Life’s unsung tunes fade away
into nothingness with the menagerie of mirage
disappearing in the realm of death.
Trudging on the desolate deserted pathway
the fragile footprints collapse in his kingdom
where the cosmic monarch of the end,
the ruler of the last breath,
carves his throne from the sands of time.
With the arcane image of terror concealed
like the sordid silhouettes of lethal menace
the king rules without mercy or malice,
lurks in the shadow of dark danger
into the quintessence of placid life,
and waits at the pause of every heartbeat,
encased within the freight frame,
configured from the vicious void
of timeless inevitability.
Down, down, rushes the stream,
over the waterfall, down to the sea.
Down, down, rain from the clouds
leaps without parachutes: splat on the ground.
Secretly making a ladder in space,
the sunshine draws moisture back into the race.
And the sunlight that’s locked in the leaves of the trees
brings water from under to dance in the breeze.
Just as the kids at the water-slides climb,
trudging up ladders to whiz on a ride,
so the droplets of water rise back to the heights
to re-live the joy of their downward delights.
A song piqued my curiosity
I wonder what you are doing in Heaven today
Sometimes I feel you are so close
Other times you seem farther away
Farther away (I mean of the day you went away)
(I do also mean how far Heaven is away)
But mingled in each thought
Are the memories of which I fraught
In the places I pass remembering our walks and talks
Talks of everything under the sun
These thoughts come rushing in every time I go for a run
So, what are you doing in Heaven today?
Did you wake up late or did you get to sleep in?
Have you met and talked to anyone famous?
I have so many questions, where do I begin?
Are there flowers there, how about hours?
Are there colors and possibilities we’ve not seen?
Are the day-to-day happenings
Like the things we’ve seen on a movie screen?
Please know that I am doing okay
Even though Earthly life looks like a horror flick
I’ll keep trudging on in and with my reveries
Even so Lord Jesus come quick
that we act as a signpost offering hope
to other weary seekers trudging along
our poems cajole our soul group to elope
with Cupid humming a melodious song
dancing at the edge of a slippery slope
asking us to discard fear and become strong
to which end if firm be resolve we evolve
as the stillness point around which worlds revolve
I walk life through trudging moments,
steps trace the last mile to the vanishing point,
configured in the cauldron of timeless nothingness.
I sink with my morphed essence
within the trance of the mystique night
when the music of life’s violin stops
in time transcending void of silence,
shape shifting to arcane image of death
chiseled from the blocks of nonbeing.
The intrinsic awareness channeled through time
drives cognitive impulses incessant,
surges the enveloping waves of acumen
through the emptiness of perception.
The divine force then propels my essence to
embrace the void
A red horse deemed to be slow
A name never meant to glow.
Conceived with short-lived strengths
Energy of unknown, inconceivable running lengths.
Envisioned to tire fast
In races and places that never last.
Rolling thunder is its sounding gaits
Roller coaster in trudging haits.
Seasoned horse of the Seventies
Time of a racing icon.
Tempest of the Oval, grafitto in oblivion!
Are we the shade of the shadow
or a shadow in the shade.
Are we sashaying toward pinhole dreams?
While trudging above an open grave.
It all seems like a giant garish gothic play
acts and players hand-picked centuries in advance.
Hobbled masses humbly kneel on crumbs to pray.
Realizing opinion nor ballot was ever worth a damn.
These two-legged, greedy, greasy snakes.
Eyes made of slag have no vacancy signs.
Clogging up our gossamer soul veins.
They're here to minimize, intimidate.
Project, disappear, dismiss, assassinate.
Straitjacket the masses with normalized madness.
We, the people, are not the ones playing God.
Poisoning water, field, sky...
Smiling in the light while eating innocents.
In the shadow of ritual and sacrifice.
These devils openly mock and taunt us now.
(byproducts of a boiling swamp).
Yellowing the face of flailing freedom.
A billion greenbacks can galvanize
such audacity and shallow bravery.
Of these deeply soiled oligarchs
and pathetic plastic kings.
