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AfterwordFunerary 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.

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

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.

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?

Air Force Revisited.

Flying fortresses,
dense enough to deflect light
yet insubstantial

Water drops suspended in
the high, thin air, wind sculpted.

(Originally:

Flying fortresses,
solid enough to impede light
yet made of nothing.

Water drops suspended in
the high, thin air, wind sculpted.)

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

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

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

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

Moon struck

Sleeping or waking?
the trees dream eternity
while the moon's cool eye

creates shady mystery.
The walker is enraptured.

Delicate blossoms,
lures to attract the future,
to nourish fresh seeds.

Ends and beginnings
cycle perpetually.
Yang dances with Yin.

The cityscape is
forgotten. She's compacted
by anxiety.

Has she ever seen the streets
about her? She sleepwalks.

An Early DilemmaThe volume is set close to the margin of silence, ghost music is all that's
left to hear.
I'm listening to its whispered portents, its enigmatic tales of lust and fear

I know already the censor is busy, he's classifying my lifeful of
forbidden dreams
Still, there is no silence to be broken, no anguished voice that screams.

At last I must approach the petulant child, and speak too many
reassuring words
His universe is much too small. How it echoes to threnodies com

Browse More Like This

More from *AlecBell

How the basket ball
focuses his attention!
All else forgotten.

He's trapped in the harsh city,
yet living his fantasy.

Close ReadingHow do you read
a spiritual poem?

Listen for the silences
that resonate within the lines,
between the poet's words,
that set up sympathetic
vibrations in the secret depths
of the mind.

That which you might discover
lies beyond the amplitude of speech.

Insectivorous1
By tiny increments
death's remnants are dispersed
among the blow fly horde. An orgy
of decomposition is getting underway,
accelerating as the day's heat
stokes the noon tide furnace.

2
The buzzing foragers are drunk
on the potency of nectar.
The avid creatures burrow and shove
their way to ecstasy.

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Stranded 2

by *AlecBell, Apr 28, 2012, 11:24:26 PM
Literature / Poetry / Spiritual / Haiku & Eastern

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

abandoned in empty space,
no hope of resolution.

167

14 6 7

Stranded 2by *AlecBell

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~awjay Apr 29, 2012

excellent my friend

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*AlecBell Apr 29, 2012

Thank you, James

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~awjay Apr 29, 2012

welcome

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*AlecBell Apr 30, 2012

Reply

Mood: Wow!

*TriciaS Apr 29, 2012

Love this one Alec!I can relate to it....in quite a few ways

....

.In the realistic sense I hate the fact that all the little stations ...and lines were closed ...Of course it's much better to crawl on the buses and motorways.... isn't it?

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*AlecBell Apr 29, 2012

Indeed, Tricia!

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