Long Residual Poems
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The old, relaxed; we pour ourselves a glass.
There is no need to stretch or change our way.
We know the flavors here; the only task:
ensuring it is just like yesterday.
Like sediment, this attitude does weigh;
we lie immobile, deign to be disturbed,
exchange bouquet for residual gray,
our appetite for joy, completely curbed,
our thoughts reserved to naught but that which is deserved.
Thus, when it comes along, we’re unprepared;
our skins are too inflexible to grow.
The thought of making room just leaves us scared,
so we eschew the new for what we know.
That which does not comport, we must forego,
and in this way, we struggle to survive;
our aging, brittle walls, like Jericho,
must be torn down to breathe, to come alive,
for we were meant to stretch, that we might truly thrive.
A leopard cannot shed its spots alone;
a dried out husk cannot make itself new.
The old man must be utter overthrown
before with new wine he can be imbued.
The old skin, by a Word, banished from view,
no longer to restrict and much annoy;
a transformation occurs through and through:
the old man dead, a child of God, a boy
who bubbles forth in endless, effervescent joy.
----------
Musings on Matthew 9:17
These are Spenserian Stanzas, 10A:10B:10A:10B:10B:10C:10B:10C:12C
A ticket pinned to the thigh reserves it,
the whole cadaver is parceled off - of course.
Legs are a late harvest, these often-indigent parts
carry a visual poverty long after the body is plucked.
Under watchful eyes the young medics
separate muscle groups, filter large blood vessels
from fibrous runnels, hesitant scalpels
seek out fascial planes.
The leg is devolving to scraps,
yet, ingrained in the tissue
I sense residual shades of a former life,
seaside postcards, old photographs,
perhaps campaign ribbons, odd tokens
amongst yellowed newspaper clippings,
all briefly surface as conjectured images
beneath a probing knife.
The gray flesh retains its personal history,
I imagine that behind the knee
there is a wife, children, and a separation
all spectrally etched between femur and tibia.
Much of the ensuing bone-whittling years
are demonstratively scored
across a formaldehyde and jelled narration.
The students suppose they dissect a limb,
while I notion that I turn over bloodless pages,
of an unwritten story,
and now the last few attached ligaments
remain as threads that speak at last
of a long journey’s end.
In the languishing life’s listless landscape,
the paved path along convolute contours of uncertainty,
winds undefined to the fading fringe of time future,
beyond the perception of the toiling time present.
Away from the throb of the bustling life in galaxy glare,
in the somber path the stretched shadows of the past
drape the cobblestones with dense darkness,
echoing the sigh of my broken dreams, I hear.
The template of trampled time holds the debris of desire,
as I walk dismayed in the befuddled state of stupor,
following the invisible compass crafted for me
by the supreme creator of the dormant destiny.
My twilight time is tinged by the garnet specks of spent sun,
sinking down the horizon shrouded by discontent dust.
With the cornucopia of the uplifting life unlived,
I wander bewildered in the last mile of the blind alley.
As the sinister night of ebony despair engulfs me,
firefly of hope flashes with moonbeam filament,
kindling lucent lines of lamps in the dark scary street,
I toil to travel ruffled in the residual time.
I seek the benevolence of the almighty to guide me
in my search of the lighted path to the sublime sanctum
for my sanctified soul to reside in abode of bliss,
and to show me the way out of the dead end street.
When a colorless glass that once stood up to the heat begins to sweat,
persimmon-tinted droplets—and the wind that drinks them—
ripen red where the night should cool to blue,
as the moon lowers the creases of its brow into the glass.
Heat, struck by the long claws of the wind’s shudder,
stretches its dazed body and tumbles through the air,
fooled by the murmurs of residual warmth the sun left behind,
it presses its claim on the glass once more, intent on its own dominion.
Drawing up the tender rustle between the two,
within the tug-of-war of heat that rises and wind that braces,
I am caught by a longing that charges ahead without thought,
drinking the fading chill, I bend the blooming heat.
Letting midsummer pass is like
finding the loosened end of a tangled skein of heat and blue glass
and tying it back together—
a difficult journey to rekindle the breath you left behind,
yet, like a meeting on Chilseok, it is one I can always endure.
In the terrane of deplorable deprivation manifested
in the wasteland of wretched desertion,
the obscure tufts of the subdued slender grass
struggle to rise through the cleavage of stony destiny.
The frail faces shaping the artifacts of spiteful fate,
flicker with the fading smile of residual innocence,
borrowed from the remnant rays of the forsaken sun,
already sunk in the depth of desolate dark horizon.
The children when they should be blooming like flowers,
stray to nowhere, uncared and soiled
in the harsh squall of the juvenile servile servitude.
