A withering

Shrivelled, exposed, cold,
Warps and wefts waste away
the body afflicted with decay
O!, I say,  the hey-ho way, of the live-long-day.
Whatever has lived
Will wither, languish, and decay.
Time  pines us away
aghast in a quagmire of guilt, regret
spilt water, wine? I forget
which itch of memory did the damage.

No transubstantiation this,
no move into immortal bliss:
this work of resistance is an inception in art
of all the heart-wrung soul that is left in me.

A lamenting for the passing of the light?
Maybe, but, no, no, not quite…
more like a winter tree stripped,
bent, gnarled, entwined in the winds of time. 
a modulation of voice, a volte-face:
a variation in rhyme?

 

Surely, no man
has such bad intent as to awaken from sleep
those legions of demons that laugh as we weep?

 

Stripped down, dying back to the root,
We leave a shadow behind the sun.
We take such passing grace,
hot breezes that freezes
the many faces of history,

Spiced with dusty uncertainty
streaked with the blood-red tears
of a love expressed n Moorish fears
break these prophets, wreck the priests
stab posing roguish politicos who over-reach
confuse our days and steal our dreams away…

 

Release us, God,  from all those who shout, insist, twist
the days’ mysteries into the measliness of rhyme,
reducible to money, power, prestige.
We need a little empty space-time….
for everything under heaven is strange and new
and resists the conformity of rhyme.