they are yours
and mines;
the hard-boiled
cookery of virtuous noise.
a polyphony wrapped
in aluminum foil
on a tedious shelf
w/bits of mythic statuary,
petite reliquary
of gastronomic demise,
and jars of jazz
sit motionless,
mummified
in gifted dishes.
they are the cool
epistemologies
that gel I the mixing bowl of life
that sudden slap
in the face of time
and the subsequent freeze.
In my heart, a reliquary, gather teeth that do not belong to me,
but are those of voices I swallowed out of politeness, unwillingly,
they echo in silence like relics of a gentler, forgotten violence,
and I polish them with guilt until they shine like silent confessions.
I tell myself there is beauty in this digestion of thoughts and emotions,
that consuming means transforming, changing essence into silence,
but every night, I wake with a mouth full of unbelieved prayers,
as if my soul seeks to speak unshared truths.
And yet, within this dance of shadows and unlived memories,
I struggle with the ghosts of those words that never belonged to me,
I am an alchemist of my own conscience, seeking to find gold,
in the ashes of promises I never understood, only swallowed.
I place these relics under the pale light of introspection, seeking healing,
but each rattle is a reminder of transformation through forced silence,
and I wonder if I will ever be able to release these captive words,
or if my heart will remain a reliquary of eternal melancholy.
In the temple abandoned by time, in the silent whisper,
Our palms unite, masters of the subtle light,
You watch over with the warmth of spirit when angels dart,
You, the reliquary of divinity, the guiding star when the world stands still.
The elixir of dawn in your chalice, sweet venom, unknown assuagement,
Beneath your mantle of bliss lie embers that do not burn,
I walk in your rays, seeking a natural shore amongst the silver poplars.
The night clothes you, a queen in veils, in the white that transcends,
Your kiss, a fresco that breathes life into the sacred and undisturbed,
By your side, I cross the chasm between shadow and astral glow.
You, ruler over art, mysteries of what my eyes behold,
Born from the great abyss, a promise sculpted in the heart of the sun,
My treasure, the sky and the earth, the altars of my life.
Unfading glory, you are mother-in-law and artistry to stars,
The hourglass envies our shared moments on this dazzling realm,
You are whole and complete, in the sweet silence that embraces the corners of the world,
My treasure, a mystical altar, forever in the twilight of splendor.
And here you are
on the end of a smile
that doesn't seem to fit
your face, caught
in the startle of a flash,
still and ageless
after all these years.
I wonder what thoughts
were in your mind
when the shutter clicked
to hold you there,
a wafer of who you were
back then, set free of time
to surface here, unchanged.
I will never know.
Each image now
a closed book revealing
nothing but its cover or,
at best, by luck,
a small, unexpected
glimpse of something more
caught in an expression
or in a look of the far way
reflected in your eyes.
Love always reaches back
to redeem what it can
to restock the treasures
stolen from its stores
by time.
And years hence,
will there be someone
looking at a photograph of us,
deciphering the pose,
seeking out a message
written in our eyes.
Will they see something
hidden in an old photograph
left there by chance, a sliver
of who we were, a little bit
of bone to replenish what
remains of us in their
reliquary of love.
A Reliquary Musing
A child’s doll melded into a stone in a former Nazi Death Camp
as its chilling image haunts the collective mind of those who live
in the so-called civilized world of today and who profess a hollow
concern for a child who’s long dead and who’s been completely
forgotten to the rest of the modern world.
A sad image like this one should haunt the very soul of mankind that
oft professes a political correctness as it sweeps such unpleasant images
under a bone-ridden rug that reflects a sad happenstance and mutters only
a sigh at the horrific nature of such a truly evil occurrence.
And, only Almighty God knows this sad truth.
And, now you do too.
Amen.
Gary Bateman, Copyright © All Rights Reserved
June 14, 2022 (Narrative)
Sadness within me is my skald,
Ignorant world, taunting my afterworld,
Why is my soul in this soil pinfold...
The sky is filled with dark enshroud,
Am dumbstruck, thunderstorms cloud...
Love is an unloved harken,
The heart in me, a shrunken token...
Fey reliquary in the sand,
Buffing the defoliated leaves off my land,
She lay her tears on my heartland...
Miseries of the silenced one...
Tortured hell gone...
I see nothing but pink plume and ink
In the lofty canopy above
The roof is raised with mist
And rust in my eyes
and the old wreck of souls
Shouting Jazz melodies like tricks
The way this porch was raised
by Summer Sweat-Backs
Anticipating the eager tide
Of the long lost labour
of Coast Mainline Harbour poles
Broken Nets untied and umkempt
My Masterpiece belongs
at Sea
A Ship sent to Eternity
"The Constant Work of Man"
Sorrowed to Travail
Being fished by the Whale
With Jonah's reticence
I bemoan Nineveh's wailing tides
And grow with the Sand
Dali came to me once
in the repose of Dream
With unexpected charm
Amidst reliquary code:
Growing up and away the hoop
The tree anchored to my soul
Had Been Lifted
Repeat...
