While walking through a warm afternoon
that suddenly turned from bright to dim,
with blazing clouds that began to loom
and shadows grew deeper and light was thin:

My way ahead was unexpectedly barred
by an iron gate, its lock snapped shut.
It’s topped by spikes well made to ward
off hurdlers, sharpened, made to deeply cut.

Past the gatehouse, a tunnel, a fallen shelter
from the rapidly coming hard rainfall
that once was sung about by a jester
in time with a tambourine, as I recall.

It leads to a light that’s still ablaze
where sunbeams’ sheen still sparkles bright,
beckoning us all to pass this gate
that looks at first glance a menacing might.

To stay before this wrought iron fence,
its spikes tipped with red poison that drips
into the soil that’s in cracked distress?
I won’t just wait here in the dawning eclipse.

No lock is unpickable, no wall too high
for those with the will to reach new skies.

A tinpot tyrant built a tower tall,
clad in gold and granite and all.

This motte and bailey mocked the skies,
mocked the peasants who’d helped him rise.

Reflected in wide moat’s black waters
he saw a king or khan — not the paupers —

and ruled his lands to rack and ruin
until he faced his own perdition.

The tyrant’s chiseled name fades away
dissolving with each rainy day.

All that’s left of this despot’s schemes:
the wreck of his peeling gold leaf dreams,

this tower the barest token of his trying will
upon that lonely bald abandoned hill.

Now none remember the tyrant‘s name
whose broken tower was built for fame.

Berlin, Berlin, just what art thou?
A cake of layers baked from fates
by many bakers, cold and proud,
who filled it with chunks of bitter dates.

The cream on top is cloying, sweet,
to compensate for the stale flour
and brownish yeast of marching feet
with bruised crabapples, soft and sour.

To try a slice of this complex taste
isn’t easy: It’s baked in haste.

Up hiking on a hill that once housed a king
whose golden age had gleamed long ago:
His former realms filling all that I’m seeing
but little trace of him now, just shadows.

Standing alone, his abandoned throne,
overgrown with brambles and weeds
that crack its old stone, unbemoaned,
while the vines spread more of their seeds.

Many years later (or less?), a hiker will pass
up and down this very same hill
and look back on us past, wondering at last
why our gilded age didn’t last like we’d willed.

Everything’s under control.
Sure, the controls are a bit old —
nah, it’s not quite like a dice roll,
it’s all still working, kind of, all told.

Not to worry, everything’s fine,
all systems are still online
even if it looks like some redlines
are warning us of flaws in the design.

Sure, a failure happened before
that had lots of troubles in store,
hordes of red flags that could not be ignored
but were anyway. Led to one or two wars

but it’s OK, we fixed it back then
without needing to count down from ten.
Shut down your doubts, say yes and amen —
What, me worry? That’s our kind of Zen.

A Berlin monastic church of blood
shed by true witnesses to freedom’s love:
These few who stood against the flood
of hate from tyrants they rebuffed.

Not far from here, these martyrs were killed
for facing down the brownshirts’ might,
in hopes that all would someday be filled
with the will to live for love’s delight.

Here Mary sits with her holy child,
carved of warm wood, set on cold stone.
She bears an expression, calm and mild,
with nothing around them: alone.

Her robes are daubed in palest blue
while her hair with a golden crown is wed;
her baby son wears redder hues
that foreshadow blood he and his martyrs shed.

This blessèd Mary’s calm defies the fear
decreed by despots in past and present years —
Softly, she whispers her granite will: Defy
all tyranny ’til hate’s tides subside.

Atop a high knoll, a Gothic arbor. The town
below seethes in blustery breezes that whirl
around the few trees, bare and brown:
A tempest’s iron furies unfurl.

Two lovers stand on the hill’s stony ground
beneath the arbor’s brick sky
as they look out over the city around
them: marching clouds descend from on high.

The winds whip higher and stir dead leaves
while they hold one another’s warm hands.
Though the bleak scene may lead them to grieve,
no: In togetherness, they make their stand.

They fight, fight for their love: It ignites
their glowing embers of heartlight.

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.

In a cathedral of stone, stark and white,
with a lone statue from long before.
It stands in a niche, with a soft spotlight
shining on its medieval decor.

A ****** Mary, with her Mona Lisa smile,
looks down from her pedestal high.
In quiet, I stand and gaze at her for a while.
Did I just hear her audibly sigh?

