Post by amelie on May 19, 2004 11:36:13 GMT -5
I
As a clock she ticks.
Dry as dust, the eyes click
Behind the bone, alone;
Pulsing to a metronome
Of a breath, a beat, another.
She exists like a strobe,
Between moments in time;
Like The tock of a clock,
And another day is done.
And not a word passes
The porcelain, pure lips
That tremble and curl,
As the stone, hard,
Cruel bone intones:
We are the weak;
The anxious and the frail;
The displaced and desperate,
Who turn the other cheek,
Because we have no choice.
We lean into the wind
That chills our hopes.
Cleansing us of desire,
But for The restless,
Recurring dreams
That nightly denounce us;
Measuring out the inches
Of the small tottering steps:
Those we never take
In the glare of morning.
We are the weak;
We have no shame,
And no name comes to mind;
Nothing to stand behind,
And not a word spoken,
Unsanctioned by the crowd
To whom we are bound
For survival, but we pay
Our dues alone at night,
As betrayal rides our backs;
We talk in whispers,
As rebellious as the herd allows,
And never out loud;
Cowering inside the crowd
Before voicing a word.
And turn the other cheek.
Having no choice.
II
We survive. We are the flowers
That bloom in the desert
Once every twenty years;
The life that carries on
Under dried river beds
Till the spring floods come;
The migration across continents,
Following the instinct of the seasons;
The life at the bottom of the deepest
Ocean in volcanic fissures;
The seed that crosses galaxies and time,
And people mistake for God.
III
She lived in a time without causes;
Small in her ways and not strong.
She discovered soon she had no god;
A father lost and all hope with him.
The serpent and the sceptre took her;
The caduceus claimed her mind:
‘I swear by Apollo the physician’ she said,
And found a sort of peace.
But she failed her oath and ran;
Nobody wanted her heart,
And Africa took her innocemce.
IV
I survive;
I lack the courage to rage;
I am weak, and I speak
Not a word; I’m unheard.
I have nothing to say,
But stay safe, and I hide;
There’s nothing inside anyway;
So I play; till others say
I’m as dumb as I seem.
But I dream;
And my dreams are unbroken;
So I stay unwoken, where I live;
In a place to survive.
I stand apart
From those with the heart
To stand proud, and say aloud:
‘This, I believe.’ I just leave;
no one knows where I go.
I won’t show how I feel,
Or if what I feel
Is real or a show.
For I am weak,
And turn the other cheek,
As I have no choice;
I have no voice. This is how
I’ve learned to survive.
V
It was late one evening,
I caught a dragonfly
At sunset,
And I saw the rainbow
Through its wings;
Iridescent and fragile as truth,
As the sky bled
From mandarin to indigo,
And the clouds
All rushed to the horizon
To block my view,
And bustle the day away.
And I touched
The paper gossamer,
Not knowing
My touch meant death.
I bent to pick a rose,
It came to me in my hand,
But all I could smell was blood.
I am done.
I am undone.