Imaginary things
Make believe places
Roaring gods
Benevolent faces
Old holy ones
Contrite women
Religious puns
Invisible semen
Sacred tomes
Fantastic stories
Reliquary bones
Uplifting Glories
Sins of the mind
Confessions of the heart
Eyes for the blind
Converts from the start
Alters and incense
Candles and fire
Bronze age past tense
Pointy church spire
Lying to infants
frightening folk
Keep the lay distant
Holy men strokes
Who am I? A seeker, within I set sail,
Beyond the horizon where stories pale.
Golden threads of twilight unravel in my grasp,
A penumbra of half-truths, a breath to clasp.
Waters rise from twin springs of insight,
A call to cleanse, to bathe in light.
An offering to the serene, a passage to cross,
The dagger of repentance, a coin to toss.
They urged me to open my chest, to reveal,
To reawaken the saint, the truth to unseal.
Before the reliquary mirrors, I stood to confess,
Our mirrors lie, but here they address.
Reflections of incarnation, not mere mimicry,
A perplexing phenomenon, a soul's intricacy.
To look within, a task of moments or ages,
A measure of the self, in countless stages.
emm*
Copyright 26 August 2014
You hold it by the hand.
This stillborn subject of
a camera's lens one day--
complete that instant when
a moment freezes as unique,
its sum of history
and the unknown, audacious
in its silent voice.
Give it a little time.
It asks for nothing,
but rewards are there--
incomperable, they swirl around
and through the never-ending mind
that permeates the all,
the sine qua that no one
ever sees.
A scrap of cardboard!
One of thousands daily swept away
in silence, offering its vanity
among the garbage of the landfill...
and its priceless treasure, too.
Tremble as you hold it!
There lies a universe straight forward.
Gaze into the eyes
that seek the action of the shutter;
they carry now and evermore
the world that came along to mix with light
and re-create itself
within a single flash.
It is an altar there between your fingers,
yes, a reliquary, and much more.
It isn't just a curiosity,
or souvenir of memory;
it is the opening (and mounting to be sure)
of one thin, speeding
impossible fragment that totality
left far behind.
~
Buried at sea
the dead man lives, as if a blood
in a reliquary.
Remains of a day
were very volatile.The backlash
will start with a kiss of moon.
By the lack of a sin
you meet an ambush
lying in wait.
The severed hand will
hold the sunrise.
Who will write the epitaph ?
A stunning breast, over your
reflection, the red rains
come for celebration.
Satish Verma
UNREADABLE 4 May 2011
It was a fake time,
moon will not rise.
Words were afloat
on junk dna.
A stonefaced pseudonym
dies point-blank.
The surprise, the speed
was not on our radar.
The ravenous siblings
now asleep on walls.
Naive or disingenuous.
A sitting Buddha will decide.
Satish Verma
Retreating into my mind, I find,
Encased like glass, a history of my past, of
Lovers long ago, of bent and broken arrows.
Instant memories envelop me, like a familiar
Quilt, wrapping me into a mummy of guilt,
Unhappiness, pain. . . all feeling remains,
Are stored here, the bones of tears, to
Regret, resurrect, reflect, or entomb. I linger, having
Yet to exhume, the elusive, gold doubloons.
4/26/11
*Won 1st place in "One Off" contest
fallen clusters of chestnut flowers were imprisoning the entire alley,
serving as a now withering proof of the sky’s anger…
tenderly caressed by some stray raindrops,
still waiting to evaporate,
the flowers were now watching like a swarm of dead butterflies
towards the flood of moonlight bathing them in silver,
as if trying to embroider the nightly shroud slowly veiling them…
she kneeled in front of that painful image of effused fury,
trying to imprint on her retina the last breath of the dying flowers,
knowing it would have been a sin to step over that natural reliquary…
for even if they were now fading,
they looked more glorious in their misery,
than her tired soul, still searching for absolution…
I had to learn to skin animals
but instead
practiced on myself
after diving deep
into the abyss of my soul,
I surfaced
with my tri-colored eyes alight
in the illumination
of self prophecy
fates morn’ dawned bright
flint-ed off the horizon
the sun blazed,
misery
and reflect in the seven seas
streaming from tempests eye
I stretched out my dermis
till a feather was thicker,
it was then
the calligraphy started
a hundred thousand words
later, I became concerned,
my relic would perish
with nothing to protect
my legacy,
times harsh hands
crush the petals of my soul
I pushed past the thirteenth rib.
and pull out my heart,
the seven seas having decimated
to clear each chamber
my words rest in a reliquary
lined with love
and I pass it to you
for safe keeping
namaste
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