Her gilded robes are weathered, cracked,
the once bright paint’s faded and spare,
many scars made plain by shadows cast
by a red circle of candles lit by prayers.

What crises has this scarred Mary seen?
Her sighs echo ours: This statue’s hallowed
by the pains the prayerful to her bring.
I hail thee, marred Mary, full of our sorrows.

I stand in front of a stone library
that once held great knowledge therein,
but stands now empty under skies dreary.
I whisper a prayer for our sins:

Please, Lord, let the children who follow us
grow wiser than we ever were.
Let them yet be the loving kindness
that we have signally failed to confer.

I doubt that they will ever forgive us
for this fallen world that we’re handing down
thanks to all the blind disservice
by leaving little but ash on the ground.

Before us all stand two stone gates
each leading to diverging roads:
The one leads to our visible fate
while the other fate overthrows.

Please, Lord, let those born in these days
choose the path of the unknown
instead of taking the road that behind us lays:
They shall our foolishness swiftly outgrow.

What few blessings I may pass on to you,
O dear reader of the future’s present,
I give you freely in hopes of a new
rebirth in a world without end, amen.

Fifty years ago, the future came,
built in concrete, tile, and bright lights,
underground station, undergirding the fame
of this city, adding to its manifold sights.

Now the future’s a place that smells of stale beer,
barely lit by futuristic lamps in disrepair,
wallpapered in graffiti, strewn with gear
of the pale homeless who’ve made this their lair.

They, like this chipped, grimy, forsaken place
are left in the dust of our dreams’ mercury pace.

Palace in night fog
draped in a pale vestal sheen —
Moonlit débutante

When I was a kid in the Virginia mountains, we had a train line that ran yonder through our quiet little town, a few miles from our house.

In the warm summer months we’d have the wooden sash windows wide open, their screens strummed by the breeze and humming a hushed lullaby.

Each night, lying in bed, I heard the remote rolling roar of the train when it blew its whistle as it neared our town.

Every night, as the dusk fell, it came: the slow rush and roar of iron engine wheels that glide along on roads of steel. The engine‘s sacred heart was stoked white hot, fed by black coal dug from those rolling hills.

Then the hush of night lifted for a rolling moment: The engineer pulled the whistle cord — releasing a long plaintive chord of a melancholy choir, pitched just so, for to sound softly through the coal-hearted hills of the Blue Ridges as they echoed in quiet reply.

It was my signal: It’s time to sleep.

The nightly ritual chuffed on. Boxcars rumbling on rugged rails. A distant engine roaring by in steam and stoked fire. Waves of lightning bugs that rose and fell in the sticky summer night while foxfire faintly glowed blue in the brambled underbrush. High above the rolling green hills, between the watchful blue mountains, the stars arced past on their tracks of old.

I’ve long lived far from home. Longer still has the now lonesome line been turning to rust. Now I know why the whistle wailed: It was wistfully aware that its last stop was near.

But I still hear the ghostly wail of the whistle past, as the slow steam train of memory glides through the dusk of my soul.

The promise of a future bright
encased in a temporal temple:
It sits among Berlin’s blinking lights,
a spaceship made to resemble.

Its oracles stood in this aluminum starchurch
dressed in sparkling ABBA track suits,
alit by glittering disco ***** with lights that search
for the future’s many loyal recruits.

But futures seldom turn out the way
that priests of the modern prophesy,
and this once sleek starship sits, decays
while stoic streams of cars drive on by.

What happened to the dreams we had
of federations who deep space explore?
Was it all just an ephemeral fad
now left in twilight, to be ignored?

Then again, this is Berlin, the place
that is built upon its broken dreams —
Utopias all cast aside, but which grace
this city with abandoned and fading gleams.

The starship sits in unending preflight,
awaiting the signal to lift off.
Its digital clock counts down to delight
but never makes it past Hasselhoff.

Climb aboard Battlestar Berlin, my friends,
fly with warp speed to nowhere at all.
Before you know it, the latest trends
will leave you yearning for total recall.

In the bleak winter
under hurrying clouds,
the wind blowing, bitter
gusts through trees’ barren boughs.

A small house: Its nooks
in new Gothic style
once housed the old books
of a forgotten king for a while.

It had been a library,
a place filled with words;
now all that here tarries
are the winds and the terns.

Its glassless peaked window
looks out on the sky
to waters that flow
by the small palace hard by.

