"foregrounded" poems
Emerging economies.
What they’re emerging from I don’t know.
My guess, the depths of hell.
From the frying pan, right into the fire, or worse; a well.
A deep hole stronger than gravity, the force.
To be forever under the thumb of remorse.
A modern era of endless acts, policies and bla bla bla.
Shut up with all your platitudes.
I see what’s really going on. Aha!
You speak of sustainable development.
Nice to know that you’ve led by example.
Carried the mantle for all these years.
Centuries of ruthlessness, now veiled in sheep’s clothing.
But you won’t shut up. Because you don’t speak.
You never have. You just do.
Each day that goes by, you carry on anew.
Behind all the talk of hope, equality and more progress,
it seems the wolves are lurking.
Cooking up the next tool to subdue countless.
This time, not behind closed doors. But in plain sight.
It’s scary to imagine such spite.
Each year that goes by it becomes clearer that you never cared.
You sold guns, drugs and all kinds of war.
And each time, you kept coming back for more.
You’ve built up antibodies that ensure your survival.
But sometimes I wonder if you’re alive at all.
But what do I know?
Maybe you’re more alive than ever.
Doing what you do best but always more clever.
That not even the most stable of geniuses can evade your pressure.
A strong enough foundation that each break makes you stronger,
So strong that not even the Gremlin can take you under.
Against this dreary background, foregrounded is nothing short of magical.
Beyond hope, prayers or a thoughtless radical.
Or maybe this is all just fake outrage.
An attempt to evade the boredom of this endless monotony and baggage.
Or maybe, the term is out of date.
Like every other, that makes me increasingly more irate.
In which case, this poem is at least ten years late.
Or maybe there are too many maybes’.
And I’m perfectly suited for this time of vague uneasiness and indifference.
In which case, my imagination probably needs more sociology and less a lesson in rhymes.
Oct 14, 2018
Oct 14, 2018 at 1:44 PM UTC
Such to break surface, the framed glassy pool reflects
With me, upright, the still-life foregrounded as its own
Pale imitation. But I see it, there, between my vague eyes
And evaporating pores populating a single empty window
Devoid, a full of life—or so I am to believe.
That tree is happy, incomplete and passive, wayside,
It contemplates its own dream, nostalgia is its willful present
In the moment, there are but ripples in which the tree smiles
Happy to know it is here, it is alive, it is me—just as my fading
Bliss is real in the glass. I am happy for the tree: being of difference.
What never can be, it shall, in spite of metaphor
To be like is to be, but too pure be is to abhor.
It turns, a rebel, from the pool: no fiction of cast nor questioning;
That plastic Narcissus cannot hear the Echo of a captured face:
Where Exit signs sigh in their own irony trapped, here, there,
It is by its own imitation it must comfort the erraticies—
Sadly, she weeps uttering the same mantra on her lips,
But by design, she has curses on her brow, anger at her mimicry
Which hides her from the dream she lives, still weighted by
Wonder, still holding onto God. She sees nothing but the calling back.
Is but the voice of a Lover, of trapped souls in a tenement window,
She can only hear herself talking infinitely
Presence to the water, commune her ‘I’ unto me.
While I am free to glide about the room, the panoramic view
Of two minds’ madness, I, too, feel a pool on which my beloved Self
Reveals to me the seconds it took to create,
The voices which, vague, came as mine
And I stole away quietly, to believe me a tree, and to go ahead and dream.
Mar 10, 2015
Mar 10, 2015 at 9:06 AM UTC
I call to you, with stars
in my eyes, and a hope
that takes over my timbre.
Giving voice to the void
that separates internal
from
external,
through the minuscule aperture,
like a photograph with no light behind
but only foregrounded you.
No leaves or trees or paths
or edits to the memory -
natural
and glorious
and vivid
and you.
You alone.
I call to you alone
when you are all -
marks of tread through my heart
and love, a whole lot.
All I need, and no less
despite the behavioural
incongruence (hushed
and veiled).
So much says otherwise,
but does not so much
say as such?
I call to you, drowning
beneath the surface of
a puddle;
no, a pool;
now a lake,
impossible to fracture
the top frosted over,
beating my hands endlessly against.
The water blue flows crimson.
My heart beats,
until it stops.
And in the quiet,
she breathes.
I breathe too, and
my heart restarts,
her exhales electrochemical,
jolting me to wakefulness
and bringing my heart
to life
once more.
It's the nothings, the calm,
just the way she is
that gives you the breathless love.
Let her in. Gosh -
just let her in.
Let her love you because
she does.
Oh, slow your heart
or she will know.
Slow,
or the dream will end.
Let her love you
without loving you
the same.
Let it be, ok?
Let it be ok.
Let it be.
There is love
and it is bright, vibrant,
and it will shine through
any darkness.
She is everything in herself -
let her evolve.
That is life;
that is love...
That is love.
Jan 29, 2018
Jan 29, 2018 at 7:07 PM UTC