While passing by a great Gothic church,
I see sullen skies begin to glower:
a looming wicked curse
above the church corona’s tower.

With bruised blue clouds brewing black
in the bellowing wide heavens,
hearts pounding, all shrink slowly back:
Blazing bolts scream and threaten.

Here comes the gale force shrieking wraith!
Take shelter from the storm
in the stout fortresses of your faiths
built with those who keep you warm.

For though some tempests last
over rocky spans of fears,
all the maelstrom’s wrath must pass,
even if it lasts for years.

In these sturdy stones you’ve laid,
rebuild for the coming of new days.

Atop the curve of a carved stone dome,
well gilded by rays of many setting suns,
Fortune pirouettes and prances all alone
while her clockwork wheels rhythmically run.

With each new tick of her timeless clock,
she spins the drivewheel another round
and dances ’round the clockwheels’ cogs
in freedom, from our cares unbound.

The spring in her step drives clock’s time,
a rhythmic dance with outstretched hands
that point to sorrows or high cloud nine
as suits her music: She won’t come to a stand.

Would that we could pass the years
like Fortune, a lady unwound by our fears.

The mason chipped flecks
from slate with a nail,
each tiny grey speck
carving a brief tale
that strips a life’s fame
down to the merest detail:
two dates, one name,
in letters faint and pale.
It asks One to bless
them who’ve passed through the veil,
to grant them their rest
’til resurrection prevails.
The mason too is long gone,
none live who his name still bewail;
he lies beneath the stone
that another past mason regaled.

The mind’s a magnet
but also a sieve,
sometimes a dragnet
with nothing to give.

A mesh of iron —
or is it fool’s gold? —
attracts the ions
of whatever it’s told.

It scoops from the streams
of wisdom and truth
but catches jetsam —
what’s floating ’round loose.

Whoever may say
“Well, that’s just not me!” —
It will come, that day.
Just wait and you’ll see.

A space-age fortress of glitzy build
stands empty. It had once been filled
with shining futures of tinsel, milled
of bronze for a time that all would thrill.

How empty the future past now seems
behind the glass of wasted dreams:
Once polished steel now dimly gleams
and old high tech lies there unredeemed.

Its giant clock now standing still,
the hands unmoving, like hopes that will
remain as frozen in amber that’s filled
with flies of dreams: placebo pills.

Asphalt night
by red dawn’s light
descends into deepest fog.

A glimmer of bright
on the edge of sight
shimmers blue: I begin to walk.

Battered plaster,
shattered glass,
splintered rafters,
a crumbling mass.

You former home
of…who knows who?
who left to roam
away from you.

Now you stand
empty, broken
but look quite grand
in scars unspoken.