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The end of the line
had ever seemed likely
to leave the traveller

abandoned in empty space,
no hope of resolution.

A City Augustine Never Dreamed OfSuch strangeness stalks these dream haunted alleys and lanes.
At noon the city's byways still remain submerged in subterranean shadow,

sunk in a motionless reverie. No creature stirs, Within enclosing walls
murmurs, even cries might be heard, were there any curiously listening.

The sun vanishes abruptly. The day ends, precipitating all the activity of night,
the sensual argument of the drum, flares providing erratic, dancing light,

and shadows whirling suddenly like dervishes, across the crumbling plaster
of close packed walls. The alleys seethe with the flesh of strangers,

lives that pass too close to each other, remaining unrecognis

Can she enslave him?
He surrenders his spirit
to her purity.

Does he then become her pet,
is he her beast of burden?

Ends and beginnings
cycle perpetually.
Yang dances with Yin.

The power of flight
begins with a child's fantasy,
the world left behind.

Perspectives

Do people reflect,
each with their own distortion?
So many viewpoints,

each separate, each unique.
As Leibnitz said, each alone.

SenselessI've lost the power of speech,
become the dumbest of beasts.
I've been robbed of my senses,
stripped of all my defences.

Your exercise of bewitching touch
leaves me incapable even of remembering my name.
Your witchcraft has undone so much,
still you refuse to shoulder the blame.

There's so much for me to learn anew,
can I hope to learn it all from you?

Storyville, Bordello Sketches1

Girls, pale skinned and nubile,
who by candle light might pass,

women who lend a joint a little class,
a suggestion of sass in the swing of the ass,

these were the gems the madams looked out for,
girls who could turn sad guys into would-be Casanovas.

Still the punters knew that the dollar was always king,
their dollars could buy them any pretty thing

in the room. They also knew that black girls
had learned what they had to do for a necklace of pearls

and stockings of silk. So the guys played make believe.
In the first light of dawn nobody was deceived.

2

The Storyville madams
hired piano players, even bands
to help the gir

ColloquyWhere, I asked, does the sun set?

Have never heard? It's swallowed by the Western Sea.

But how then can the sun rise?

Child, your dazzled eyes are too easily misled,

How can a hero rise again after he's dead?

Yet I see what I have seen. Are so many heroes then,

that they're extinguished every day?

You have seen what you have seen,

we faithless creatures can only watch and pray.

Millions of years,
gales sand-blasting solid rock,
shaping mindless art.

Can you read her face,
is she wearing hope or pain?
Her visage a mask.

All of us can share
the sweet kiss of the sun's warmth,
and the spring's fresh air.

Romance In GermanyGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
did not invent the bagel.
He found the dialectic
made him much less dyspeptic.

Hypnopompic

A key too rusted
to turn, a door once solid,
now rotting away.

As sentience stirs again,
the dream's images decay.

Pose! The camera
has got the moment frozen,
her body language

untroubled, her youth preserved.
Her real life still ebbs and flows.

Browse More Like This

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Transcendence

Transcendence

Virtual no more,
she invades our reality,
rising from the Id.

September 1939 (Updated)The immaculate garden in Hampstead
seems to his failing eyes saturated in tranquillity.
After the anxious years when he out-faced
the barbarous tide fast rising around him,
this peace, this calm seems other-worldly,
a morphine glow gilding the scene.

In this city of refuge has his end come at last?
Twenty years ago he had entered into
a solemn pact with his doctor, who reluctantly
agreed that he would assist in his patient's release
when he requested it. Today, he realises,
he has reached the end of his struggle.
His pride could now surrender to weariness and pain.

He would die without fuss in this foreign land.

LingeringLingering

Many of them lost by now –only a few struggle
against terminal decay. Too many are sealed
in the amber of habit, repeating their lifeless repertoires,
impervious to change.

Oh yes, we can try imagining
the price that survival exacted from them, as we listen
inattentively to their tales of sacrifice.

They have become the last of a lost generation.
They drink too much, or wake raving in the dead of night.

They stare with haunted eyes at worlds
they no can longer recognise, they're drowning in their anguish,

ostracised by strangers whose hearts
have never been shattered by brutality, by agonies of fear.

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Afterword

by *AlecBell, Apr 28, 2012, 11:41:16 PM
Literature / Poetry / Spiritual / Haiku & Eastern

Funerary goods
always include coin to pay
the ferry man's fee.

What if we had always been wrong,
If none waited by the river?

The end of the line
had ever seemed likely
to leave the traveler

abandoned in empty space,
no hope of resolution.

128

13 13 7

Afterwordby *AlecBell

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I have united these two poems because of another accident of titling.

The first time I used Stranded as a title was in March 2011, for a commentary on Waiting For The Ferryman by *mcdermid.

Today I settled on the same title for a commentary on A Short Journey by *awjay

They do indeed seem to make a natural fit (to me)

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*almcdermid May 4, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Yes, Alec, these go well together. Good work.

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*AlecBell May 4, 2012

Thanks very much, Al.

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*almcdermid May 8, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Always a pleasure.

Reply

Mood: Wow!

*chryssalis May 1, 2012

I believe that noone waits by the river....Great work..

Reply

*AlecBell May 1, 2012

Very probably not.

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*chryssalis May 4, 2012

You think that too?

Reply

*AlecBell May 4, 2012

Indeed I do.

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*Corvidae65 Apr 30, 2012

Yes, they work perfectly together, Alec

Well done!

Reply

*AlecBell Apr 30, 2012

Thanks, John!

Reply

Mood: Love

~MagicBlanche Apr 29, 2012

I take the hope...

I know the ferryman...

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