

distance spilled from the sky
onto pastures of mourning
white lace umbels caught up
in the wavewash of grief
inflorescent soft stippling
on acres of anguish where
memories leapt from these
delicate clusters of sorrow
where death gave impossible
miles to the valley of mist
between breathing and entropy
intimate yesterdays rolled
to a sudden svelte silence

 

 

From my book Inside the Smoke

Emptiness

“Absence and Return”
Painting by Sharon Cummings
From fineartamerica.com

memories
gather at holiday tables
on empty chairs

Fibonacci 17 – Loss

“The Grief of the Artist”
Painting by Ivan Shikerov
From pixels.com

time
hurts
beyond
rotting bones
and wasting muscles
pain throbbing in absence in loss
occasions of grief arriving at exponent speed

Graveside

“Mountain Graveyard”
Painting by Kurt Schwitters
From wikiart.org

sleep neath the seasons
mute reversal of heartbeats
keeps grief in the air

Funeral

Dawn LIght
Photo from 3lian.com

unravel the light
pull on threads
straggling down
from the loose
dawning skeins
of the sun weave
a garment to
costume the dolor
of waking alone
before facing
the oncoming pity
of those who
remember the
glow that she
gave to your days

Empty Chairs

“Two Empty Chairs”
Painting by Natalie Ryde
From pinterest.com

old griefs return
amid mirth and wine
tables laid for the
sumptuous feasts of
November December
where vacancies
gather to celebrate
families unwhole
friends who passed
holes that burn with
affection of memory
these are the high
times the joyful
occasions of calendar
blended like cocktails
of time with the spirits
of sadness the right
proper toast for these
mixed blessing blue
maudlin holidays