None and Every.

The air begins low and then sings high,
The birds soar skyward and then swoop by.
The sun melts yellow and mellow shines,
The light shoots through and evades the pines.

Mountains loom, snow falls and water gushes
Through crags between rocks and on rushes;
The chill is duly warmed by the beams,
Heaven on earth … or so it seems …

Concrete and tar rise upward, majestic, ugly,
A cold light of their own gleaming unceasingly,
A stoic hindrance to humanity, no doubt,
A human necessity they can’t do without.

The air lacerated with darkened soot and mindless smog,
Breezes stilled, beams dimmed, breath blocked,
Desolation crawls within as do suicidal tendencies,
Life’s utter folly, its own vagrancies.

The aimless thirst for what is not to what is,
To take from another what was never his,
Lie for no reasonable and explicable cause,
To exist, to not just live, but just because.

A child’s laughter so pure, almost divine,
Leads to beauty, joy and happiness sublime.
A man’s grown chuckle so virile, so morbid,
Resembles inborn greed and all that’s sordid.

A daughter’s anguished pain and her incessant weeping,
Her father’s grin and his forced ignorance constantly creeping.
The burst of metal and fire, the end of a living thing,
Existing billions blown from being to nothing.

Though the Mother still survives and lives on,
Though the Blessed Faith carries upon
A ruthless world, Hope remains and moves
To etch within Destiny its lovely grooves.

And the sun still shines and burns bright,
Just like the stars that burn at night.
The sand still sifts as the wind sighs,
And people still cry when love dies.

Replies.

It moves toward the Rose!
The Frost!
And, slowly, her life goes …
The Cost –
Of Life, Beauty, Being!
All’s lost!
Then why this taut living?
For Frost.

Is this the Truth? Reply!
‘Tis so.
Why live then? Why, oh, why?
You know.
Nay, I do not … do I?
Do so.
For Frost does the Rose lie?
For Woe.

For Woe? She lived to die?!
In vain?
Her form crinkled, hue dry:
A stain
Upon the ice. I cry.
Again!
And what’d she get? Reply!
Your pain.

21st November

Snow-White in CAPITALS.

It’s morning.
But there’s no light in this coffin.
I hate the dark; it’s blinding;
I can’t see.
(I hated light; it’s blinding, I was blind.)
I wonder if it’s the same for you.
Wonder a lot these days.
In dark.
Use “I” a lot.
Use “You” a lot.
Who am I?
Who are you?
Names.
What does “we” signify?
I know what you think?
You have a
Name.
You need it in CAPITALS.
You have a
Name.
You want it recognised.
But do you know your
Name?
How can other confused people
With vaguer
Names
Possibly recognise yours?
Maybe they’ll wonder at it,
Because you place it in CAPITALS;
But can’t you understand it first?
I’m willing to try.
But I’m snow-white:
I heeded the WITCH
And I bit the APPLE.
So I want you to be the prince –
But my prince wants to be KING.
So I wait.
Alone and quite dead
In my glass coffin,
For people with vague names
To come and gawk.
And I wish I could appreciate my
NAME
That is now in capitals.

30th March