poetry, original
My attempt at a sestina. It actually isn't as long as a sestina is supposed to be, but somehow it just feels right to stop where it does.
Untitled
copyright (c) 2004 Meixia
In this dark place where the light beams low and there are mewling hungry mouths
Where his chains rattle in the dimness of night and the muteness of gray morning
He strives for a thing that is lost, but it is not love nor hate nor passion
That he wants, the dull melancholy sadness of early evening with the birds,
Their voices only imaginary for they are far too above him to be heard,
But a vision he cannot remember and cannot forget, the details lost in a time so long ago.
When his friend from age-twelve would walk the dog and he by his side, eons ago
When the sun still shone bright and his mouth still smiled, the pinkest lips for his mouth
And the darkest shade of blue for his eyes, the first chirp of the evening bird was heard
On that sunny, sticky, frothy summer afternoon just after a grueling summer morning
Of selling ice-cream at the corner in a little push-cart, of watching the blackest birds
And laughing the happiest laughs, where he felt his friends smile turn into passion
And he could not help but laugh again, and wipe the sweat from his brow, passion
In the movement and all other movements from then on, the hand he laid so long ago
On his friend’s shoulder and raked through the dark hair, lazy afternoons with birds
Singing above them in the trees and on the idle lamp-posts with their sharp mouths,
Where he first kissed a boy and held a boy and loved a boy, long after the sunny morning.
Before them their lives awaited, somehow entwined, somehow to be severed, and to hear
Those birds again in the fog of his dissipating memories, rotted by time, yet still heard
By the echoes off the empty walls and the empty tunnels, is a love no longer, a passion
Known to him as only a bottomless well he cannot crawl out of by morning,
So far away, unreachable by his outstretched fingertips, long, hard, and cruel eons ago,
He could not bear the weight of what was lost to him now. He knew only how his mouth
Missed the kiss, his fingers the touch, how his ears missed the singing of oblivious birds.
Untitled
copyright (c) 2004 Meixia
In this dark place where the light beams low and there are mewling hungry mouths
Where his chains rattle in the dimness of night and the muteness of gray morning
He strives for a thing that is lost, but it is not love nor hate nor passion
That he wants, the dull melancholy sadness of early evening with the birds,
Their voices only imaginary for they are far too above him to be heard,
But a vision he cannot remember and cannot forget, the details lost in a time so long ago.
When his friend from age-twelve would walk the dog and he by his side, eons ago
When the sun still shone bright and his mouth still smiled, the pinkest lips for his mouth
And the darkest shade of blue for his eyes, the first chirp of the evening bird was heard
On that sunny, sticky, frothy summer afternoon just after a grueling summer morning
Of selling ice-cream at the corner in a little push-cart, of watching the blackest birds
And laughing the happiest laughs, where he felt his friends smile turn into passion
And he could not help but laugh again, and wipe the sweat from his brow, passion
In the movement and all other movements from then on, the hand he laid so long ago
On his friend’s shoulder and raked through the dark hair, lazy afternoons with birds
Singing above them in the trees and on the idle lamp-posts with their sharp mouths,
Where he first kissed a boy and held a boy and loved a boy, long after the sunny morning.
Before them their lives awaited, somehow entwined, somehow to be severed, and to hear
Those birds again in the fog of his dissipating memories, rotted by time, yet still heard
By the echoes off the empty walls and the empty tunnels, is a love no longer, a passion
Known to him as only a bottomless well he cannot crawl out of by morning,
So far away, unreachable by his outstretched fingertips, long, hard, and cruel eons ago,
He could not bear the weight of what was lost to him now. He knew only how his mouth
Missed the kiss, his fingers the touch, how his ears missed the singing of oblivious birds.