The Rock

A deep look inside

In the avenues of thought you stirred up ripples
And waves, and raised all the dust that had settled
On everything that sat within the circumference
Of a space between two meanings
A tale of two cities

And stared down the twin barrel of ill fate
While the large jawed kings of your time
And the plain faced queens of circumstance
Searched for deeper meaning in their alleged souls

Upon a time, standing upon a place of memories
Which time had mugged and murdered
And killed half the things you had treasured
Questions led to answers
And the answers to more questions
If it was a match you would have known
You were no match
So you threw in the towel and quit trying

And mumbled an unrepeatable obscenity
And offered your toil tortured middle finger
And cussed out an irrevocable infinity

A man with two legs and a crutch, clasping
A pair of blistered hands, clutching
A collection of mirrors containing the images
Of a man who fit that exact description
Whose eyes stared into far spaces
A man crippled and crumbling
Whose feet stomped in lanky paces
Upon a path at half past forgotten
And all the large jawed kings of time
And all the plain faced queens of circumstance

In the wake of all the drama that began to unfold
You caught yourself fumbling in half steps
Afraid and cold, feeling suddenly old
To the rhythm of a heart that beat in half measures
And the sign said - Closed because of weather
From which you derived no pleasure

In the shadow of memory, upon a time of plenty
You lingered upon feasts once partaken
Where the sun had shone bright on many
In a sea of plenty you had nothing, life dilapidated
It was there, you would have sworn to it
It was there, this fact, as you had known it
Handled by those hands, of own eyes obligated

Incandescence shines through this dullness
Lights up the passages of time and allows us
To pass through and to pass up opportunities
To lose our ways in the vast perpetuity

Where silence raged with the raw tonnage
Of a boundless herd of oceanic waves

And speech and noise went unheard and unheeded
The matters which mattered were sealed and hidden
Clusters of mutterings staggered and settled
And in settling, died and gathered dust
Much as they do now. Much as they did now

In the end we clung to the branches of abstracts
Something hidden to the eyes but open to the mind
Let the reader understand, the rock on which I stand