The window is incised
in stone shaded gold —
a warm tone that belies
its touch that is cold.

The red palace is crowned
in gold and white marble.
They shine out, gowned
in hues that spite winter’s pallor.

Now blue waters and birds
add color to the scene
that fills this blank window
with nature’s stained glass serene.

This house has stood waiting,
empty in wintriest times —
now it’s filled by nature’s painting
brushed in hushed hues divine.

In the night of purple murky clouds
that fell from heaven, a heavy haze
envelops the old palace, a velvet shroud
that blinds all but the keenest gaze.

Yet there atop the palace gates,
a spotlight sends out golden blades
to slice the velvet and spite its weight:
gleaming swords by brighter spirits made —

A signal to the clouds, return up high,
cast off their shroud and kiss the sky.

Christ and disciples
gaze from the stone tympanum —
Frozen redeemer

I’m walking by the dimming remains
of a building of future past:
its once stylish streetlight, now decayed,
points at the Moon that’s rising fast.

The old streetlight was made of globes of glass
that circle its core of steel bars.
It looks like a starship, sleek and fast,
but now its globes are dusty and scarred.

The globes, a circle of eight bright moons,
orbit the streetlight’s tall spire
that points up to the glowing sky jewel,
to the place to which it aspires.

Up there, on brightly lit lunar plains,
our spacefarers once walked in awe
and dreamt of Zarathustra’s booming strains
in two thousand and one proud hurrahs.

And so this spacecraft of glass globes
was made to look up to the stars,
to urge us on to launch further probes
and take wing from this blue globe of ours.

Years later, this dream has faded
to fleeting stars of reality shows,
who leave the people fixated —
not by the Moon’s, but by screens’ dim glow.

The streetlight was fixed firmly to earth,
iron bolted to grey crumbling concrete.
But it still points up to the heavenly berth:
Moon rises, a dream left on repeat.

In darkness, a church
of carved Baroque stone
catches me walking
unawares and alone.

Two stone hands reach out
from the church outer wall.
A gesture of blessing
or a prayer for us all

in stony carved silence
that echoes the voice
of a God we can’t hear,
who stays quiet — by choice?

Just when we need
to hear they’re right here,
they feel like a veiled cloud
that is more distant than near.

Still these outstretched hands
remind me of this:
Divine’s in the touch
of human hands’ godlike gift.

A Berlin building. Sunbeams of steel
made to shine in suns of future’s gold,
now dreary, dimmed and forced to kneel
to the timeless gods of growing old.

Its shining future could not last.
Sinking in a golden fade, a forgotten grail.
Of sunbeam ore, new futures are cast,
bright dreams unbound by fear’s black veil.

From the forge of steely sunbeams
comes a new grail of sunlit dreams
and the tireless gods’ tired reign
is overthrown for another day.

A cobblestone road
in a dark night dyed with woad.
Faint glitter under pale street lights.

Icy blue fog in the late night
turned electric by the passing lights
of rumbling cars that rush on by.

They leave their streaks of LED beams
that quickly fade as if a lost dream.
The night watches with a hint of a sigh.

A-walking on a wormwood path
that’s paved by age’s cobblestones
on past a palace of distant past
in a Prussian park, a mind unthroned.

He walked, a shadow
through the foggy night,
his pulse beat faint and shallow
as the pale and fitful light.

In the lace of this quicksilver mist,
a fellow shade now walked along.
She emerged from dark, adrift
like him. They hummed the same black song.

In what had been a pitiless pit
of icy fog and stony walks,
she was there as if summoned by fate’s writ.
In whispers, she and he began to talk.

They shared their bleak
and tattered tales
to raise the wreck
of where they’d failed.

And as they talked
their once distant light
began to shine
out in that night.

Here in their pale of desolation,
two kindred shades touch shadowed hands
and in their touch found consolation
to rekindle light in benighted lands.

The bright death of a star
lights the black night from afar.

Astrologers walk from east to west
and follow the nova’s fiery arc.
The burst of white in heavens’ dark chest
gives sign of a birth, love’s new spark.

They walk on through sandy shards of this earth,
past broken glass of our days
to find the one whose heralded birth
gives hope that our world is reglazed.

Held in their hands are gifts replete
that tell what the child will become:
Gold for a king, sweet incense for a priest,
for a healer, myrrh that will scent his tomb.

