Saturday, October 26, 2013

perenniel, elle est

i. le 29 décembre
Regal and distinguished in faux fur,
she stands, with mona lisa on her lips;
lost in petite reveries. She trusts
the faerie powder falling from the sky
to bury her, and preserve precious snowflakes
that would melt under july's viceroy.

ii. le 14 avril
Flowers smile, Sophia stands solemn;
showers sweetly serenade her skin.
The house behind her is silent and bereft;
she doesn't mind. She never minds;
tears mesh perfectly with raindrops.

iii. le 9 août
Sweat, shining beads coalesce;
a coronet to replace love's lost diadem.
Sophia ponders the unfairness of hellfire
and the fallacies of falling hard.
What was her sin again?

iv. le 31 octobre
Kids cackle, donning demon masks.
Tonight she finds the edges of her face;
no mask, but living skin; an element of truth;
revelation for a reeling heart;
the foundation of a miracle.

v. le 29 décembre
Regal and distinguished in faux fur,
she stands, with mona lisa on her lips;
lost in petite reveries. She trusts
tenderness and trickles of tears;
the tools that taught her oh so much;
no need for magic, fey

On Death and Dying

A message rocks upon the gentle waves,
headed for an unknown destination;
warm arms, warm heart, reconciliation,
a dream, a hope; every lonely heart craves
to turn back time -- as though it were nothing --
just uncap the Master's slipstream of time,
to atone for an uncommitted crime,
as though that could remove the bitter sting.

No comfort is found in kissing headstones
nor falling in love with decaying bones.

No answer, no symbol, no metaphor,
will ever be found upon Death's fell blade;
ne'er moved by a heart, no matter how sore,
he is no haggler; one cannot persuade.

Friday, October 25, 2013

Sister Mary Zion

daffodils made an
insignificant penumbra;
nobody coughed up roses.

she melted gilded lilies
and shot gift horses like steer.

calling Athena a common whore,
she chose sackcloth and a sweaty habit;
she said that silk felt like burlap
on the unholies of her flesh;
the bosom-splinters from the unvarnished cross
felt fine.

believing in belief and happily ever after,
her cloister closed in.

maybe she believed in the golden city;
we only saw terra swallow her bones.

Work Makes You Free

Work makes you free
and they worked
for years

no food
no water
and they lived

they built gas chambers.
a ‘shower’
killed them

The corpses waited
to be moved.
The next room
had ovens.

Death is freedom?

I don’t think
that was the “freedom”
they wanted

at the end
it wasn’t work
that made them free

Arbeit Macht Frei

I wrote this poem in 2007, after my visit to the concentration camp in Dachau. My German is (most likely) completely screwed up. But this is still my first (and only, if memory serves) attempt to write a poem completely in another language. The translation will be in the next post. 

Arbeit macht frei
und sie arbeiteten
für Jahre

keine Nahrung
kein Wasser
und sie lebten

sie errichteten Gaskammern.
eine ‘Dusche’
getötet ihnen

Die Leichen warteten
zu verschoben werden.
Der naechste Raum
hatte die Öfen.

Tod ist Freiheit?

Ich denke nicht
das war die „Freiheit,“
dass sie wünschten

am Ende
es war nicht Arbeit
das gab sie frei

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Children of the Aegis Angel

Innocent,
like the first few minutes awake;
before life’s millstone
falls upon ever-leaden shoulders.

We are
newborns,
trying to iron out
the wrinkles on our faces

because good
isn’t ‘perfect enough,’
and we are
tired of hurting.

Tying yellow ribbons
around scarred wrists,
memorials of the crucifixes
that angels lifted.

Are you tired yet?

My weariness, tight jeans
that I choose to wear;
maintaining a still frame
of politically correct agony
that is just
plain
stupid.

Decimate your barriers
and hand your razor blades to He
who no longer fears
the bite of steel;

my Friend,
and hope
who loves despite his scars.

And, you know?
I can still love too.

