The Crescendo

I rage, I toil, I cower and sweat.

I have not met my maker yet

and if I meet him I shall say,

‘Please come again another day.

I am not ready. I am not ripe.

The times not right!’ I’d wail and gripe.

I’d beg of him right there some sign

that he was fair; that fate aligned

and gave me all that I deserved

not less and from the path I swerved

by some dark power ill beset

to full crescendo of regret.

And in the whisper there I heard

the tempest break at silent words.

I knew, and he reminds me now,

that I deserved much worse allowed

for fate is held by piercèd hands

that save each one from fair demands.

From instant darkness, ash, and flame

and takes upon himself the blame

So God the Father please forgive

my angry heart; my will to live.

Teach me—slowly—how to die

that I might live for more than lies—

not what I see but for the hearts

That beat for thee—in distant parts—

a tune you love to hear and share:

The music of the lives you cared

enough to bring out from the dark.

And each that beats and stills you mark

as yours—this orchestra of strings.

So take my heart and make me sing:

Now in life and then in death,

may all I do; may every breath

be all for you my Elohim—

the Ever Greater Than He Seems.

At the End of Their Conquest

The conquerors looked around
At all their ashen mess
They stood there all quite silently
Not one to call them blessed

And from the ashes came the wail:
"We conquered our brothers, our sisters, our selves
We conquered our conscience and in our hearts delved
A dark little ship without oar or sail

For Acheron, Phlegethon, Cocytus and Styx
And most of all Lethe!
To memories nix."

His Legacy

They say he took his own life

Like she once tried to do

But where she was saved

By miracle or luck

(I’ll take the former)

He succumbed

To leave that everlasting question:

Why...

He passed on

Like we all must one day

Leaving too soon it seems, too young

Leaving children behind

Children old enough to have given him grandkids

But too young to have tried.

He passed on before that empty-nest-hope for grandkids could sneak in.

Yet she

Who once tried to take her own life—

She who got a second chance—

She lives and begins to feel that empty-nest-hope stir.

She lives and dreams and hopes and plans.

She works and suffers and fails and cries.

She calls her son at 1 a.m.
                                 With tears in her voice
                                                               Asking if he heard the news

He, who was close by after she met those bright unblinking eyes

                                           On top that unforgiving asphalt

He, who came on that horrible task to pick up her car

                                           Abandoned at the side of the highway

He, who came to talk to a baffled husband wondering
                                           What did he do wrong?—What signs did he miss?

He, who came to talk to a father with no way of explaining impossibilities

                                           To children confused and afraid

He, who offered to help in a situation most would flee from,

He, who waded into the incomprehensible mess of it all

And offered a warm hand,

Is gone.

His hand is cold and sapped of strength

He has left his family and this world behind
                                            But he is not dead.

For he was there for a man at the height of a freefall

A husband who had left all he understood behind

A father falling through thin air grasping for something that makes sense.

He was there for a family in the disarray of impossible chaos—

The impossible that somehow was

He reached out and was there.

And there he remains.

His legacy lives on

In the warmth of a father’s hands

In the tears of a mother’s eyes

In a son’s trust

In a daughter’s love

In the family he helped to heal

He lives on.

His death is still a heavy thing to bear

A weight too large to understand.

So shed your healing tears

And wail out your confusion—

The whys that heave out your chest—

But after the rawness passes

When the memories still remain

Remember he still lives in my family

And in all who he touched in their pain.

Shadows Lit and Fled

The shadows lit and fled within the cave-

The hole of past iniquities piled high

And packed closer than stacked Parisian ’combs

Of bones on bones; mixed neighbours friends and foes

Till numbers disappear with all the names.

Yet when the crack of earthquake, pain and trial

Broke through the granite roof of strong facades

And split the cave in two down to the roots

The sunlight shone on bones in milling piles

Where darkness once held uncontested sway.

And in those dry and dusty bones within

That cold Platonic cave new life begins

To spark a fire in marrow stiff and old.

Life from death; a life renewed as phoenix

Wings and lasting beneath the phoenix star.

For now a valley is where once a cave

Held its crowded prisoners beneath dark,

Heavy earth and rock to dry out and wait

For what they did not know. These bones they have

Memories but no knowledge and hoping

Not much for futures, they forgot the hopes

In pasts. Before the end they grew as they

Now appear: cynical and hard and lone.

They saw only I’s and me’s and not we’s

But each a king, each a queen in their own

Reckoning, till parched and lost they became

All indistinguishable pale, dry bones.

The names and titles and wealth and everything

They once were and thought and fought over was

Forgotten; nameless heaps in an arid

Valley. There they should remain, forever,

A hidden mystery of death and woe.

Yet despite everything that lives and seems

And all that had ever lived a whisper,

A voice, a word arose beneath the sun

To light the still burning fire in these bones.

What Silences Say

This poem can be read in several ways. It explores the theme of silence, among others. The brackets can be read in many ways: emphasizing the words within, as if the words have been removed, with no audible difference, etc. Each way of reading the brackets alters the meaning and sense of the line but keeps the main theme/message whole.


Enjoy,

- F. L.

Are you listening?

-Listening to what the silences say;

The (gaps) between words

And (spaces) between glances

Between (the seen and) the heard

Between (pauses and) second chances

Between what is and what may

Are you listening?

It’s in the flutter of autumn leaves

It’s in the floating winter’s flakes

It’s in the patter of distant spring

It’s in the summer and in the wake

I’ve been listening-

I’ve been listening for (all) my life

To authority’s (steady) voices

To the rambling of my mind

To the plethora of choices

And through (the wastings of) my time...

