Voice

Your voice, signature of person as it exists,
lives to be found in the stories you tell.
It lurks behind the words you speak,
between the gaps in your breath
and within the way in which you punctuate your text.
But–it also is in every part of your gestures, your laughs
expressions the voice to which others bear visual witness.
Oh, how does your face alight when your loved ones call you?
and how does your laughter ring out when you hear a joker’s tale?
Your joy distinct, and your sorrow unique
A footprint of its very own,
caught in the strides of your name and self
and that voice, that individual, irreplaceable voice
lives to be found in the stories told about you.

Working on a new WIP, but here’s a practice oil painting that I did fairly recently! Funnily enough, I only realized how much I like painting flowers by looking through my old pieces.

This work is one I’d pair with my poem “Empty Desk”:

A desk decorated bare but for a sea-green glass vase
filled with the two shiny stems of immortal flowers
and, sitting near, a small bottle of flower scented perfume.

Thus the flowers may live a day more
whilst the room remains.

Time -novel excerpt-

Time is the tatter-wingēd butterfly that flits, delicate, among the petals, occasionally pausing for a bead of saccharine nectar. It is a tree’s scrapbook of leaves, considered but never truly admired– when even a breath of air itself takes time.

To bask amongst the fresh fragrance of the tulips standing withered a decade later, the forlorn memories of a forgotten beauty taken with—

to dip one’s feet in the bubbling brook flowing still, but without the liveliness that made it so bright, brilliant—

—that is the feeling of a lost life, of lost time.

Articulation of dreams is no simple task, and at the intangible door of thoughts do wisps of hope await, intertwined, with the silken filaments of regrets and roads-not-taken; alas, one worries he may never live out his dreams, for the days, seasons, years—they pass much too quickly.

Wisdom grows with age, they say, and perhaps that it is true, but only if the entire definition of the word is flipped. Adults say, and they always will say, how children know nothing—that children are naive, ignorant, yet in reality they are the ones who see the world for what it is. The covert masks of strangers melt away in their eyes, their previously veiled shadows struck by the light, for the gentle hearts of youths find it effortless to trust and to love without preoccupation over ulterior motives or repercussions. As it is, it is only later that the absolute fickleness of human emotion and thought is discovered.

Some age faster than others. They are the youths whose sight can end up changing not only their lives, but even the sorrowful temporariness of other beings.

To them, life is no such dalliance.


Indents

Cross over the shallow running water
to where skyline meets buried rootstock
Jagged rocks peek past overgrown reeds
and the brushstrokes of rosy flutter plastered
with invisible droplets meld into ticking clockwork.
Indents in the wood worn over time remain
a Game played by Children and Adults alike.

Chaos

Amidst the white glare of the stars
you reach out your hands and feel only
     the flames scorching your fingers.
Blind, you remain; yet you are the one to see
     [the plagued skin of the defiant]
Deaf, you remain; yet you are the last to hear
     [the warning screams of the fallen].

From whence the crying comes you consider not
     because whilst the noises and voices conflate
into a disembodied greyscale hum, untranslatable-
a labyrinth of intangible faces to one’s sanity bate-
you stay mute by throwing down all reason
     so that they may skitter away to beleaguer
     the crackēd bones of those already desolate.
Repulsed by the taste of your own venom
its pungent acridity pervading every bud
you spit on the entrails toss’d safe astray
     and rely on the imprints in the dirt for guidance
but the ground before you crumbles away
     and you find yourself lost without ever taking a step.

Seeing still all visages through the smoke of the pyre
wondering why their masks are dripping at the edges-
Weep; glass tears scrape at the film clouding your eyes
     -and fear- then, if you are finally seeing clear
for all you shall discover when the sun doth rise
when the shade departs and the weak-hearted cower
be the pyrrhic ravages o’ crimson ash mix’d with burnt souls-
     all the carnage of Armageddon a simple hand-mirror.

Now Greyscale

Now greyscale is the shade of clouds o’er light
obscuring the colors of horizon in sight
the rays once spread focused on solely a spot
from whence no wrong can be differed from right.

Whilst sodden down minds and beaten hearts lay
they sway in the light wind of day
no psalms, no thoughts, no exchanges to pay
Yet a sorrowful cry that whittles so slow
that flakes of gold and white bud have no-say
and leave body and heart with nary a way
to bring back their laurels and chorus
for the grey tied in-side hath naught more--

And dreams are filled with memories so few
Paintings of gold that have lost their hue
Feathers ruffle and wave, ride low under leaf
Black wings and dry nest bring arms take siege
but scattered reflections do not shelter make.
The wind blows; but there is naught left to take
cry they who mimic hath all still to do.

Nary are the words, passionate in meaning
A heightened gale, an open sail; free?-- no, but knotted
and thus the white and the black are cloaked from seeing.
They that have become nothing but wisps of dull smoke
slip silent through our yearning fingers
and memories of cold and dark are all the mind doth bespoke.

The details fade away one by one
left an empty frame
for life itself is grey until the right comes along
and gives it a brand-new hue, never the past same;
But that day is rare, whilst the usual:
It is only an illusion, a self-constructed delusion
Created by hope; they deny, but
Hope is forever greyscale
and her companion, Regret, is just-- there-- wavering steam
until the day passes and her eyes
gleam from behind
offering a deep sigh with a gaze lost yet focused
a lonely figure among the wildflowers; she cries
a Visit to a place with genesis long before
the heavens’ seam burned cold and blue
hands brush away the mist to kiss the early dew
Ears turned to the twittering of the cloak’d paroquets
They muse of a tired existence
in a language no longer decipherable to the mind
as twisted as the vines of penance wrapped around your hands

The water sings--oh!-- everything is singing
but his voice is hoarse
and the melody a little-- just the slightest- bitter
The faintest fragrance, so light that it
ought not have been smelled
remains.