When she died a part of you did too

His voice that rang like shimmering church bells
Fell oceans deep
A  water well
In the darkness of what was
Broken little pieces
From up above
Departed; Leaving
Stories retold
Smiles retrieving

When the skies are blue
I'll look for you

My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,
My tears like vinegar,
Or the bitter blinking yellow
Of an acetic star.

Tonight the caustic wind, love,
Gossips late and soon,
And I wear the wry-faced pucker of
The sour lemon moon.

While like an early summer plum,
Puny, green, and ****,
Droops upon its wizened stem
My lean, unripened heart.

'Perspective betrays with its dichotomy:
train tracks always meet, not here, but only
    in the impossible mind's eye;
horizons beat a retreat as we embark
on sophist seas to overtake that mark
    where wave pretends to drench real sky.'

'Well then, if we agree, it is not odd
that one man's devil is another's god
    or that the solar spectrum is
a multitude of shaded grays; suspense
on the quicksands of ambivalence
    is our life's whole nemesis.

So we could rave on, darling, you and I,
until the stars tick out a lullaby
    about each cosmic pro and con;
nothing changes, for all the blazing of
our drastic jargon, but clock hands that move
    implacably from twelve to one.

We raise our arguments like sitting ducks
to knock them down with logic or with luck
    and contradict ourselves for fun;
the waitress holds our coats and we put on
the raw wind like a scarf; love is a faun
    who insists his playmates run.

Now you, my intellectual leprechaun,
would have me swallow the entire sun
    like an enormous oyster, down
the ocean in one gulp: you say a mark
of comet hara-kiri through the dark
    should inflame the sleeping town.

So kiss: the drunks upon the curb and dames
in dubious doorways forget their monday names,
    caper with candles in their heads;
the leaves applaud, and santa claus flies in
scattering candy from a zeppelin,
    playing his prodigal charades.

The moon leans down to took; the tilting fish
in the rare river wink and laugh; we lavish
    blessings right and left and cry
hello, and then hello again in deaf
churchyard ears until the starlit stiff
    graves all carol in reply.

Now kiss again: till our strict father leans
to call for curtain on our thousand scenes;
    brazen actors mock at him,
multiply pink harlequins and sing
in gay ventriloquy from wing to wing
    while footlights flare and houselights dim.

Tell now, we taunq where black or white begins
and separate the flutes from violins:
    the algebra of absolutes
explodes in a kaleidoscope of shapes
that jar, while each polemic jackanapes
    joins his enemies' recruits.

The paradox is that 'the play's the thing':
though prima donna pouts and critic stings,
    there burns throughout the line of words,
the cultivated act, a fierce brief fusion
which dreamers call real, and realists, illusion:
    an insight like the flight of birds:

Arrows that lacerate the sky, while knowing
the secret of their ecstasy's in going;
    some day, moving, one will drop,
and, dropping, die, to trace a wound that heals
only to reopen as flesh congeals:
    cycling phoenix never stops.

So we shall walk barefoot on walnut shells
of withered worlds, and stamp out puny hells
    and heavens till the spirits squeak
surrender: to build our bed as high as jack's
bold beanstalk; lie and love till sharp scythe hacks
    away our rationed days and weeks.

Then jet the blue tent topple, stars rain down,
and god or void appall us till we drown
    in our own tears: today we start
to pay the piper with each breath, yet love
knows not of death nor calculus above
    the simple sum of heart plus heart.

.......a parade of thoughts,
crowd its tip......sad...sweet,
scary...unpleasant...pleasant,
hopeful...or prohibited,thoughts
come.....one after the other,
like white circled smokes from a spectre,
smoking....hiding, behind the curtain,
triggered by a song, a verse, or somethin'
else.....like a photo, a voice...a memory...

when they come to haunt...and taunt
..... i just bow my head,
and let my  pen stand *****
or lean inside my palm,
allow it to make curves, loops and  
lines, to cross out untimely thoughts
on white blank pages...
pen struggles with me--whether or not, to share
my likes, dislikes, my disgust, fears, my despair...
my endless questions are frozen...wintered
within...i wonder, will they remain unuttered?
....the answers, as before, are uncertain...
.........my discontent, oh, so apparent...
::::
.....when i hold my pen...is when my soul
breathes and relaxes...it journeys...i forget all,
....hunger pangs do not enter my mind
..my troubled self....and the peaceful me
....join forces....their combined energy
flow freely, inside my inner streams...
...i sit tall when they bring out the best in me,
...wonder if i could bring back worst moments,
......and correct the wrong in them...but,
who's to say what is right? what is wrong?

when i hold my pen, i realize its might,
its omnipotent power....its written bold words,
exclamations, lines, commas, dots and dashes,
can incite, or douse strong actions and feelings
it softens the sharp edges of anger and pain
it can puncture deeper...better than a sword,
it can heal...soothe wounds and  slashes
.................inflicted by other pens


........when i hold my pen,
i let it speak for me...time and again...


Sally

© Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
March 21, 2018

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
******
I always had this certain
contentment-
I wouldn't call it
happiness-
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occuring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.
it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.
to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade-
this was the craziest kind of
contentment

and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror-
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.
what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.

This I write to you
From the deepest sea
Where the gentle swell
rolls the boat softly

For it is here I am left
To contemplate my life
And the choices I’ve made
That extol my strife

I made them then
What’s done is done
They’re mine to own
Each and every one.

But I am the product of
These decisions of mine
And I’d do them again
Time after time

And so, this I write to you
From the deepest sea
Where the gentle swell
rolls the boat softly

And all I can say is I’m sorry.
To me.

Once upon a time
Not so very long ago
I was wishing upon a star
Watching Mary's lamb
With down as white as blow

I laughed at Country Boy Eddie
For hours it must have been
We'd been up all the night
Indulging in our sin

They said we were full of crime
I said we were doing time
They were about to leave
Until I made another line

We laughed at Country Boy Eddie
For hours on an end
Daylight came creeping in
It was time to make amends

If you every saw the flick
"Once upon A Time In The West"
It was a western made
Perhaps it was the best

Brutal man can be
unlimited it seems to see
For Country Boy Eddie was laughing now
And he was laughing back at me

All the laughing stopped
There in the morning mists
It was a time to collect the debts
And sadly were they ever ******


There would be no tomorrow
No more credit would they let extend
An eye for just an ounce
See how far the bones will bend

A life for no more than a pound
A bullet between the eyes
From the boys that
Wear perpetual frowns ,
"It's time to say goodbye!"

There was no more laughing
Except on the TV screen
Country Boy Eddie was hee-hawing to himself
The morning now serene