[With a nod to the Bard]
We are the moving dust,
we are the breathing dust,
we are the seeing dust,
we are the living dust.
But how, you ask, and rightly
so, can dust fall asleep,
dreaming of places unknown,
and lovers unmet-- how can
dust imagine whole worlds
and love with one heart for
60 winters and 60 summers?
And do the notes that stir life
come also from dust, just a
little dust and nothing more?
When the music is played
and dust dances with dust,
and dust laughs with dust
and soon dust loves dust,
can dust ever understand
the paradox of its own
being, from dust to dust?
Not until the winds come,
the warm winds of Eternity,
will dust be blown away,
leaving the unseen soul
alive, to walk and breathe
and dance and love, bathed
forever in the dustless Light...
[posted 2/27/21]
Categories:
dustless, analogy, appreciation, celebration, hope,
Form: Free verse
They were photographs of younger days
protected from dust in a shoe box,
sense my trepidation opening it;
impatience fustrates, anxiety overwhelms,
lifting the untaped top is a paradox...
have the pictures remained intact?
There must been a hundreds of them or less,
so dustless and neately packed and held together
by a yellow ribbon I bought for a returning soldier
who never got to see it wrapped around the maple tree;
what made me decide to open it with cautiousness?
Did I think that opening it, all memories would flee?
To my surprise it turned out to be quite the opposite,
as I untied the stiff ribbon, the resurgence of images began:
faces with youthful smiles reawakened moments of a lifetime,
that ended up into oblivion for reasons I can't explain!
Now, they are hanging on the hallway wall painted in green,
I've plans to perserve them and display them in a museum
to attract and amuse keen visitors with their momentum;
I'm glad that I saved them from deterioration and been seen.
Categories:
dustless, childhood, emotions, happiness, inspirational,
Form: Rhyme
The Simplest of Pleasure
The glorious big television
The cable box, dustless as can be be
Flanked by two flamess candles
Dancing ever so cheerfully
The mahogany table on which it sits
The flickering flamelike heater, right beneath it.
A cup of fresh coffee with a dollop of cream.
Making the experience heavenly
June 4, 2019
5:30am PST
Categories:
dustless, life, night, peace,
Form: List
Good Morning Night Owl.
Why do we leave the light on?
Where the Lamp-post sheds its skin.
The Trumpet pours, the passion flour.
Our constitution is number 1.
A dustless preamble.
Borderline masonry must not crumble.
Categories:
dustless, political, social,
Form: I do not know?
For Aleppo
What is the joy of war if not the fragments
of blood sprinkled unholily on the ground?
Aleppo has seen this braveness and succumbed
that the testament lies in the swords and armours.
I can feel the test of your suffering and pains,
I can smell of the irony of the warship bouncing,
I saw the shape of your crying laughter;
Sharp, drowning, and, building itself a channel of
restriction in this fragments of godless war.
Make the body of your masses a holy fortune,
let them find delights in your face and soul.
Illusion of this abolished fate shall stand
when the thousand drop of those tears shall speak,
Aleppo! You can fetch from eyes to eyes
those filthy shades of darkness and imperfection.
Aleppo!! Shatter those winning ageless fate.
We have seen your tears and sorrow smiling,
we have seen the season of your song hanging
here in the throat of howling wind of shame.
Your mirror has eyes and mouth to tell the world
of those thorns that grow on your skins...
Wearing dustless of stories on your neck,
in pair of empathy we shall make your tortures
known to the world when the time comes.
©John Chizoba Vincent.
Categories:
dustless, analogy, betrayal,
Form: Ballad
My nightmare filled with streaks of saintly garb
rousing the flares of benevolence
and the strokes of compassionate ink
scribbled on to the snow-hued papyrus.
The fields of golden grains unmasked
the unpolluted ecstacy of childlike desires
Simple.
Innocent.
Pure.
Softly swaying as the hammock in the dew air
gently rupturing the laddery pride.
It waves its resilient trunk
then stoops to the god of snow.
And the windows to the soul will tire peeking
and paint instead ashen hopes
Languid.
Reminiscent of pallid hermit
caressing colorless sands,
tranquilly hummed by the songs of a lone shell
under the unambiguous sky.
Compose your poems
now with the sallow ink
on a dustless, ethereal white sheet.
Categories:
dustless, mystery, peace,
Form: Verse
The air is thick with memory -
A fog of reminiscence.
Or is it simply mist
Rolling through the window?
I feel the wind and taste the salt,
Hear the distant pulse of waves
Keeping time, skipping beats
With my haunted heart.
The wind chimes sway and croon
From their place above the sill,
Where sand dollars still form a row
Among crumbs of sand.
And there, on the bedside table -
Speckled stones arranged just so.
And if I lift them, I know
I'll find dustless circles,
Halos from the past.
My vision blurs.
Then I see her in the doorway -
The ghost of childhood,
Twirling in a cloud of skirts,
Strings of seashells draped like gems
Around her fragile neck.
I blink -
And she's gone.
But through the mist I hear
The patter of bare feet
Down the empty hallway.
By Heather Ober
Submitted to Nette's "Mixed Senses" contest
*This is an old poem I wrote on March 7, 2012
Categories:
dustless, childhood,
Form: Free verse
beauty can be found
in the simplist of things
joy can abound
from a cloud's silver lining
answers can be found
dustless and shining
wherever you turn
don't stray down along
the path of naught
for it is wretched and wrong
more often than not
like an old familiar song
love the life you've got
and happiness will return
Categories:
dustless, introspection, people,
Form: Rhyme