Exhausted by my daily heap...
The trail lies angst beneath my feet.
The rocks erose... with jagged edge...
I stand upon a mountain ledge.
To peer upon a land aglow
Where fires burn sweet dreams below.
How did we... who stood with time
Come to ferret such a crime?
My ignorance was sadly placed
As I was one... who walked in Grace.
So here I stand... a promise kept...
Now at the edge... I take a step.
The End
Written: October 19, 2023
Poem in the Fragmented Form Created by Poetess: Constance la France
The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design. By Harry Crews
_______________________________________
Love's blades tear within as a dull scalpel with teeth
Leaving merely a crushed, dead chunk of flesh
It shreds, gouges, and weeps till the heart bequeaths
Offering its heart gambles will be accepted fresh,
Being hugged frowns as it gulps the vile reality
The dagger sinks further, piercing the frailty of sanity
A heart still bleeds while succumbing to sociality
Pathetic, petrous parcel with pebbly peaks
Jagged-toothed dome rising into bespeaks,
Each is engraved, erose, and has surface breaks.
Swallowed by a murky quagmire of an abyss beneath,
Snapping at heels all life, laden with vessel mensch,
Unfathomable evil clings to grief and jagged vitality
Vow to thrive with every word your soul speaks.
Gustavo’s Rite
He walked onto the harbor beach at sunset,
planting a small net on a pole like a guidon,
and setting soiled cloth bags around it.
Alone on the beach he began his dance.
Mismatched clothes flapping, he swayed,
then paced, then crouched to pat the sand
into a crescent, then stepped back and back,
dug sand by hand, finding black things
and tossing them into a jumbled pile .
He stepped easily, as if riding waves,
moving in erose shapes only he knew.
Then he gathered net and bags and left,
not glancing back at the cairn
of burnt wood and asphalt fragments.
All this I watched from a restaurant deck,
and had to ask the waiter about him.
“Gustavo,” he said, shrugging, “a local character.”
I nodded but kept silent, recalling that morning
walking another beach, trying to feel profound.
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