To bludgeon the curmudgeon trudging on among the blind
Or hide the Easter egg upon the stage playing your mind
When word's the play some like to stay indif'frent in the lobby
Among the corn and candy and the geegaws of their hobby
But some afoot are bigger game and so avoid the trap
Set for the blind and lame contented in their nap
A wakeful state of grace in place, entitled and enlightened
To independent thought, unbought, unsullied, and unfrightened
By those who would pretend that good is what they are about
Fooling only those disposed to follow those who shout
the crunch of gravel
echoes underneath my trudging feet
i walk alongside you
pinkies intertwined
the path forks;
your hand rips from mine
you cease-- expression resolute.
my feet carry me forward,
eyes still glued
to yours.
crunch. crunch. crunch.
i hasten.
crunch.
the looming trees fly past,
dancing with the wind.
crunch, crunch.
diaphanous clouds suffocate
the.
air.
crunch.
my neck snaps around,
eyes finding you--
an umbra in the fog.
crunch.
Righteous sing to the bright star in the sky.
Hymns of faith, devotion and love vibrate
through the entire body, speaking within
one’s skin to the finger tips…blaring while
scaring the long-awaited dreams from their
roost near an old oak in your mind’s chest.
Graceless and faithless villains caterwaul;
the old toss coins into the fountain of youth.
Virus’ knock daily upon my locked door
of which I will never answer those calls.
In dreams, I see paths to the waiting trains;
Toys lay in the dead leaf fodder on the path
a lovely doll’s face, her blue eyes stained
staring towards the musty decrepit squalor
trudging along the dark path I lift my gaze;
Truths lying dormant for decades bleed into
the night sky, creating rainbows in the dark.
As if in thoughts the quiet road seemed lost
As evening shadows looked longer and dark,
Young winter’s chill felt like December frost,
On tall treetops Sun still looked somewhat stark
But smaller ones were all wrapped in darkness,
Grief-like I felt the sombre shades of grey,
Birds hurried home to their nightlong address
To rest and recoup, fresh for the next day.
In no undue hurry to reach back home,
And trudging slow I saw a sunflower
On a farm’s thorny fence muddied with loam
Bringing to mind’s view a bright face turned dour
Along sad memories of my sister,
Of sunflower looking more sinister.
________________________________________
Sonnet | 11.12.2025 | allusion, sad, sister, sunflower
Note: The reference is to my youngest sister who lost her husband some time back. He was a busy oncologist with directorship of a cancer institute. She too with her own work in the field of education, and only now the two had the time enough to cherish a ripe, mature company of each other to continue with their hobby of literary work. All memories he mind from time to time. Alas, sad memories leave a deep-set scar.
An anonymous artist had named the painting:
'Bertram Crumm'
it was simply a depiction of a man
trudging over a blank Landscape.
No one had heard of this man,
but this enigmatic fact alone was intriguing,
and now he was perfectly framed.
After many years
an art critic tracked him down.
Crumm claimed to be a meatpacker
who worked in Allen Town,
yet no one could see him as a meatpacker
working in Allen Town.
Some saw nobility in his gait and posture,
some saw a furtive mindset, most declared
emphatically that Crumm was definitely
a poet!
If we had known
that Crumm had often confessed to his family
that he loathed poetry and was indifferent
to art in general
then that landscaped/portrait
would still be gathering dust in a Goodwill shop.
However, a billionaire owns it now,
and ironically,
he also can't write a lick of poetry either.
Trudging down the same path
Present equals past
Red clay
My problems outlast
The runes have been cast
Astray
A delayed forecast
Emotion outcast
I failed
In the opaque night across the space of silence,
enfolding the languid landscape of my existence,
bereft of the beguiled essence in indolent life,
my pathway meanders in the labyrinth of torment.
Trudging at the fringe of trying forbearance,
I hear listless the whispering wind of wisdom
tell me, this journey has no meaningful end.
I’m entangled in the nebulous mesh of ambiguity.
The ill-conceived venture of the errant mind
finds gloomy dead end in the introspection path.
That’s when the serpentine force opens the innate door,
releasing the feminine energy of yogic awareness.
My soul shines then with the ethereal radiance
in the infinite depth of the discernment space,
like the flaring brilliance of dormant tantric power,
flashing through the seven chakras of perception.
In my self-searching spiritual odyssey
toward the edge of the enlightened eternity,
I perceive the acuity centres configure consciousness
and turn it into living beacon, lighting my inner self.
Mothers don't let your children
grow up to be soldiers
and march off to battle
without remorse or of course
a thought of regret
to get in the way
boys playing follow the leader
'We're only following orders'
the young may say
yet greed and stupidity
is the name of the game
either for land or in God's name
history has taught nothing
on judging it seems
and trudging behind the herd
in a word
it's 'insane'
but what if the Generals held a war
and on the day
nobody came
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