Best Chasm Poems
An empty echo bellows from within the depths of a chasm. Endless and cold, it moans an apathy that desecrates the sanctity of love and alters the signal of all feeling and emotion. It reaches and bites the heart, concealing from vision its true mission of destruction. Tightly wrapping itself around the soul, it plunges its deadly sting through its victim, cutting off the gentle flowing mixture of happiness, sincerity, laughter and devotion. Mindless faces speak a meaningless language. The lips seem to move in an endless array of contours as a lone silhouette vanishes with the last beam of light. Alone it stands as it silently waits for time to pass. Alone in these vast depths of indifference, there is no hope, no salvation from the inward conflict that evaporates the soul. Bow your head little sparrow. Weep the tears that none else can. Reveal the pain that none else will. Lift your eyes to a destiny. Take the future up in your tiny wings and bring it back to me. Together we can cry over the past and fly away. Darkness is the absence of light, yet you and I see. Within the chasm flickers a small candle. To you and I little sparrow, no freedom is too distant, no change too great. We persist with love where blind hatred dwells. Lingering within us is a hope, a dream and purpose that lifts the wind beneath our wings. We've tasted the bottom of the chasm. Together we can cry over the past and fly away..........
All heads are bowed in Soup Creek today
The town’s elder statesman has passed on his way
A gentleman true whose tongue wasn’t forked
To whom people listened whenever he talked
But when others spoke he would cheer or applaud
Whatever their nation, whomever their Lord
His words rarely barbed and only when apt
And usually only when friends were attacked
The name of this man, held so high in the rankings
None other than L (call me Milt) Milton Hankins
A man of belief with a deep ingrained faith
Who found time aplenty for each stray and waif
It’s quiet today in the town of Soup Creek
There’s a humungous chasm… so to speak
It’s like something’s missing for one and for all
It’s like someone’s stolen the church and town hall
Soup Creek, a town with its spirit ripped out
But Milton left town as a man in no doubt
That Soup Creek would thrive on his foundations laid
His legacy being the friends that he’d made
A sage and a mentor whose work here is done
A scribe with adventures, brand new, just begun
I dreamed in the night that a light lit his land
And his good lady wife said, “Milt, take my hand.”
Last night my thoughts dwelled in melancholy
recalling what we once shared had been good
before we made the mistakes of mutual folly
and on opposite sides of a bridge we now stood
You called, I answered. Both having need to talk
but the bridge between us still kept us far apart
Would one of us take the first step of the walk,
afraid the risk would end again with a broken heart?
We spoke of memories that we both held dear,
and of those that caused me to wear a sad frown
Neither of us moved. We were still standing here,
in fear that one step would burn the bridge down
Is it too late to cross the deep chasm of this abyss?
Would holding you in my arms change even one thing?
Could love be rekindled with one passionate kiss?
Then, you said you were taking off your wedding ring.
At the foot of that bridge, I stood completely alone
as you walked away without one word of goodbye
Into that unbridgeable chasm, I tossed my phone
and threatened my eyes, "Don't you dare start to cry."
We seem separate, sadly so
Culture's children of East and West
A horrid hole lurks humankind
Traipse through time to stand up straight
History's tears tell the true tale
Finding freedom from irksome isms
Inner inklings shine to the stars
Will wise hearts always pay the price
Wrought with woe, wars waged unwon
Face race, our original sin
Seeking healthcare for everyone
Reset concepts for world order
Find ways to treat our foes as friends
Cross grand gorges, greet the other
epigraph:
A Field Guide to the Questions
That Survived the Fire
I Didn’t Start
—
I. The Songs
When peace like a river
When, for whom
I still haven’t found
what I’m looking for
Why here
here comes the sun
Whose morning
the answer is blowing
in the wind
Why ask
What if
a change is gonna come
When it circles back
Amen?
all you need is love
What then
what’s love got to do with it
Why love, then
every breath you take
Who owns
I’m not yours.
Not now
like a rolling stone
Which road
you can’t always get
Why try
Why dream,
anymore
I heard it through the grapevine
Why now
imagine all the people
What remains—
—
II. The Poets
When—
hope is the thing with feathers
Why—
the center cannot hold
How—
I contain multitudes
Where—
in a dark wood,
midway
When again—
a dream deferred
darkens
What then—
dare to disturb
the universe
So why love at all—
it cuts,
and you
were always
already open
Who watches—
someone will remember us,
not save us
Which road—
I saw my life
branching before me
What remains—
nothing will come
of nothing
Why now—
the hour is out of joint
dislocated
Then what—
the same dark wood.
midway.
again.
—
Coda
and after the songs
and after the poets
and after every question—
a chasm inside you
God left there
before the Word.
don’t answer.
it doesn’t need a way—
it is
the way.
Curled under my covers
Hiding the world from my senses
Angel’s comfort beyond my grasp
Seeking refuge
Minding darkness
Soul is weary
Heavy heart's dreary
Breastbone crushing resuscitation
Pressing rhythms flatline
A moldering past
Alas—a day to die for
A brilliant sky - a hopeful day and night
But broods and churns, the haunt of beast and plight.
