(untitled)

In Shropshire a house burns.
An orange glow and an oppressive cloud rise, crackling,
Breaking the dark silence of the night.
Mountains cower along the edges, black with grief,
Wondering how they will ever remain,
Ever go on, ever stand, ever be when ash alone remains.
This little house, thatched roof and stone walls,
Taught these giants stories of men: how to laugh
When to cry, who to love, how to die.
Who better knew the poetry of the hedgerow
And the song of the sparrow confident in the bright warmth of her
Brick hearth. Burning.
Here the ancient hills heard the babe and comforted the boy,
Found the man and nourished his body; fed his soul
And filled his board and blaze.
But in the firelight, rising and falling, all seems lost.
Ash falls from the sky like bits of crooked snows,
And somewhere deep beneath the mountain shadows
The man watches the blaze, his eyes dark with loss,
But made bright by memories,
Banking like fallen vesuvian dreams,
And brimming with joy.

Patterns

Sometimes these patterns (I love so much)
Haunt me.
Insisting that trees should grow in perfect rows,
Straight lines and even numbers, superimposing design,
Four red cars on either side of one white,
Seven heads and five eyes (yet always
I pin the mouth too low
A symptom of constant sadness, perhaps)
Caught up in their precision and predestined order.

A rendezvous with two a.m. again --
Long sleepless nights and mornings
Dreamt away. Come back.
Rehashing old stories, reliving old woes,
And in hopeless thoughts of unsure futures,
As if destined to spend the wee hours
Alone.
Counting. The years, the regrets, the failures.

Staring at the fixture with two of three bulbs --
A reminder of the inability to control
The way the dust falls, and where the spider goes.
I want to trace my hand upon the wall but
Shadows rise and fall, no time to wait, to see, to create.
And this chaos theory begging for some pattern in pigeons,
Nihilist world begetting nihilism in faithless hearts.

If only the void could be filled with these patterns,
Haunting my dreams and waking hours,
No more the meaninglessness of it all but
A forced perfection and
Ghostly beauty in every thing.

Bridge Out

Roadblock on Aeolian lane,
A ruckus of noise and shouting,
Words from mouths that make no sense.
The problem ahead?
Bridge out:
Nothing means anymore.