& j'aurais mon paradis perdu

taint me with your zephyrous liqueurs
and let me exhale these polished dreams,
these sunbathed isles, free of any cloud
that might cast shadows across hope,
this tiny little diamond that I hold.

hold me, a simple command, a wish;
the manifestation of fragile dreams.
They exist in twelve dimensions, but, Alas,
you are nowhere near.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

silhouette

i loved you behind the silk screen of stagelights, letting the light colors bleach your skin into angelic hues. you were so beautiful singing Shakespeare to the masses; i thought you more a Cordelia, but underneath the sunglasses and icy rouge, Goneril shone through, wrinkled and aged.

you are hated; a batty old woman who pets her cats, not knowing the secret collaborations; they dream of slipping feet and broken hips.

falling you will be like sinking the titanic, inevitable; the buoyancy of skill is no match for leaden ego.

i like to think that people are more than the outline they traced on butcher paper, during those beautiful kindergarten days, when hope still blossomed in emerald bushes. but you are hollow.

or so i've seen. prove me wrong;
because i want to love you.

fiat lux

for Jon
je t’aime

Beloved, I would burn the world in clouds
of napalm; bring to sing a running stream
of flame, with ashes like a widow's shroud;
a gentle balm to cover every scream
that falls from shattered windows, every curse
to fall from clothèd lips before they burn
on stakes that they created in life's course --
of course, to Heaven blinded eyes shall turn.

Now. Stop and breathe with rationality;
for I would scorch the world to kill your cross,
and set our breaking hearts forever free,
to rid our bones of emptiness's moss.

Today we ache in quiet suffering,
and yet, with haunted voices, we still sing.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

broken aegis

My love:

Many minutes have passed since we last crossed eyes, leaving me to wonder if anything still breathed in the minute crevices that our unspoken goodbyes left behind.

In the last hundred-thousand grains of sand, I have learned the blues well. Deus ex Maestro, the master of the Heavenly band, ordered these strings bent, the better to birth broken chords. My chest, resonant and empty beneath the ribs, has echoed these sounds well, causing these selfsame fingers to paint them on my eyelids for the whole world to see.

I have forgotten to scour the eastern skies, looking for our covenent on the horizon. I’ve witnessed hopelessness aplenty during the darkest nights; jets masquerading as stars for the desperate optimist. But love? No, not love.

I’ve walked in desperation and mimed my way through far too many days. Love is, alas, the last thing on my mind.

Or maybe it is the only thing? As many times as I’ve sung hopelessness’s hymn; I still forget the ending. All I remember are the measures blocked with eighth rests, each one anticipating
future sound, ultimately unresolved.

This, my love, has been the composition of my days in the sun. I can only hope that different stars have shined on you.

- égide

To the Days that Never Were

"I'm full of a future that never got lived,
days that should have been but never were."
Clara Oswald, Doctor Who: The Rings of Akhaten


We lived for Strawberry Hill and April showers,
for silly pranks and brighter days.
We suffocated our demons as they rose
and let life be, for all it is.

I do not begrudge you the high road, straight and fast,
nor the picture's perfection; that isn't life
but fantasy writ in this wondering mind,
left to wander a long and crooked life.

I leave cigarettes on the water,
a peace offering to the gods that be.
I thank them for you, for memories
and dreams and tears, for all the things
you left me -- and the things you didn't,  I see

our child in my eye, your first laugh line,
the years of straight progression, matrimony,
love and lust, a house on a hill, anger and laughter,
angst; a bottle of bitter pills, quaque die,
our bodies find sleep; for once, for all,
find peace.

But you were the hurricane, and I mundane;
never quite enough to match your pace.
I leave you to the years. I hold you dear.