Under the fair freedom spread by the unbound sky
the infantile dewdrops devoid of pristine patina
no longer bejewel the puerile grass of our meadow.
Tarnished by the muck of our malevolent times,
the deranged dreams of the dew dry premature.
In the twilight hour on the penultimate journey,
I wish I could give the last rays of my setting sun
to the relics of the dewdrops so they can glow awhile.
I wish I could drip the last drop of empathy from my oasis,
so their innocent smile doesn’t desiccate in inimical desert.
Just one thing I’d like to change is to stop child labor,
show the children of the lesser God
the dreams of dew that would never die.
“The birds fly away from their nurturing nest,
find their own skies to soar”
– Quote by Poet
I built the nest for them
where we could stay together
for as long as the sun rose for me.
Kept it warm with my embrace
in the winter days of frost and cold.
No sweeping storm of strife
could ever blow it away.
I cuddled them with care and love
in the secure fold of my tender wings.
They grew up deftly nurtured
in the cradle of love and attention.
Learned how to face life
in their chosen way.
As a parent the process of growth
I could affably share with them,
but the ephemeral delight lasted for a while,
until one day they all flew away.
The cherished network of bond turned
into frail strands of memory,
entwined with the fond feathers they left,
I fondle with pining sigh.
My residual time I spend with me in the empty nest,
clutching the pallid tapestry of longing.
To see their fading faces in its motif,
I try all the time.
A lone traveler at the edge of twilight zone,
I walk the last mile
toward the obscurity horizon,
waiting to disappear someday.
In the convoluted reflection of hope,
demolished in the debris of dream,
I wish my image remains indelible
in their hearts wherever they are.
Dampen talk in a hesitant time
Uncertainties of a procrastinating hour
Where life goes on … and on...and on
With some obvious happenings of the inevitable
Blemish talk only highlights the stigma of a stagnation
Where neither you nor I are able to be someone
Other than only living in a life of necessity
Those pernicious happenings go on with
the description of a disaster. With a lot of
Repetition of a traverse, repentant mind
Where we are blocked with
A roadblock and a sentry,
Always alternating,
Always calculating
The ingredients of laughter
Ambivalence is a residual reality
of the heavily guarded possibility
Still, there is love, there is a poem,
And there is a visage of heavenly affection
With an astral temptation of life,
Garnishing more and more along with;
Perhaps an enterprise of goodliness. With the
Threatening math multiplying the powerful zero.
A ticket pinned to the thigh reserves it,
the whole cadaver is parceled off - of course.
Legs are a late harvest, these often-indigent parts
carry a visual poverty long after the body is plucked.
Under watchful eyes the young medics
separate muscle groups, filter large blood vessels
from fibrous runnels, hesitant scalpels
seek out fascial planes.
The leg is devolving to scraps,
yet, ingrained in the tissue
I sense residual shades of a former life,
seaside postcards, old photographs,
perhaps campaign ribbons, odd tokens
amongst yellowed newspaper clippings,
all briefly surface as conjectured images
beneath a probing knife.
The gray flesh retains its personal history,
I imagine that behind the knee
there is a wife, children, and a separation
all spectrally etched between femur and tibia.
Much of the ensuing bone-whittling years
are demonstratively scored
across a formaldehyde and jelled narration.
The students suppose they dissect a limb,
while I notion that I turn over bloodless pages,
of an unwritten story,
and now the last few attached ligaments
remain as threads that speak at last
of a long journey’s end.
Clouds hover over fealty's
splendored domain
Grey patches our devolving
relationship stain
Dark shadows of doubt stride our
weather vane
Jading wind of indifference; eerie,
dolesome refrain
Thunderous echo of despair from
distant, careening train
Lightening's serrated edges strike
our exposed terrain
Duplicitous motives weathered bond
doth strain
Torrential outbursts cannot all the
opprobrium drain
Icy pellets laced with malice
bombard each, desolate plain
Soaked psyches now bleached with
residual disdain
From all rational discourse spent
minds abstain
Penitent tears cannot cleanse the
mildewed brain
Flooded tributaries flowing from
fidelity's bulging vein
Eroding the final links of fealty's,
tenuous chain
Spring's christening morn, they sow each, leased field
You squawk at their noisy machines, fabricated skill
In due time, green shoots sprout; twined destinies distilled
Awaiting Harvest moon's celestial seal
You ready your nettled till; contraband to fill
Before hoary frost can shower its blighting chill
Mechanized hands garnish nature's wage; stitched pockets to gild
Golden nuggets ferried to recycling mill
But to their deep reservoirs will not all of nature's bounty rill
Your scouring eyes will every, eroded funnel swill
From earth's spent crust, disbursed kernels drill
Sharpened beak pecking out residual, wasteful spill