Way(ra)s Of The Past

 

 

 

Way(ra)s Of The Past

 

 I.

 

There is a road, cold

as stark nightmare's mane, weaving

a winding-sheet memory

choke-tight, wringing the eyes

dry, smearing the heart, called the past.

 

II.

 

There is a tollway

never cheated by moonlight

never unwatched by day. Don't

squander your soul walking

down it; the past collects its debts.

 

 

 

 

 

November 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for dVerse Poets

Poetry Form: The Wayra

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Footsteps, 2016, © Joshua Philip Hart

Photograph of the Author, 1956, photographer unknown,  Public Domain

Affinity

Affinity

Do the stars

call to each other

as you call to me

a restless wave

across infinite dark

spark to cellular spark?

Is it distance you see

measuring me

or disastrous proximity

the way light bends congruent lines

a star-egg prism'd warm

from eye to eye

before the breaking door,
the solar storm of crypted time?

Can those hunting specks
that dust the desert blue

in their shaken glass globe so

identically bright, so sweet/saltpeter sour,

in their cyclopean run

in the isolate absence of heat

dance the desolate dying of suns

knowing they'll never meet?

~July 2014

Optional Musical Accompaniment





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Kerry's Wednesday Challenge: Alienation in Outer Space
 Kerry O'Connor(Skylover, Skywriting) has brought David Bowie, post-modern alienation, what it means to listen, and outer space together for one of her always compelling challenges.

For some unknown reason, perhaps because this is Kerry's prompt and I know her love of forms, I had an impulse to rewrite this poem as a sonnet. As always in these free verse-to-form exercises, it's the same, only different. (Please don't feel, anyone, that you have to read both--just my over-achieving self-indulgence.)

Affinity

(sonnet)

Do stars so far call out one to another

the way your call to me crosses infinite dark,

small voice to voice pitched low, never uncovered,

restless wavering spark to cellular spark?

Is it distance that you see, measuring me

or the damage of diffracting proximity,

the way the light at dawn bends congruent lines

in colors breaking down the prism's door?

The ragged beat tapped out by contracting time

compels the specks that dust the ballroom floor

so identically bright, so sweet/saltpeter sour,

sparkling as their shaken glass globe's devoured,

to make that falling run in isolate absence of heat

and dance the dying of suns, knowing they'll never meet.

(July 2014)

Images: The Voice of The Blood, 1948, Rene Magritte

Time, by Wojciech Siudmak

Fair use via wikiart.org