And the lodestar that died
signals the birth of a child
whose death and rebirth
lit a new star on this earth.

Selah.

Each year I watch them travel in a snow globe
that hangs upon my Yuletide fir tree,
a glowing glass sphere where waters flow
’round these Magi walking magically free.

Week by week, winter
clouds shroud the sun, sullen sky —
Church arch, bridge to light

Sitting in the subway.
All fix their eyes on screens —
What does this sight convey?
Is this all that their lives mean?

I’ll take a stroll
through wintry night air
to free my mind
from its dark wisps and snares.

While walking in the night’s leaden fog
that weighs upon both eyes and mind,
a building emerges from dampening slog
adorned with columns of marble refined.

The fog oppresses all the known world,
with eyes and ears slammed shut by fear.
Its thralls have spread, its pall unfurled
to wring out all sense of what was clear.

And yet: Here rises
from black fog’s embrace
the lights of a campus
that spite fog’s dimming wastes.

Upon building’s brow, above the main gate,
two words inscribed. Letters gleam through gloom
and icy tendrils of iron mist’s weight:
“Auditorium Maximum” —

— the place of the greatest hearing.
If only this hall could vastly hold
the sum of all in fog a-fearing,
to teach each to hear and be thus consoled.

To live in more than piecemeal peace
in a heartily hearth-warmed hall
where all must learn the art of hearing,
to share in the greatest art of all.

Berlin, Berlin,
contradiction city.
Grey concrete hulks stacked around
old buildings rising pretty.
A never ending construction zone
that tries to top the past
while dancing ’round her history
whose pallor shadows cast.

The embers fade
from passing year
and turn to ash,
then disappear.

A span of time
that fades to black
now melts into
earth’s deepest cracks.

From murky fog
and blackest night
emerge first shoots
of new year bright.

Now from grey ash
of burnt-out past
the shoots are fed
’til new dawn’s flash.

At year’s knife edge
the night is long,
obsidian blade
cuts open new dawn.

The clock’s hands turn
and grasp the knife
to slice open the box
of a new year’s life.

And from the cut
the knife just made
comes ray of light
that glints on blade.

What this beam will bring?
I do not know.
But I’ll take some hope
and let light flow.

—

Photo here:
https://bsky.app/profile/jackgroundhog.bsky.social/post/3lem2baz3ks25

In creeping fog
of wintry night:
My eyes are clogged.
Billows of blight.

Dull cataracts
veil antique lamps,
gun cotton tracks,
pale wreaths of damp.

Yet though here loom
dun brooding hulks
of cold stone gloom
in misty sulk

the lamps shine forth
and shall not fail
’til dark fades north
and pulls the veil.

In the sallow sea of sable ink
that breaks upon my splintered prow,
fire beacon’s beam a-lightly winks
and casts gold light upon my brow.

I see a man walk on the swells
and wave to me through sheets of sleet,
his silver voice a tolling bell
that beckons me to take the leap.

His shining rope crests upon the waves
that rend my vessel in tempest flares:
Across black brine the lifeline sways —
My callused hand will take its dare

to grasp the line that more life gives
and feel its pull to once more live.

I am the night
that never ends.
I weight your world
until it bends.

My cloak of fog
devours your light
and deprives the soul
of inner sight.

Once Dante stood
before my gate:
Abandon hope
and seal your fate.

Selah.

A distant presence
now calls me out
to challenge my
dark seeds of doubt.

My choking mist
and gripping vines
are loosened by
an else divine.

My nine circles
now fall to one.
A white-gold flame:
My time is done.

Two thousand years and miles away
a foretold child was to poverty born.
A tyrant willed to keep his sway
and murdered children in his scorn.

The child would live to preach a love
that surpasses the smallness of our minds;
The despot now dwells in a dim-lit grove
of shattered urns and skeletal time.

That child became a man of words
which fell upon unhearing ears —
They twist his love to sharpened swords.
To a tree he’d be nailed: hyssop tears.

Yet though he too had died alone
like the despot who’d hunted him,
his message of love has only grown
in spite of new despots grim.

A tale of two kings in memory:
One turned to dust, one love’s victory.

My heart’s ventricles
form a vast vaulted ceiling —
Crumbling cathedral

A marble altar
in a gilded Baroque church —
Poor babe in manger

A blanket black across the sky:
The ice-ringed moon lights backs of sheep.
We see our breath and hear the sighs
of gathered cattle that we here keep.