No kneading dough nor kneeling praise nor shout -
Before the cross was laid, there’s no way out.
The stretch between heaven and hell, no game.
A farmer or preacher could not stake claim.
With deep bruises, blood-red, the chasm has clout.
Before the cross was laid, there’s no way out.
Unsettling spores, the slithering…it’s war.
Get used to whip of snow and sun…its roar.
The walking dead transverse the sea of doubt.
Before the cross was laid, there’s no way out.
Ferocious waves, an unlit path with rocks.
A flaming sword, wrath of cherubim-locks.
Eternity without a save - sealed route.
Before the cross was laid, there’s no way out.
The Chasm Of Depression And Death
Screams heard in the far off distance
Tales of pain and horror
Echoing through the night
They call for a hope that is never to come
Their calls fall on deaf ears of those who went before
The light from the distant blood red moon is dim in lost chasm
Unable to show what the night has hidden
Depression and thoughts of death fill the air
Young people die by their own hands
One useless suicide after another
Their futures destroyed while their screams go unanswered
Hope hides on the edge of the valley
Just out of reach and so far out of their dreams
It waits for someone to find it
Wanting to reach down to help
It starves from the lack of attention
Young people dying in a chasm of depression and death
Never giving life or hope a chance
Never looking to the heavens
Never finding what they should have seen all along
If only someone, somewhere would have said something
Made them look harder at the edge of the chasm
Maybe it could have saved just one life
Then another and another until the chasm closed
And no other young person would fall into its depths
I have awakened from my dream little one. Alone, so very alone. How did we slip so far without direction ? Encumbered by the darkness, the candle long since spent. Dark, so very dark. Can you yet shed a tear for me little sparrow ? Your wings clipped and heartbeat fading. So far down we've travelled. A taste of freedom gone by, my eyes listless. Choking on the remorse of this pit. How deep the chasm. Must I carry it in my heart through eternity ? So much emptiness to bear. You have left me in the darkness alone, so very alone. Too much of nothing, the dream unfulfilled......only a dream. A waking torment, my sparrow gone. The chasm cold, so very cold......lives on.
Scribbling with amber-colored crayons,
time scrawls sepia on ancient rocks.
And ocher and orange canyon walls
rise above bushes wearing dust frocks.
Flora and fauna are left behind
serpentine rapids swallow the ground.
And white-water murmurs ricochet
off cliffs that echo the slightest sound.
Sentinels, sculpted by wind and rain,
create a maze full of twists and turns.
And embedded crystals of pure quartz
make monoliths sparkle; as day burns.
Red tints the Colorado River
shades of scarlet, where rusty rocks bleed.
And crimson waters rush to the sea,
grinding gorges at a breakneck speed.
A star-studded sky of twinkling lights
forms a backdrop for a pocked-faced moon.
And ebony spills into the chasm,
encasing all in a black cocoon.
(Quatrain)
2/23/2017
Eloquent and festive in harvest crops,
Plethora of blossoming may,
O our adored land!
Immaculate in dreams of tomorrow,
Nostalgic of fragrances of yesterday.
A land, in vision, never second to none,
O, my beloved motherland, beloved of mine.
Amongst the moon, the sun and the planet and the stars
a running brook of so many enchanting words,
nowhere to be found.
Lightening in clouds, black and sweaty, as they are
wake up with chirping birds, lull to sleep with similar croon
Rivers murmuring with such a bliss,
And mountain top, with wanderer clouds lost in a kiss,
Where the emerald green of forest land surmises the gazing sky
Gust of wind along the spontaneous swaying field,
none knows where to be to witness again.
Branches burdened with blooms of floras,
Birds, hopping and chirping along the leaves lushing in green.
Humming bees, flocking in muse
They, tame the churn on flowers, honeys of a waving season
Gentleness together fused along,
bonded in a brother keeper motherland,
never a loser, never compromised
O my beloved,
I caress thy holy feet on my bare chest,
Us within a story
Chasm of my land of birth, I beseech my death in thy glory.
Shine not tonight moon
Garden blooms spray no bouquet
Night wind no dancing -
Let tears just flow by my bed
Fill this chasm 'tween me and death.
2.13.14
The autumn leaves crinkle beneath my feet
Their radiant colors dulled
I see the reds and yellows as vibrant as they were
The last time we came here together.
I hold you in my hands,
The way you held me when I was a child.
Your urn jostles softly as I scale the cliff
To our favorite spot.
I open it up, and look at you one last time.
Bits of bone sprinkled in the ash,
Like the time we came here after the first snow fall,
The defiant leaves of abundant autumn
Refusing to be masked by light dusting.
Off the tip of the rock,
I turn the urn,
You flow out over our favorite hike,
As you would have wanted.
We pass through this trail
One last time.
I knew I’d offended you, your smile
of hurt, the one reserved for whipped
spaniels; you use it too.
We didn’t speak as we strolled through
the woodland park , picking up acorns,
dropped by passing tree top squirrels
And when my hand brushed yours, you
pulled away, like a nervous electric eel,
stranded in the rainless mud
I knew I’d offended you.