Daily Archives: May 18, 2017

In Between: séadna

Perhaps there is no in between;
it’s either pitch black or light.
You inch forward or slip backwards,
fight each turn of day to night

imagining in fierce battle
you will lose your coward’s mask.
Believing in some great reward,
you ask your sword to hold fast.

There is no time for fool questions,
no need to see shades of gray.
Forget that distracting tension;
let play your guns, heroes say.

Perhaps there isn’t a middle
ground where opposing sides meet;
only space between the goalposts,
where cheats and ghosts find good seats.

18 MAY 2017

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Don’t Kill the Siren: sapphics

Now whose voice is singing out words of warning,
as the low light, glittering, slowly fading,
starts to flicker tenuously, letting darkness
silently swallow

other points now wavering on the shoreline?
When those bridges crumble for their reasons,
will they turn the oceanside’s brightness inward,
quietly shifting

all their burning energy from their borders,
glowing in the after hurt, slowly dying,
letting outside travelers lose their bearings,
careening wildly

on the rocks that litter the lightless beaches?
Are new voices learning the ancient lyrics?
What will guide the innocent ships to harbor
without that howling?

18 MAY 2017

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Colors Besides Black

There are some other colors besides black,
I once said upon my exit from the goths;
and yet, when all the world is shades of gray,
where people tend to seek polarities,
how many days are suited for pastels?

For secondary shades, one must be bold
and smile through every hopeful lie and fantasy:
the world is getting better, by and by,
and when you’ve grown up you will understand.

Let white, and even creams, remain reserved
for rituals and those observances required
when we admit collective lack of words
and make up answers to get through the feast.

But black is not just mourning and sackcloth;
it is a practical solution, after all.
When all our lives are spent here in the dark,
what better way to soldier through the days

than in a wardrobe blind men could still match,
and that requires no consciousness to pick.
Think not of grim and stern sobriety,
though these occasions can and do arise,

but of a silence suffering that stands
at the back of the room during the wake.
There are some other colors, it is true,
but none that hide as well as black tones do.

18 MAY 2017

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