Mythos & Marginalia

2015 – 2025: a decade of days


  • for a shadow

    dead pencils
    still leave a mark
    salvaged from the litter bin
    gave most of their everything 
             from within
    now surrounded 
                        by cigarette butts 
    salad oil      tuna tins     phone
    messages   hydro bills   coffee
    grinds                    orange peel 
    rotting spinach              or kale
         broken 
    shoelaces             leftover pain
                                   a sad refrain
        still saving a few scant lines
                                   of sentiment
    for a man
    and a night
    and a poem

                                   for a shadow

  • faith without discretion

    Take these humble hearts,
    those who trust, perchance, too much,
    the ones who now shelter themselves
    from the agony which lingers
    from trying; from hoping; from
    believing there could be more.
     
    Heathens, yes, for lack of a more apt word
    but neither an infidel, nor a fool.
    Where trust is too much, there is faith
    without discretion. There remains a
    longing few can see, or realize,
    for they need to believe.
     
    See these unwilling victims
    not for what they have not been, but for
    each tiny gesture, shameless notion, and
    act of empathy, however inferred. 
    Allow them to create, leave them 
    to their ways. Let them be.
     
    Teach them, these broken souls, 
    not to look for the lesson, but to accept
    the graceless guidance oft shone into
    clotted shadows. Knowingly they will
    expand and contract in self-preservation, 
    self-examination, and sorrow.
     
    It is there, in seclusion, where errors in
    understanding take on perspective. There, 
    those humble hearts, may come back 
    to being. Each carries a pulse. They bleed
    silently and remorsefully. They have loved 
    you before, and may again.
     

  • ask the impossible

    Don’t talk to me at dawn. Caught up in whispers
    of residual dreams beyond my control,
    I’m not always ready for a new day, and
    frequently have difficulty comprehending
    where the night falls.

    Morning is not the time for words
    if the night has come before. Every breath 
    a struggle. I wake. No heartbeat. No. No talk. 
    Blinded by sight and sound I won’t hear 
    the meaning, or the message.

    Give voice to my days instead, where I won’t 
    see your reflection, but will feel the wonder above 
    the cacophony and confusion 
    that terrorizes an otherwise 
    monotonous day.

    Evening’s long shadow laps up scraps 
    of humanity. I pay less and less attention as 
    the planets close in. Considering your many renditions, 
    I await your arrival. Any night. What shade
    will you be this night?

    Then is the time, when distance fades, where we tell 
    each other stories. Little else matters, and we ask 
    the impossible. Inevitably darkness 
    consumes me, until you become 
    less significant.

    Through nights, when I’m restless, when dawn 
    is simply a concept, don’t waste your words on me. 
    I will not hear them, promises or otherwise,
    or find the light, or time, to 
    see your lips move.

    Dawn reveals serious wounds, time misspent 
    and misplaced words. Where morning hints 
    of the night before and I may not hear your call, 
    don’t talk to me at dawn, 
    or talk to me at all.

  • obsolescence

    Ravaged by rain
    tormented and
    tortured with nature’s harsh breath
                   Skin torn away and hanging
                              a mangled skeleton
    left for dead
    in the gutter                    an umbrella
                         alongside broken bottles
    matchsticks and cigarette butts
    a spent condom
              salt and dreams washed away
    with the rain
    Items which once served a purpose
    now used or used up
    no longer of use
                      Servitude
                                    sins and secrets
                susceptible to societal ways
    Disposable
       Obsolescence
         Everything once had a purpose
    or a reason
                       or an excuse
    Now
        all but forgotten
                                   until it rains

  • more or less

    “If you want to win the teddy bear, you have to break the rules.’

    Advice from a panhandler, a regular, 
    outside one of two coffee shops. People come and go, 
    tedious ebb and flow of those getting by; life in this city.

    Daily she is here or there, barely warm coat, 
    hands clasped in prayer, paper cup and her frowzy blanket.

    Where she sleeps is often a wonder; 
    women’s shelter a block over, or congregated
    rooming house. Downtown. There are many not far away.

    ‘Any spare change, anything helps.’

    Passersby, some smile, others won’t. Many don’t 
    look down. Not everybody stops, not everybody walks on by. 
    A quarter or two, a coffee or crumpet. Here and there.

    More or less.

    ‘God bless.’

    Slight smile from an everyday face that has braved cold 
    winter winds, scorn and rejection. Her life harder than 
    the dirty concrete where she sits. Every day.

    Empty stomach. Little promise. Few possibilities.

    Some other day.
    Some other time, the world was different.

    So was I.
    So was she.

    Society does what it does.

    We rarely know 
    who breaks the rules and do not question those who make them.