There in the dark on pasture fields
while we watch over our huddling sheep,
a silver seraph, her wings revealed,
now rouses us from the darkness’ deeps.

She opens up her thousand wings,
reveals a blaze of gilded flame,
cold air around us begins to sing
in tempest that her fire proclaims.

Our hearts now race, our eyes are blind
from searing light and disbelief:
in cowering terror we take our flight
and quiver as a quaking leaf.

Out of the cauldron of light she made
comes forth a voice of gold lyre strings:
Dear shepherds, my friends, don’t be afraid
for I am herald of glad tidings.

And all around, piercing the dark,
come further blazes of wings and song,
each calling to us to rest and hark
to this gathering radiant throng.

Their whirlwind song swells to a peak,
of peace and glory in highest heights.
We long to see of which they speak:
the wonder of this night of nights.

Their chorus gleams and softly fades;
the embers of our hearts now glow.
We stand in awe of what they said
and feel our veins with warm hope flow.

We see a star rise in the west:
To the birthplace of a shepherd king
we walked in peaceful silence past
the watchful stars a-twinkling.

Along the path to newborn babe
are brambles, barren bushes’ thorns
that by the light the angels made
bring forth red roses with gold adorned.

Thus from the shards of broken worlds
comes sudden hope in wings unfurled.

The bleak sable night:
Leaden blanket drapes the world —
Supernova hope

Many points of light
shine through blue streaks of hoarfrost —
One star leads the way

Tangy, pungent, sweet
tastes and smells fill frosty air —
The solstice scented

Two marble columns
hold up the high temple roof —
Lovers holding hands

A jet black shellac record spins
seventy-eight times a minute.
Its label bears a lady ’round the pin:
She strums her lyre pictured on it.

It’s a flat earth of forgotten tunes
that spins on an axis of steel
through heavens lit by a lyrical moon
filled with the stars of bygone years.

The label’s lady of the lyre
smiles up from her grooved time machine,
her strums reverse the stars’ funeral pyres:
On each rotation her lyre gleams.

Beyond the grave, voices I hear
defy the dark passage of time:
They sing, resurrected from yesteryear.
Her lyre scores each lyrical line.

Each scratchy hiss and tiny pop
I hear from the disc’s dust and scars
reminds me of a radio telescope
that points up to distant quasars.

Alas, the needle drifts further on
‘til it reaches the groove’s final string
and then the tonearm waits for a new dawn
when this time machine once more sings.

An oracle stands
alone in her stone grotto —
Solitary lamp

Will she, won’t she
buy my Christmas wares:
If I work to sell me
will she take my snare?

The practiced pitter-patter
of my seller’s pitch
hangs in crisp cold air
and hopes to scratch her itch.

Her eyes dart to and fro
from one stall to the next:
the jingling coins’ fickle flow,
Christmas bells that leave me vexed.

Will she, won’t she,
see this heart that beats?
What if I add it free
to the sale of these sweetmeats?

Each moment wisps of tinsel
a-flutter in icy gales:
I fear her dismissal
as I grasp at just one more sale.

A spark of insight melts the ice
in a tiny warming breeze:
It’s not my wares I price,
but what I’m truly selling’s me.

Dear reader, let me with you share
how we must loosen winter’s snare.

I remember my last summer
when lazy clouds would puff the sky
and the river’d laugh and murmur
while the wind wandered gently by.

The trees all waved in greeting
with their maple green hand leaves
while air with nectar dripping
wafted past my senses’ eaves.

All around were people glowing,
each filled to the rim with gold sunlight,
each face a brimming chalice flowing
with the fruit of grapes of delight.

But now the sun’s departed
behind the bleak clouds’ winter coat
while leafless trees look guarded —
no more waving, just remote.

I turn my collar stiffly upwards,
wrap my scarf around my face,
become one more of masked hundreds —
of our hearts’ warming hearths no trace.

Where voices once were warm and clear,
they languish, muffled in a space
that tightens in a chilling fear
locked in the creeping frost’s embrace.

The slice of ice into my bones
snaps me awake to think again
and free myself from aches and groans
that winter’s biting shadow sends.

Under winter’s bitter blanket grey,
my mind wills back to summer’s upland hills
that shimmer in sunlit summer days
to cast off winter’s hoary chills.

And so, my friend, do we choose the dark
or do we light the solstice spark?