Tag: Poetry

Odysseus

I check the tone of my voice to see
If I’ve become a man, like Odysseus,
If my gait stood strong like a Trojan horse,
Deceptive, but a well planned opulence,
Lured by the sirens of my own perfection.

Before puberty, the squeak of my voice
Haunted me tirelessly and unafraid,
Longing to escape the burden of boyhood,
Masked by the tyranny of expectations,
Cursed by a conscious vanity:
When would I become a man?

My frailness became it’s own enemy,
Locked in a chasm of regret and allure,
Running towards validation,
Like a good infantryman towards gunfire,
The blaze of contempt for my own manhood,
Reduced me to a giant without the strength, might, or height,
As the sirens of conformity,
Drifted me to the shores of complacency.

As winter has gone on for far too long,
And the spring winds foreign from rusted chimes,
I check the tone of my voice to see
If I’ve become a man, like Odysseus.

unsplash-logoCristina Gottardi

What’s A Hero?

The lighted cries of homecoming and well,

Flesh crusted, cake with a million yard stares,

Epics written on the back of men,

Not old enough to dream. What’s a Hero?

What is it for me that I should see?

Old medals that rusts, and a gut that purges,

The drunken youth that fuel the absurdity…

That Parades could drown out the massive strain,

We’ve come home to a war of our own,

Man vs Man, Ideas vs Ideas,

Dogma vs Domga…what’s a hero?

Deplored 

I thought about,

What we’ve become, 

When soft lies become,

Subtle fun. 

One who yells loudest,

Has already won,

And the search for truth,

Is an amusing one.

We’ve grown distant,

in teams of sorts,

Enslaved by emotions,

Agendas,

And retorts,

Friends become enemies,

In a civil struggle,

For love, 

Acceptance,

Deflection from the lives we lead,

We plead for wars to cease,

While we fight ourselves in deplored streets,

Courage to dismiss,

And not to question,

Our own ideals,

Left uncontested. 

We fear the real,

For we must begin again,

The arduous path of discovery,

That has no goal to win.

Sightings 

I walked along a trail,

Going nowhere;

The Fall’s delirium

Keeping me at bay,

The leaves cry beneath my steps,

I wonder if they had any falling regrets,

I carved you into a tree,

To leave you where the timber sleeps,

And gave you back to a world,

That knows not the way it seeps, 

My breath slow and somber, 

To the details that lay ahead, 

To the russling of the sheets,

That muddles the beds we made,

The creek whimpers to a sigh,

From the currents the day has gave,

I crossed paths with a squirrel,

Who nibbled at the fruits of the sky,

Who tussled the soil of the earth,

And ran from my prying eyes,

He left me alone,

As alone as I ever was,

To devour the recompense,

Of shaming grooves,

And things untold,

Only to the wind,

That wonders if it blows again. 

The Hills Have Eyes

By Carmine De Fazio. https://unsplash.com/carminu
Photo by Carmine De Fazio. https://unsplash.com/carminu

The hills have eyes,
And I am taunted by the buzzing of insects,
Who are nature’s daredevils.
I brush away the serene annoyance
Of a summer’s day;
A woodpecker selects his dinner,
Through bangs and scrapings,
Of a warm breeze that engulfs me
Like a warm blanket under a winter’s tree,
I ride like a cowboy,
Chewspit and all,
Gunslinging through the hills before night falls,
I ask the same questions,
Questions that have no answers,
The blood of thorns that drips down my legs,
Tells me that Earth feels my pain,
Like a dunkard I am born again,
Trees become my pews in which I repent against,
The hills have eyes,
As I mutter through its rich sublime,
I am at my most freest,
When my heart is blind.

Mulberry Trees

I think of you,

Through the mulberry trees,

Low and deep,

Like your love for me,

Berries as full as your lips,

Seeds as hard as your words,

The sweetness of your touch,

Drips down my lips,

Like the blood of a bully,

Who has done too much,

I lay under you,

And you shade me

From rays determined to darken my face,

I pluck the best parts of you,

From callous fingers red and blistered,

That strum taut strings,

That gives your voice its cadence to ring,

When your branches are bare,

And has lost all its fruit to share,

I’ll till the weeds that cross your feet,

Waiting til winter’s edge encounters its spring defeat,

And think of you through the mulberry trees,

Where the sun sits low,

And the moon begins to sing.

Ashes

The smoldering of ashes,

Once bright and dim,

Now frail and brittle like life’s little wind,

A monument built upon the backs of dirt,

A breeze assaults in,

Flanking to scatter what little respect we’ve hoarded,

We love what we do not know,

And grieve for things we dare not show,

Like a blow shocking and riveting,

We clutch to save the breath

That escapes through crevices of night’s summer’s edge,

The things we once gave our lives to,

Are bled through tunnels of false imprisonments:

Searching like a miner’s light to ores of redemption,

We dig till our fingers are bare of innocence,

While succession waves like a flag of pride;

Bowing firm to our dripping obedience,

Towards traditions drowned in puddles of hate,

Like a man in no man’s land,

We dig trenches to shelter us from the shelling of our dissonance,

As shells are washed away by the Fogginess of our cognitivism,

As the Salmon returns to the streams of birth,

We are ready to mate with elusiveness,

Burning the vestiges,

Until they become ashes,

Settling.

Monet

Like the brush of a Monet,
You are loose,
But your colors are not as honest,
Bright as you may be,
You bleed indiscriminate,
I painted you well,
A masterpiece some may say,
Captured your beauty in an artistic haze,
Reds become golds,
Blues fold into bands of judgements,
Whispers of delusions,
Canvas all that you are:
Unfinished and unrepentant,
Unmoving and dependent,
Hands littered with the casualties of making you beautiful,
Lines become blurred with impatience;
Naked with prudence,
Visions betrayed by the tinkering of emotions relayed,
Fingers moving with a hint of fidelity,
Until you are everything I think you are.

Undone 

How many men did he see,

Come beaten down after a tussle with insanity,

Who took refuge from love coming undone,

And the unwebbing of tightly coiled ego,

Frayed and twisted in a such a way,

That a prayer to God couldn’t save his fate,

Such a day laid in wait,

Where blues and golds sprung to stifle his gait,

An assault of conscience,

A ruse of pain,

A bitter sword

Left to strike its bane,

Streams whispering of currents anew,

As the battered soul trudges on with a betrayal

Of taunt and sinew,

And there he laughs glee as the spring’s morn;

The stillness as it quakes under the light’s dawn,

Grooves encroaches his brow,

Sweat nourishes his belly of solitude,

Leaves that have fallen a long time ago,

Brings warmth to concessions only he knows,

As one goes many will come,

To be held by the noon’s sun,

Before coming undone.
Support Me