Post-Spring Poetry Drop
These are three of my favorite journal entries from this Spring.
Autumn in Spring The world was much older then, when one small boy opened a door his selfish mother told him to never open. Now, the creatures - oceanic and crustaceous - have been set out into the world where they suffer in the dry heat. To them, this world is a desert; even the rain wont make them well. They say the tundra is a desert despite its snow that, if melted by the sun, would return to sea where maybe they might be able to live like they used to. - "Over his keys the musing organist, beginning doubtfully and far away. . ." - Lowell - Now these modern sirens dry up like sand-dollars, gathered to be sold at a store to give women and children two minutes of joy. Who can say if it's a shame or not? Only the trees know what things are for; they alone listen to quiet cries in the woods by those who dread the thought of being heard. They don't remember that the oaks above them are every bit as alive, aching with the burden of all the pains we subject them to. Still, they stand as sentries to a forest of hurt, leaves falling to the ground when they learn, there is no escape.
March for the Bride and Groom
a warm embrace to breathe your scent,
a faint and distant tune,
a marching band whose drummers run,
the trumpets out of tune,
conductor's secret rendezvous,
with the piccolo player boy,
the saxophonist leaves the room,
spits out his moldy reed,
the clarinets have sticky keys,
from sweat and blood and tears,
I've waited for this long embrace,
for oh so many years.Fruit of the Lethe
Bent back over the ashes,
I swept them into the pale,
the mold and rust and rotten dust
and hands with skin aged stale,
My wrinkled body, still too young,
to fully understand,
a world without a door or lock -
the key dug in my hand.
There is a type of blood that runs,
beneath the desert sand,
it rises only once a year,
in some far foreign land.
Where kings are killed for ancient crowns,
and battles seldom won,
and babies buried in the ground,
tell stories to the sun.
A fountain flows in cities lost,
and flows, throughout, the same,
which knows the heavy, painful cost,
of pennies, thrown in vain.
The church bells may not ring again;
the salt may conquer sea,
it's hard enough to name a friend,
and no one's naming me.
No one remembers tired souls,
who live their lives as ghosts,
the palace walls with tired art. . .
the portraits are the worst.
Long-dead eyes and aching tongues,
with nothing left to say,
stare into Lethe's vacancy,
to drown in their decay.
The bitter frost beyond the walls,
that kills the orange trees,
which used to grow;
the dead fruit drops, the dead fruit drops for me.-by M.Shultz