literature

Doldrums Poems 2

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GRAVITY


(or A deal with the Dreemeeters)




Cry wolf;


and drink a toast to ending;


looking long across the


ashes of a freshly ravaged land.




Breath smoke;


and watch the dim stars bending


to it, tattered, tired and


powerless against its broad command.




Bottoms up and see it there,


the melancholy map stripped bare


and white, like chalk-dust on the air


the bands of blank-slate ruin scare


all difference back until the last strange things refuse to stand.




Capacity of Same to swallow


oddities that cannot follow


sad and stretched and dry and hollow


pallid tombs of thought and call: ‘Oh,


let one final unique vein escape the purging sand!’




Fresh-pressed smooth like linen, bleached


the clean gigantic arms then reached


across the sky and, laughing, leached


the brighter colors pale and screeched


the finer music mute and bleak on that offending strand.




The people saw it; massive, gray


and glowing faintly with decay;


they bid it, begged it might obey


their fervent wishes and allay


the wicked white-wash ruination wrought by unseen hand.




So drink;


to careless bargains made:


that theirs would be the country


that was spared until the last.




Salute;


to hasty ransoms paid;


to Forebear's greater weakness;


to the eons that have passed.




Winds around us wither thought;


beneath: the vapid tongues that rot


the Doldrums' neighbors down to nought


while they the same quick barter sought


that they'd be spared from harm and brought to other lives anew.




Take heart and trammel up your fear;


So long away, while still too near,


though you would take the pain to peer


upon an awful void and sear


into your mind a half-blank, tearing universe askew.




They'll come for us, a contract true;


so light 'em up and down a few


for all quick souls; for me; for you.


Open arms and welcome new


adventures when at last they hew


us finer folk and all we've done... and smile when they do!




- Michael Blackwood

spoken as a bar story.
© 2011 - 2024 MisterBlackwood
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