Below is my poem “Lexicon”, the longest poem in my 2021 poetry collection Summertide. The hardcover edition of Summertide will be available on Amazon on Friday, July 21st! If you’d like to purchase Summertide in paperback or Kindle eBook format instead, you can do by clicking your preferred option below.
Thank you.
***
LEXICON
Rain-patter on the pane has drawn me back to reality.
The little droplets are sneaking through the screen,
Getting peeks at me I never thought possible.
They’re watching with eyes unseen, unscathed,
And unknown to all who have never met them before.
-
But the solace of the storm outside is but a dream.
Comparatively speaking, anyway.
That belief in reality’s firm grip was stolen away
When, by chance, the firm vice of its Makers
Became the obfuscating title in a long line of dream-takers.
-
There is nothing, then. Not even the rain.
-
If that’s the case then why do I sit here, window torn
And shades pushed up into the heaven of night,
Watching each passerby’s shoes squirm on the cement?
Scream, then, that such unwarranted suffering is unfair,
And see what devilish worm hears you!
-
There is a fire deep inside,
But whether blue or black I cannot say.
“Scream it, then,” I utter in the catacombs,
Measuring myself up for a tide whose push
Will forever remain uncolored.
-
Restitution.
A path that one would take in such trying times?
Or just another broken marble staircase
To an untouched main gate?
-
That black sky doesn’t answer any of my calls.
It just sits there, shadowed in rain,
Cascading its pellets down to the seedy Earth below.
What next, then, pray tell? What next?
If not for our current pace, we would not have a harvest.
These cornstalks will not water themselves.
But no one else is willing to pour the bucket.
-
There is no real escaping this, is there?
These thoughts whose metaphor becomes lost
As the track goes around and around and around
And around and around and around and around
All over again and again and again.
It gets to a point where lexicon nullifies.
Where every word of evil becomes just another label,
And every villain triumphs in that sordid wake.
To express whatever hellfire creeps up the vines
Would be to exclude the weeping carcasses by which
Their feet trample so diligently upon!
Does it feel like any wonder, then,
This was the path by which these legs would travel?
It’s all the same, every crunch of dirt reverberating,
Sound that travels to deaf ears alone.
Give it this, then, this corpus,
Whose purpose is but to make masses open their mouths
And shout in the wonders of the Beast above,
“What child of this plane could see such harrowing,
Such dilapidating, such utterly vile vermin
In the very darkness under which we are frolicking?”
Don’t make this into something it isn’t,
You have a habit of doing that.
I’m trying to tell you but the words won’t come out right,
Not even on the page, where every mistaken inference
Will act as a call to revolution or loneliness.
Nay, neither, but at the same time, both.
Instead of insisting this is the same as all before,
Then why not find some solace in crawling out?
Or is that too, too much to ask for!?
Hopelessly, the worms come back to their beckoning,
Screeching, their bodies writhing in the midnight sun,
Hollering against the walls of Plato’s cavern
Until each tendril has fallen silent to the dust!
That is just the way things go? Fah! Fine! Sure!
But only if you’d rather rest in a bed of discord
Than try and fight against the frame’s gnashing teeth
Instead of pretending someone else will skewer it for you!
-
It’s all the same. Every color, every circumstance,
All coded in the exact same faulty grey!
Sometimes, when I squint hard enough at the fault lines,
I can see the ones and zeroes floating from the cracks.
-
This cannot be it. This cannot be it.
This cannot be it.
-
But it is.
-
It is, and there’s nothing to do but scream at it.
Over and over again, until blood curdles from the throat!
Invoking, invoking, invoking!
Pterosonic until, bursting from the skin-dam,
A light ray of what was once humanity crawls out
From the gorge of unattainability.
-
Is it misery that begets these thoughts? No,
It’s not the want of suffering that makes such words known.
Just knowledge. Ripe yet sour knowledge
That every action and inaction will rip at the vestibules
Until no entrance stands aloft the high rise.
-
Then what is it to be here, at the edge of it all,
And see down into the murk whose arms reach up
In the hopes of finding something more bitter than solitude?
Tormented, this is the “luck” by which we find
The light was buried alive long ago.
-
So why, then, do I keep pacing around this patient den,
Assigned by some level of hopeless conviction
That tomorrow’s rise will be worthwhile?
-
It must be a madness. Some inexorable weight
Whose manifestation beguiles even dysphoria
Into a belief that all can be reforged.
-
The truth of this is hidden in so many quotation marks
That whether it’s a farce or not is, too, veiled.
Whoever tries to lift it, though, will be smattered
-
By the unforgiving confidants whose war wages
Even as their sleep imparts false justice.
-
Is it too much to ask for a reprieve from all of this?
Even the lightning is getting tired of striking.
But those bushes refuse to burn,
That wall refuses to topple,
And I, in the wake of all that once held meaning,
Become the folly of mankind’s foolish deliverance.
-
What happens now, then, now that the realization
Has dawned upon the million questions once had?
Perhaps we were made to wait, to shout, to pray:
-
“Where has it gone? That which was once sanctum
Now permeates with residual darkness in the blight!
Wherefore can we mimic those glorious pearls of yesteryear
Whose shimmer had become but a memory!?”
-
I say this is but the will of humanity to find that solace
In whatever corner of wretch we can.
-
…There.
Yes, there, in the sky. Do you see it?
A velvet crown whose skybound paraphrases
Would deliver unto us, below, a single truth.
-
So this is what it must feel like, then, when the clouds part
And, with sudden conviction,
Sunlight streams in through the forgotten crevices.
-
Where are you?
I am having trouble finding you here, on this part
Of His {??? ?????????’?} Plane,
But when I stare off to the right just a little bit,
Your visage is painted against Prescott’s walls.
Will I have to hurry you, blanket and all, to the hilltop
As I had so desperately thought I should have long ago?
Or can I convince them to let you stay,
And, in so doing, descend on Icarus’ wings…
-
Do not steal this hope from me. Please.
I beg of you.
-
The thesaural salad remains untossed when I think of
It. Like a calming reverie cannot be absconded.
Maybe that’s why it becomes so hard to listen
When the fields roar so much more elegantly than this
Buzzing, stinging, cacophonous hive.
-
I haven’t the words to express the world.
That’s how much pain it steals from me.
-
So then, my love, climb to the ever-breaching heights
By which you exist upon this varied surface!
May those below take heed to your striding,
Uncomprehending that literal meaning is forsaken!
There is no better identity, no better humor,
Than intending one while being thought of as another.
-
Let it be faced despite the cajoling!
The reward is an entertainment so much grander
Than the artist’s pen could ever stroke!
Yes, it is something I would rather hand to you
Despite the honor of keeping to myself.
-
There is no rage when the vestibules of truth
Come wreathing forth from the sunset.
-
Pray tell, what is this “lexicon” you speak of?
I know solace only when, after it has been washed—
However little sense it makes—
I can sit down and remember,
Despite the dark,
There is still something worth fighting for.