Abandoning
yesterday
haunts me
today
Interring
reminder
of what’s not
in play
Bypassing
my choosing
evading
my will
Each sight
unenvisioned
in blindness
— distilled
(The New Room: February, 2025)
A tribute to Marie,
Marie, you seemed to draw the short straw in life,
Again and again,
Yet somehow you were able find a way to keep giving,
To those who we thought less deserving.
But giving was in your nature,
As it seems to be with most who have little that is physical to give,
But a whole lot more of the spiritual to impart.
We hope if you are looking down on us as we gather here today,
You are at peace now with, the belated knowledge,
That your life mattered,
Your presence was a blessing,
And you did make a difference,
Inspiring others to do better,
We wish your stay with us could have been longer,
But we pray that you have found the peace,
That you had been searching for,
For far too long.
I now call upon others to share stories that,
Show how much your life mattered to them,
Then, now and in all times to come.
(We are interring her ashes after all these years when the immediate family are all together at the same time)
The corridors of life are rarely straight:
Not only do they bend and twist and veer,
We find the way ahead becomes unclear,
Soon blocked by doors -- each door, a different fate.
We’d like to take our time, to contemplate,
But time will press, and each will urge, “Come here,
I lead to bliss. Take me, and have no fear!”
How can we know which course to navigate?
Still in the end we’re forced to make a choice,
Interring almost-futures in the past,
And pick one door to open, if we dare.
We hope the door we choose makes us rejoice,
But this is a decision which will last:
Whatever ends it leads to, we must bear.
December 23, 2019
"Open Me First" Italian Sonnet Contest
In a kingdom full of cuddles;
'Loving!' said I, 'thing of amour';
My passion is this blessed, crazy muddles;
Heated hot emotions and loins treasures;
Got fever boiling?
Can't control them;
My passion is the comforting lovely
Loving
In a kingdom full of storms
'Loving!' said I, 'thing of sweet.'
The fatherly firm forgiving torn;
In you I’d insist keeps
Covering
I crave the loving, like loving
Loving
I awoke and flung the amour
the fatherly firm forgiving
and the dais never adoring
while I pondered, lover like and poring
the idolatrous intimacy interring not endearing
Much I marveled this warm carcass
Loving
I heard a dear, over fond estranging
That moment my soul grew no longer a stranger;
I saw us in my mind the cuddles
Deep into that darkness caressing;
Soul spread, spirit fed now kissing;
Ever so…Loving
7/13/19
written by James Edward Lee Sr. 2019©
The Last of the Wine
When the last of the wine
has been poured, red and dry,
and the gold wings of eagles,
burnished by time, dismount the sky.
When the velvet hush of eventide
conquers the ebbing splendor of day
and quick deep laughter, like hope
unraveled, is wilted by time's decay.
Her soft dark eyes will remind me
of love's fragments gathered in bloom;
a bouquet of passion's blossoms
fragrantly spun on love's loom.
And the silent desperate waiting
to swallow up her honeyed breath
will dwell in memory's corridor
until the ardor yields to death.
Stolen hours, like grains of sand,
have been scattered through the years,
venerated by the pain and glory
of our intimacy--and our tears.
The fervent rhythm of her body
has engulfed me in its tide,
interring my dread of failure
where other restive fears reside.
Tasting her where she loves me,
milking the kisses from her lips,
has infused my soul with purpose
and inspired lyric fingertips.
When the sweet magic is ended
and night bird wings mount the sky,
our adventure will have the flavor
of aging wine, red and dry
Bliss is the lips of a lover.
Soft yet Harsh and,
Unchanging lips which spring words of love,
Upon ones breast.
Leaving it to,
Resonate hums of love,
Upon the winds wings.
Interring the very cores of,
Your body as if they were paths made for cupids arrows.
Interring your mind to have it think and say,
“I want a place of peace where love,
Can grow like the stems of a rose,
And have that rose open, so your lips can take in loves nectar.”
Drumming from the amps, bristling with snares and hooks,
(“I see in your eyes, castles in Spain.”);
Aide memoirs of the past, post-war resurrection, stubbornly,
Wreathed in wires of smoke and delineated by baselines,
(“I see in your eyes, castles in Spain.”);
In the imaginary glare, scrubland plains play host,
The homeland of bleached white sonic structures,
Aspiring to touch the scorched stonewashed sky,
(“I see in your eyes, castles in Spain.”);
Ravaging the cold corpses of pastoral dictators,
Burying them in gritty sand, interring with their
Emotional fascism for companionship on the final
Journey into the heartlands of the dead conquistador,
(“I see in your eyes, castles in Spain.”);
In that hopeless kill zone of love and promises,
That vain and empty body of soulless night,
That reflective insult of scorn and terrible beauty,
Replications of dreams laid bare, films on her iris,
Panoramas populated by citadels of waste,
(“I see in your eyes, castles in Spain.”)
(“I see in your eyes…castles… in… Spain!”).
But what can I do?