A Friendly Goodbye

Poem 1: A Boy And His Painted Piano he used lively greens tender blues, touches of plain mauve and rainbow trout splatters to paint music on the gas fumes that inhabited the clean air that once use to live there. he made the ugly decaying neighborhood i lived in bearable on even the worse of days. he was the soft harmless rays of a comforting sun and responsible for the smiles that broke through the usual dismay on the faces of seven to ten year olds already sold on the idea their life expectancies were somewhere in the low twenties. life isn't always about the new iPhone being released he represented hope. hope that someone could make it out of the sewers and return to free the whole chain gang presently locked firmly to a large solid steel post. even in the dingiest basements of the worst streets somehow, a whiff of hope threads through the tar laden atmosphere and children rise above the manhole covers that would otherwise maim their existence and keep them buried below the impossible dream. luckily there is always a don quixote who sees beyond the all too real windmill set to blow others away? Poem 2: A Street Puddle what story hides in this street puddle what do the reflections want to recite. one broken flower lies on the wet tar. the wall cracks from the very bottom to the top sitting there are black boots quivering stalked by white boots with their bully badges yelling "comply" blind to the co-operation to their commands. deaf to pleas of mercy as black rubbers fall as the wall echoes their cries three boots stand and you wonder where lies that fourth boot. do the mass boots of all kind even care black feet walk as their words float to fill the air drawing on the sky "no justice no peace"! time passes, deceptive winds clear the atmosphere and... weeds grow through the concrete to climb the walls you can see the shadows large against this impromptu screen and nothing changes. white boots rule. Poem 3: In The Beginning I have always been here. I was here when you turned the Earth's Stomach. When it regurgitated your acid tongue stripped the land of its roots and nothing grew. When you thought you could just skate through but instead fell through the lake and froze the Planet from one pole to the next. When you cheated the Sun of its permanent spot. Had it not been for romance who placed an infinite sparkler in the night sky who orbited earth barely clad in her white night silk dress you might of owned time. I was here when you flooded the land but you hadn't counted on the amoeba everything changed and you retreated to your original pit of fire. maybe you could deal in souls you knew what was coming when the heavens opened and released the winged guardians so here we sit the best i can hope for is balance fifty/fifty good and evil I'll take my chances with those odds. Poem 4: A Boy And His Wooden Dragon a detailed wood carving of a dragons bust leads an ancient ship through an unforgiving storm. if this replica could only breathe fire like the ones in children's tales still his face is lifelike, ferocious! one could swear trails of smoke escape from his nostrils, i am convinced his eyes are real emeralds. the waves against the metal ship, the salt that dissolves the rust, flows over the dragons neck, giving one the impression the creature is bleeding. old wood has no life flow... ...does it? no pump to circulate sap but!... ...i'm convinced this inanimate portrayal is leaking vital fluid. the craftsman's hand has..., perhaps..., a long shot to say the least..., maybe?, given his formation... can the craftsman's artistic soul be so intense as to breathe a half life into his meticulously chiseled creation? how much power does the real artist?... on a more practical line of thought, will we survive? "who cares" i think "that decision rests not in my hands." so... half cocked i foolishly climb the dragons neck. i remove my shirt to use as a tourniquet. i apply it to his gushing neck in an attempt to heal him. the whole time stroking him in a calming manner suddenly he releases a breath he opens his jaw wide and exhales fire equal to that of a volcanic eruption. and just like that the storm stops. the sky flashes his baby blues. would we make it back to land? is this just an ironic pause in the inevitable egregious battle yet to come? time would tell. time always tells. never trust time with a secret. time would tell after all that is all we have us humans time and then.. June 2015 Armand