Saturday

The broken sky unknowingly seizes

The ailing form their warped diseases

How they love to cackle their taunt

Of my questions of what I want

Of what I most desire

They call me a liar

Go dance in your society

Commandeer my propriety

Tell me now: Where are you?

When my need is greatest

What of when my turn is due,

And you plead from me the latest?

I have now crashed down to the earth

And need a speck of cush’ning mirth

My sharply succoring harsh membrane

Lay derelict ‘cross some hoary plain

For what am I searching?

Toward what am I lurching?

I want from you the obvious truth

Known to every vernal youth

Just leave for me some indication

Of such timeless vindication

Which, though I will love to hear,

Must refuse to hold near dear

Remind me of a grander scheme

Remark on my pageant dream

I can’t just be pass the hours

That I blanket her with flowers

Underwrite my insight

I forgot what is and what’s not

My feet now are growing colder

Sisyphus has lost his boulder

And though he would recant, he can’t

Of his prickly, transparent rant

Off afar a hammer pounds

Articulate, iron-fisted sounds

Could it clang for me?

Am I allowed to see?

Distantly an old voice croons

To me a poem long forgotten

Crackling, broken as the face of the moon

Smooth as summer cotton

Speak to me from days long past

Answering questions I’ve not yet asked

Understand my selfish need

For that for which I dare not plead

I can still smell your understanding

Though stale now is the knowing smile

Not a step near reprimanding

Outside can wait awhile…

I dare not hold tight the reigns

For the fear of manual strains

And the lash’s deepest stains

The morning’s Tea

Today was coffee

Lightened up with cream

Softer than it seems

For years I’m broken in lachryform hate

In the second in which you hesitate

Avarice, I fear, won’t soon abate

Do remember when we walked so slow?

Not a place in the world to go

Wondering, winding through the streets

Our gray edifice hardly greets

The blank, blanched stares which all environ

And on we walk as to a siren…

And on we walk as to a siren…

The chalky morning finds me wary

As I open my eyes to an aviary

Fraught with all things anguline

What is now the task at hand?

Do not simply ask, demand

“Thank you; I’m just fine”   

ib Hopkins