In The Midnight Of Time

Freezing steel,

feel its depth,

standing upon

a shaky world

that senses less each year.

Gravediggers dig shallower,

and owls hoot more quietly,

and gazelles run slower.

The moon shines more dully,

although with still noticeable grace.

Death is used as a cover,

to excuse our lack of forgiveness,

to make things less strange,

and let flesh rest,

to mend its own seams.

To let lips rest,

from telling stories,

or casting spells.

To allow eyes, 

to focus elsewhere,

to seek ancient lands

where freezing steel is unknown.

And a steadier world prevails.

 

 

 

When The Parakeets Disappeared

I remember what you were,

although I dreamt of you becoming

something else.

I recall your actions of brilliant deviltry,

while wearing so well your anthropoid sneer,

remaining so nonplussed while I bled.

You brought home to me two parakeets in a cage

during one of your rare, dolorous frames of mind.

But, I learned that you were

a bungling traitor on whom

I had wasted worthy love while

smothered beneath your lustiest mockery

of expressions of affection.

I also discovered that you

sought to use the birds  

as a means to confine me, as they themselves were confined,

and all heard my grief.

I thought your shallow inputs to help 

cure my oblivion were real.

But, your sad and cruel refusal to abjure trickery

showed the truth.

You promised to re-orient yourself, but continued 

to rule your roost,

laying down petty rules,

as if formulated by an emperor.

Your haughty fabrications

brought me to the point of leaving the cage door open,

and as I exited through the front door,

those beautiful birds, now free, chirped,

and I felt no despair, pain, or anger at their escape.

We all got away,

and all heard my relief.

 

Intermission 

Good, kind Tim died on Tuesday, 

He should've ended right there, 

But the faeries didn't want him yet, 

His soul just floated on the air. 

He landed in the lost land of Oolmuk,

Where angels and demons coexist, 

It was a pleasant sensation to be in a place, 

Where fear, loneliness and hatred aren’t missed. 

And here among such entities, 

He dwelt for many years, 

When at last he felt caged, and he raged, 

And he cursed the Divine through his tears. 

My Soul is so tired, my strength is so spent, 

My thoughts are confused, I wish you'd relent, 

And let me sleep the sleep of those who have felt, 

That they have been honest and productive 

with the hand they were dealt. 

So he asked the question, 

Entreated to his God, 

To truly rest must I worship you 

or just truly love others? 

So kneeling he prayed for rest and freedom, 

And at last real death befell him, 

And his new parents celebrated, 

The rebirth of good, kind Tim.

                                                    Time As Harlequin

Some strange trick of the mind, sleight-of-hand, time’s hands?

Idleness or fixed energy? Cards,

quickly shuffled. Hocus-pocus. The fast

card shuffler’s hands. Prestidigitation.

Pace, disguised as standard routine,

felt as fast or slow;

thus, we register our accomplishments done

by the ticking of the clock or,

the turning of the world.

Those routine beats of time,

sped up, not standard,

Or slowed down.

Our false system of reckoning,

calendars

flap quickly through their phases as if by legerdemain,

wizards of time shift the measuring.

The same degree of hour,

second, or minute altered,

grown longer or shorter by our accursed invitation,

to watch the harlequin perform,

we lose count

of the acquisition and reward

for tasks and projects completed,

only in retrospect, at the end

does deft trickery stop.