And the hollow (music) rife

With silences

I’ve been listening

In autumn’s floating leaves

In winter’s fluttering flakes

In spring’s distant patter

In summer’s shadowed wake

Listening

To what the silences forgot;

To past (and present) tied

By ponderous (muted) string

To noise and shouts belied

As another (dumbshow) thing

(The sounds) signified as rot

Are you listening?

To decaying

Pale leaves mouldering

White flakes congealing

Black drops pattering

Red sky mummifying

Are you listening now?

Between

And in-between

The silences

There is much to hear.

The Mark of the Raven

Ah, I see in your smile

A recent visit from the bird

Who marks our faces

Crow’s feet

Or raven’s

Around the eyes

He lands

And leaves his mark

Then flies

"Caw"

Shattering the sound

Of safety

Show your mark

Show your raven-scar

Show where he stood

And printed

Eulogies to come

Show your crow-scar

With a smile

And a wink

Laugh along with

The black-winged joker

His sign was known

Before it marked your face

His sign is hidden

In the soft skin

Of babies

He even lands on the womb

So do not fret

His constant flight

Overhead

His cackling

Caws

His dark aspect

Do not worry

When he comes

To mark your eyes

But laugh

Laugh with the crow

And raven

Laugh that soon this coil

Will unravel

And release

Its tainted captor

To what?

To where?

Perhaps some distant shore

Some sunrise

Or sunset

But never

Nevermore.

Ode to the Soldiers

The bells! The bells, they toll for victory

Hard fought and won upon the heaping fields

Of mud scorched black by emptied armories

And blood of bodies brave who would not yield.

To them, to them they toll for all but naught

Who fought and died there in the worst of hell

Those dead; the brightest of the hope-lit souls

To walk the twilight of ’shrined progress fraught

With blinding pride and hubris great to knell

The gongs of war: the bells, the bells, they toll.

And throbbing now upon November air

A cry goes up and mingles with their sound

A scream of joy, perhaps, or bold fanfare

To ’nounce the end of war and loud expound

Relief for lengthy tension snapped at last.

Yet there among the joyous clamor bright

A sorrow note clashes ’gainst glad revel

Dragged slow through sky, its wake: a silence vast

Just broken by a wailing wordless fright

Of dreaded news now brought long to level

A heavy blow upon the grief-bent head

Of one lone mother who long wrote and hoped

To see her son return from war to wed

The girl who short would find her throat tight groped

By wracking tears and strangled falling moans.

The bells toll hollowly for past-known sons

When war yet won is lost when best is burned

On pyres of pride and greed that flaming groans

Beneath the weight of sacrifice in tons:

The lives not lived and futures never learned.

The bells! The bells, will ring for something bright

When men and sons will die for more than naught

They go forth bravely who for others fight

And stand upon freed lands that their blood wrought

Where peace will spread across a land once bound

In fears, despair and mercy lacked by those

Who led for gain to self and not the whole.

Those men who died in wars some base, some sound

By duty called decisive they arose

To fellows guard and reach the crucial goal.

The bells! The bells, still toll for mothers' sons

And daughters brave who gave their essence all

Against the threat and thund’ring of the guns

And raging death where they did lastly fall.

So lift the mothers and the dead sons high

And Daughters, fathers we remember too

Write fading names upon your mournful soul

Lest we forget the past in last goodbyes;

Do not erase that bleak November view

Of fallen souls for whom the bells, the bells,

They toll.

(On this Remembrance Day I dedicate this poem to all those who serve, or have served, in the military. Also, I dedicate this to all those who have relatives who serve or have served. Your sacrifices will not be forgotten.)

H is for Heirloom

The sun is setting on All Hallows’ Eve

And here on the suburban heath

I watch what happens when horror walks masked

Through half-lit streets up to front doors.

Harmless tricks on family yards and hearth stones,

Boys in warm red hunting caps,

Young girls in pink making hearts beat nearby,

Costumes, homemade haunted houses

And hearing hounds howl to the hunter’s moon

 The horror lies here but hidden.

Housed in offices, homes and certain heads;

A havoc of hopelessness and hurt

“How?” we ask from hill fortresses of bones

Suits can’t clean the bloody stained hands

When knowledge of dire hunger demands haste

And we hearken not to a “Help!”

Just heeding the hum of dull screens and honks

Of car horns and heckling hedonists

Within hectic lives pursuing happiness

The hawthorn bushes and hedgerows

Wither before the coming hour of doom

When we will be heaved into wealth’s hecatomb



http://jinglepoetry.blogspot.com/2010/10/poetry-potluck-halloween.html

Our Loss (Leavetakings II)

 

She was surrounded by those who love her

Her life stretched behind her like a red carpet

Leading onwards and upwards

It could have been much longer

But it got into her bones

It stole into her lungs

And robbed us of her

She was gone but not into the dark

She had left the shadowland

To live in fields of light and warmth unknown

Leaving us darkbound, black clad grievers

To ponder mourning

I know

And he knew

Grandson

And son

“How did you mourn her?”

Someone so good, so pure

Yet so aware that she was not

Aware of the stained rags she wore

Yet still smiling upwards into the face of heaven

How do you mourn her?

When she is somewhere better

And you are left alone?

I don’t know how

I cried at the celebration of her life

That euphemism stuck to my tongue

Like the hot wax of the candles burning by her coffin

I cried because I miss her

Because I will not hear her warm sonorous voice again

Because she will not wake me up

By gently rubbing my back

I mourned the loss of her

I mourned the state of the world without her

I did not mourn for her

For what she might miss

She traded her ashes for gold

“I don’t know if I ever properly mourned her”

He said

Son to grandson

And I understood