In the of October Octave -The Days are Sneaking by you
October Pages
In a forest of
missing moments
where silence
sticks slicing time
detains the daily drain
to whisper just before
the feet of Fall
one chilly scarlet
morning kiss
bestows upon the tall lush
green to infect with
gray invades the scalp.
The dead give away of seasons
yet in transition
but for you for the first time
truly yourself now diminishing
there everyday in the flesh.
The expiration date expressed
as clearly in numerical terms
as on any common calendar page
Then only the wishful thinking
of speculation in the power of faith
implies eternal reward in lieu
of the chilling possibility
the prospect of being
no more
Total extinguishment
of self
beyond perhaps mortal comprehension
You are gone.
Not enduring
Not returning
merely over
Gone.
And if the concept of infinity
endows the faithful with such endurance
then the Cannon of the common
is where the mortality of fate
and all its earthly symbols of meaning go to die
mocking the concept of eternal reward
while left to swing
on a shadowy exit gate. 10/1/09
Seen
When you have seen that light
escape to gush from the center
of her eyes
will there ever be any memory
to endure deeper or longer
ever again.
Where nights have been lush
in lingerings limited
to those speechless dreams
wordless recall
dawning much like her light
came gradually alone
in the very heart of the seasons transitions
alive with soft gentle air
Funnels of Sound
pulsate in pronounced rhythms
gyrate wind corkscrews
cutting cones in you that burrow permanently
See time before the dance of past tense
in a single elucidated thought
promising release
but more insuring you will
never forget the incarceration
of her eyes
awaking and gaining light
like the morning dawn.
10/09
The Days are Sneaking by you
Pull in the soften light
as October nears past
a new moon across the sky
in the next street over
hear where your absence
passes aspiration in a blur
of newer older days where
Fall emerges fresh
in still born green leaves
patches of watercolor encroach
like your temples gray
Turning away from the truth
the days are sneaking years by you
diminishing the sight
stiffening the limb
Time winding you down
ebbing your energy
singing in the empty driveway
the vehicle of your flesh
is late
and growing later all the while
so I still strain to hear the sounds
I need to
while resisting the same I’m forced
to endure
the terrible ticking of the now
in my ears
A sound I find
I cannot refuse or resist.
10/09
This Other wheel
This other wheel
is the turning light now
as shadows speak
better for me than my voice
strictly left in the past tense
where all the rockets of
your selfish recklessness
have been launched
year after year
till now here there are
just empty burnt rings
powdering the ground
yes.
The beer is still as cold
as the late great over
would decree
but let the record show
or play with surface noise
and crackling scratches
this tune they didn’t hear coming
You did escape this
and your son as well
and moved on just enough
to be on the very lip
of the periphery of memory
so that when they remember
to ask
Hey what every happen to Whatizname?
You know.
But they don’t.
10/09
The Glow over the Bone Yard
October Bone Yard Moon
hangs tonight
bright with a wide white smile
glowing in the black and blue
all about your dreams
all about the sleepy steps of you
Like a dance chart
on the floor of the kitchen
at 5 AM.
October Nocturne
Where am I in this gauze wrap of October Twilight
immured immersed in a rolling concussion
of industrial cycles and systems
reveling up to roar like the ocean
feed into a pipe
a wire funnel
where you submit to sound waves
washing through you
leaving only these words here
vague impressions
passing glances
snatches of conversation fragments
leaving a profound sense of wearing down
leaving laughter to collect in
your wake
and fall away
All Day I capture nothing
treadmill the commonplace
am at constant war
with the lack of awareness
that seems to threaten to drown me
in them
where everything just eludes and escapes
without recognition, celebration
or even eulogy
only this
Did you practice your violin ?
Remember to bring back your trumpet ?
and separate your dirty laundry ?
10/09
Goodbye Mr. Rosewater
(For K.V.)
Much like Billy Pilgrim
I too have become “unstuck in time”,
I bounce around to different points
in my past life, visiting distant planets
and worlds that no longer exist
while finding my own place
in the Terrible Now both strangely
tenuous and curiously deadly certain.
But it is little mystery why I find that I
finally really understand
Kilgore Trout so much better these days.
The Science Fiction writer of your creation
who could only get his work published in cheap
Porn magazine pages placed next to graphically obscene
illustrations of perversion and depravity
that had nothing to do with the story
he had written.
Now it can be told was re-titled with graphic labeled Mouth Crazy
I looked in my closet last night
and was hardly surprised to discover
Unk’s yellow one piece jumpsuit
with the blue question marks printed
all over it still hanging in the dry cleaner
plastic behind a bunch of old sweaters.
And I was getting the idea
it was only going to be a matter of time
before it was my turn to try
that costume back on again.
Even after all these years it still
looking like it would fit just fine.
It had been awhile since I had
ridden in a space ship to lead
a bogus alien invasion designed
to fail to help galvanize patriotism
in a conflicted culture.
Yes, it’s true.
I did time in the Monkey House
w/ the Handicapper General
Diana Moon Gampers
finding her methods of mandatory equality,
her leveling of life’s playing field obstacles
even more tedious than debilitating and terrible now defining
Cancel culture
Live at the next Witch trials
Political Correctness old school
Meets the American Idol for Aspiring Psychos
For the naked and afraid
But most all I will miss the man
who cheated death once
sixty years ago during WWII
as a POV in a meat locker under an incinerated Dresden
in Slaughter House-5.
Even that unlikely escape
was as miraculous
as it was merely the blind chance
in the lucky draw of random survival
rather than tens of thousands
who were fricasseed to a crisp
over his head while the streets
melted to the smooth glass
creators of the moon as it all cooled.
And he never could forget about that.
Kurt, old boy-
This world, much like yours then,
has managed to survive somehow-
Swinging in nuclear nooses Dangling Swords of Damocles
Coated w/ the virus de jour
Still you managed to just strolled through it all after
Boozing smoking while
writing, growing older everyday & passing so qiuetly
in this insane asylum post-modern world
that eventually rivaled in day to day surreal hyper-reality
any of the plots of your wildest stories.
As you observed once about a freshly fricasseed Dresden
Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like “Poo–tee-weet?”KV
VQ – Cyberstein
