Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Busy as Rust

We have put many things aside
in these bitter years, so
slow in turning, so much like
eons in the dusk, time
churning slow as broken
gears suffused with
coagulated grease

We have put our own hopes
by for days we began to
doubt would ever arrive
watching rapt as the
titanic and poisonous
flower grew up from
the blood between us
hiding our eyes and
what remained to sparkle
in its penumbral shade

We have lost grip on
our own souls, forgotten
what we desire, doubted
what we once knew so well
that there never needed
to be a question, because
the cruel mechanisms of
despair never quit their
toil, busy as the disease
process, busy as rust,
productive as termites
as they chew through the
underpinnings of all we
hope to hold

And now, no longer shackled
to the shadows, we are pale
and strange to ourselves,
unmade in the process of
sublimation, no longer the
people we once hoped to be,
gone soft and aimless with
the darkened year, grasping
to remember the chemical
fires we once burned on our
own behalf

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Patrick,

You’re back and wow! This one has a lot of muscle. In the process of making a buck and paying the rent it’s easy to lose the spark that originally animated and made us unique, special. Some call that process growing up, but I just find it sad.

I like the allegories you have used to describe the “cruel mechanisms”: disease, rust, and termites at our underpinnings; all working relentlessly to leave us hollowed out.

It’s good to see you back posting,

Swiftboat

Anonymous said...

Wow! It appears that there's much in you still waiting to blossom, even though thngs have been tough. This is a powerful poem and it speaks of things that I understand. Thank you for putting all of this into words. M

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