Our Steam-Driven Lives

Insert the wrench, grab it tightly,

And ratchet, ratchet, turn, ratchet – remove.

Push the clutch and rev.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump

A jumpstart to our industrial heart.

Gears spin, wheels turn, pistons fire.

Metal clanks, fuel burns, a belch of exhaust.

Our engine is running.

But open us, test us, check if we’re working,

Remove the hood and inside you’ll find

Wires, frayed and stripped-

Spark plugs, worn and misfiring-

Cogs, overly greased by perpetuated false hopes-

Units corroded by the abrasive monochromatic

Colors of our steam-driven lives.

Too much gas and the machine floods.

I saw a man once – battered and beleaguered,

His paint faded and grayed,

His gears rusted and squeaking,

The timing of his engine skipping and off-beat.

I saw in his stalled movements

A premonition-

A foggy glimpse at what just might be.

A saw a future in which my generation,

Bright, shiny new dreamers,

Achieved our hopes,

Fulfilled our destinies,

Conquered the world,

And aged.

And our zinc coated dreams corroded.

Our futuristic models out-dated.

Replaced by shinier, more reliable makes,

And our engines turned to dust.

And I turned to the man,

With his cracked carburetor,

And asked,

“What were you?”

And he looked at me,

With eyes just like mine,

And replied in tin-tones,

“I was you.”

Words

Pen drips,

Ink smudges,

A second skin.

Scribble-scrabble,

Scurried scratches,

A first language.

Ringing tones,

Singing syllables,

A soul.

But shaking hands,

Chatting chit-chat,

Alien, foreign.

Anecdotes given freely,

Spoken words,

Unspeakable.

Isolation

For notebooks filled,

Understandable.

But trading words

For trading stories?

Questionable.

Is a word worth

The worth of a friend’s

Words?

True Beauty

I have looked upon true beauty

And now it haunts me every day.

A shining image true

Now engraved upon my brain.

A vision of flawlessness,

Tis’ a beauty for which I’d die.

A perfection so fully pure

One cannot help but cry.

This beauty possesses the deepest soul

That makes one burn with desire

So that one could glance unendingly

And never sleep or tire.

Tis’ a magnificence so captivating

That words cannot describe.

The moment that you see her

Cupid’s arrow does arrive.

For tis’ true! This beauty is a woman

One that stands apart

For this is the woman

Who has stolen fast my heart.

This Silence of Mine

Upon this day of Silence,

So the silent may be heard,

To protest an opposition

I’ll utter not a word.

These words I do not utter,

Theses thoughts held in my mind,

Suffice to say they’re supplemented

With this silence of mine.

Spun Moonbeams

The humpback man makes his nightly round,

Clad in white, he walks the night,

From on high in, in silver down.

Speckling diamond dust on an inky pool,

Sparkling bright, these points of light,

Weaving midnights from Morpheus’s spool.

But hush, mortal men, and hear,

The chirping thrush, a gentle rush,

Of trees whispers entreating upon your ear.

A gentle ripple stirs the plutonian screen,

A swaying brush, a sound so lush,

Touched by a loving hand unseen.

Spun moonbeams then alight upon a time aged fence,

A knot of wood so dark, graced by heaven’s spark,

That never the like has been seen hence.

The focus shifts to a sad old swing,

Leans from Nature’s mark, upon sits a lonely lark,

As the baying hounds begin to sing.

The old man stops, and leans to rest,

His walk is done, the weave is spun,

And now he dips ‘neath Gaia’s crest.

All these are commonplace to the inhabitant’s eye,

‘Neath moon and sun, this view they shun,

And none partake of this beauteous splendor but I.

Sailor of the Stars

Sails are brimming full,

The solar wind a-blowing.

Skirting the rings of Saturn,

No cares for where we’re going.

We dock once on Titan,

Only for a day or two.

Then through the cosmos

I again renew my search for you.

Once I saw a shooting star,

And with addled hopes I thought

That I had found the shining face

Of the one I sought.

We sail uncharted waters,

As the Milky Way ends its run,

And since there’s still no sign of you

We head home toward the Sun.

I’ve sailed these heavenly waters,

This ocean full of stars,

From the gas seas of Neptune,

To the red mountains of Mars.

All the while hoping,

Still searching for my love.

These shining stars for guiding

Lie below me not above.

For I’ve searched the Earth twice over,

Then three times, then four.

I’ve explored every water

And I‘ve crested every shore.

Still my love eludes me there,

From Earthly love I’m barred.

So I’ll search the one place left to me

And sail among the stars.

Our Shadow

There’s something inside all of us,

A darkness beneath the seams,

The man in red upon our shoulder,

In the dark corners of our dreams.

There is a shadow upon all of us,

That wakes us up at night.

A scary thing within ourselves

That fills us full of fright.

We personify this inner evil

In the darkness that we find.

We point out the dark outside of us

To escape admitting it’s inside.

This evil is not a sickness.

This shadow is not a disease.

You cannot purify this darkness.

You can’t satisfy its needs.

We ignore this shadow’s existence

And thus we set it free.

And now it stalks the corners of our nightmares.

It is the fright within our dreams.