Tag Archives: self portrait

Bend the will of rhyme to time, define one single speck of peace, grant a solace ‘twixt the words upon the ink’s sweet black release. Drift my mind to never worlds, where cursive loops in scrawling bleed, that there I find a fascination in all these crazy scenes of greed. Or is it need, that drives it there, takes control, extends my hair and boils a madman’s single eye that stares upon the page with fire, in ire burgeoned from a peace where just one moment did release?

But here in diving deep to find the moment’s pause, the sacred rhyme, here in swimming longer through the glancing blows of what is true, finding meter’s just a lie, so left to face what surely dies when now the freedom’s passed! The clock says “go!” and I alas, must follow or be ruined sure, so back to work in fires impure, back to head and shovel down, sweat and blood enough to drown even the best of all our strength…

But now, the language comes to me, the fired rhyme and rhythm be, each word is cast upon my mind, I stand among the dregs to find that they are listening quite content, their shovels gone, their hurry spent. They listen to each lengthened phrase, their gasps crescendo in honest praise, they feel the power granted here and when I’m through, they stand and cheer!

In audience of the pen and ink, ‘tis that which grows within, I think, that matters most, yet spoken hence without the written plan’s suspense, that every word to them beholding is carried true throughout the folding hands of space and time, the shovel, sweat, the pain and rhyme… all ‘tis mine!

In moments hence the haunting bends and dances in return, one breath to take between the panes of glass that holds its wicked burn.

Insatiate flickered spectre seldom stains a friendly gest, more apt to burn a grimaced sneer upon the walls of plaster’s mess. Solemn sheen in stroked repose, a black bird’s gaunt and rivulet eye, driven red by blackened hell in silhouette of the candle’s cry.

Enough! It wails to empty rooms that hold no hope or promise, so bathes despair in lapping light ‘cross ceiling’s naked beams and cornice. Its ghostly echoed beat is cast in vacant space there stretched and lost before the loft where passions stale and light is neither seen nor lost.

As the evening tarries on its sadness sorrows till its told, then bursts in lapping length of flame to blacken what remains in hold of prison glass wherein its held, a lantern’s captive, a jealous cell that can’t sustain the light of day, nor grant the loft a luscious play of softened shadows’ sensuous fall to lovers locked, or lonesome call. So lingers midst the tallowed fats to light the path to crumbs for rats, to bring the raven stuffed, to life, or simply fill this poet’s room with source for fear, with threat of gloom.

Good candle in your prison kept, ‘tis in fear’s pheromones that you’ve wept, now drowning in your sorrow’s blood, pooled upon your flame in flood, grieve not your life’s been spent in vain, for every shadow cast in flame between the glass that holds you in is granted life by poet’s pen.

This pen, condemned to write long hand
twixt static lines immutable.
I dream in screams, enslaved demand,
until no whim’s refutable.

I drift between the penny thoughts that eons’ scars have tarnished green.
I search for lasting reverence to bath the mind in dreams unseen.

Then one, by one, the pen strokes lay
their theoried marks across the page.
Yet I, denied the truth they play
o’er temporal poles of peace and rage.

I watch the sloppy arcs of ink strive to drive a purposed thought.
I hear the rhythmed scratching nib stroke the paper’s lust here sought.

My hand, demands some false control
that I may feel these arcs are mine.
Yet so, I know it guides my soul,
entreating purpose form this blind.

That I behind this pen in shadow steal a glimpse of ink and prose,
conjured form this poet’s ether, released afield by arcs it throws.