Monday, October 21, 2013

a letter to the father from the unbroken man, resplendent in his shame.

i cried.

my tears were ionized vodka, a drunkenness roaring out of my body, craving attention and love. i still held to you then, a jeweled torch in the shadows of my life and a salve for the precise hieroglyphs engraved on my legs. but i still bled, and i still wept, hoping to find heaven's gate before the last of my hope died.

i lived.

there came a day where my faith went on the wind, and i no longer felt a spirit in the old hymns. i knew the chords by heart and i loved to sing, but it was only a fancy to soothe my heart and manufacture chills on my spine. there was no personage. it was an empty vibrance in depression's depths, and i would rather go without. and so i did.

it was a long, slow road to being alive, and i still walk it. and i think that i am more proud, having walked it without you. i do not doubt heaven or the angels and the saints. i doubt only your love for me.

i have done without love, and many other things besides. you are not the only pledge that i have accused of faithlessness on the long march; though you were the most beloved. i looked to you to bring the sun into focus, to place coins in my hand, to energize this tired skeleton with a raison d'être. and you failed me.

i can now see the light at the tunnel's end; but i do not know if i should love you or thank you; or if i should love and thank myself. there is still evil you have instilled in me, a perspective of hatred and abstinence that i must learn to break. i swore my youth by the cross, and by the cross was my spirit crucified by a real world that has no need of you.

you are a beautiful lie. or maybe real. you have said nothing from one extreme to another, nor have you declared yourself in simple words and deeds. but i can no longer live in penance for uncommitted sins, hoping one day that death will be better than life.

i must live.

For Men of No Importance

If love be all the world then let us sing
to Aphrodite's supplication, I
have such a tiny voice, melodies ring,
and I am tiny though I'd sooner fly
on wings of flawless gold, I see them glow,
subsisting on the aether; angels dwell
an inch beyond the rise of tippie-toes
to be a lovely thing, oh it'd be swell!

I'm no courageous thing, a man gone soft
so tenderized by time, tripping through years.
Despite myself, I'd sooner be aloft,
not subject, as a mortal man, to fear.

For some, angelic radiance's innate
and others must be Daedalus, create.

Sunday, October 20, 2013

girl in hyacinth blue

i.
school taught me
to flawlessly recite
all the conjugations
of aimer and lieben,

but when temptation incarnate
stands, alone and waiting
to be swept onto the dance floor,
i am useless.


ii.
i can scan verses,
mark meter and rhyme,
and analyze the author's
blood alcohol level
at the moment pen
was set to paper;

but if poetry is for
the wooing of women,
english has failed me
greatly.

as i stand here
sweating.


iii.
courage fails me,
but the girl is a goddess.

with shy smiles
and nervous hands,
she says
hello.

morgenlieder

I seek the morning, the evanescent moment
when night refracts and bends,
forced to crumble at dawn's advent.

The monsters protest,
demanding their fill and due.

But I will have weregild,
recompense for a crucified youth.

I claim the years to come,
the purest prisms of light,
literal joy, untarnished love.

I leave the mourning
to those who'd sing
such derelict songs.

I owe the darkness nothing more.

morning's truth

If i should hold sweet dawn in my esteem,
the promenade to morning dancing near
then i would question all the things that seem
to cling to permanence. i have no fear
of monsters, clinging to the lonely night;
i know the things that cleave to shadow's sway.
i have held court with monsters, they delight
in tormenting the hours e'er away--
but i have learned the meter of their hymns
and pridefully belt the insults that they fling.
impervious to their unholy whims
i do not fear the painful songs they sing.

for monsters, while they love to make men cry
so seldom do they ever deign to lie.

as he bled.

i.
i told my unquiet heart
to just accept the waves.

"your blood grows old,
and the wildfire dies;
it is time to accept
the unacceptable things."

it's time to accept
the empty miles with grace;
to learn to love
the unyielding silence.

it is thy only friend.
it is my only friend.
it is
all that there is
for your tired old soul.



ii.
you are loved
without being loved.

you are desired
without being desired.

you live by grace, and yet
grace has never quite found you.



iii.
accept the paradox;
it's the only resolution
that makes
the slightest bit of sense;

it's the only answer you'll get.
 

Ignis. © 2008. Chaotic Soul :: Converted by Randomness