Caribbean Sunset
you can look out across the fields (assuming it�s a clear night)
and draw a smile on the face of the moon,
from down here.

sensing the disparity between mirth and disconsolance,
evident even from such a perspective as this,
the murky dawn rails against the failing light,
a rebirth imposed upon the natural order
of the logical progression; as rainbows, fires beneath the rain,
dying on long empty highways, winds that blow
where freight trains slow to salute the fallen soldiers,
leaving no trace of sorrow in their wake

the wheels rolled and the steam blew skyward;
the cabinmaster drowned in a bed of lilacs

the sleeping beast at last awakes to first light
and with a casual perusal of the artworks in his hands, says softly,
as though whatever audience there might be might be offended
to hear it in plain-spoken bombast,
�don�t seem to be nothin� round here that�s sacred anymore.�
his only friend,
a gentleman and a philosopher who says only
�every man�s conscience is bound to betray.�

all of our dreams were our own; they were all that we owned
we dreamed of dark alleys and marching bands and eight-by-twelve cells

the low grey tones we speak pass mountaintops
and glide lightly on blurred contexts and enigmatic concepts;
you could sense the unrepentant tone; the frostbitten alleyway rainbows
of which we spoke were long since lost to the mercy of the snow
�that�s a good lot of redemption for an unrepentant foreigner.�
a foreigner, but in name only;
the sunburnt waves marching rank and file across his brow
testament to the sentiment to which he too has been a party
�that�s one way to leave a disconsolate frame of mind
aching, broken in the dirt cart-path ravaged by winter and spring alike.�

we sat and watched the falling stars, dancing and whirling
towards the Caribbean horizon, and you murmured something
about how in this moment you wish you could stop the stars
in their paths

the phantom engineer rolled on, into the night, past darkened houses
and fields of wheat glowing of their own self-interest,
through banks of fog on windswept cobblestone streets,
on an uncommonly still night, the gentle grey pillars striding
so confidently past the humbled cobblestones,
stopping imperceptibly briefly to greet each one in turn
saying a few simple fatalistic phrases,
only of necessity, and marching on into the darkness

the sunset cries for help as it slowly bids farewell to central America
and tiptoes stealthily off into the Pacific,
never to be heard from again.


_______
   2002




   
elemental desires

    elemental desires, the bearers of promise & of furious delusion,
    smile cruel smiles and unleash on the sullen beaches
    the snarling storm that had long been
    prophesied, and feared, but denied
    in the name of a good and kind overseer
  
    death spoke swiftly in its native tongue
    the howl of churning wind raced
    from one horizon to another, and fear I feigned

    who has seen the wicked messenger? not I;
    through the scripture tentatively immortalized
    in pyritic sandstone deep beneath the graveyard,
    remorselessly encroaching on the tombs
    of those who had come and gone in aeons preceding,
    I found solace. between the lies and the laws of compromise,
    the streetcar fantasies live on, untouched by
    millenia of Enlightenment, oblivious to the
    unfolding Gedswardahg around them.

    typical situations in unforgiving times,
    dysfunctional panacea in an elliptical orbit
    around an enigmatic, dancing, fumbling rhyme.
    true mirror images, inverted, the rosy hues of the
    negative spiriting away the broken light,
    the half-formed heart
    of such a vision to stark and soulless realms

    a towering Trudeau of disconsolance, beckoning,
    begging the rape of the Otherworld to cease

    find some consolance here; this inspiration finds you ill at ease
    but it's not nearly as far gone as it would have you believe.
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