Our Strolling Shadows
Life is but a walk-in... Shadows, slipping
into the darkened Play, players fall in...
Every earthly medium... Parts, gearing,
for a moment, with the rolls, as given...
Clay, dust and water, molded and fired,
seen in sun's light and its denial, of form;
What deteriorates, in hues, retired...
to the busyness of brushes that swarm
In chiaroscuro: precise, unreal...
our sleeping visions, emerging from dream
as substantive, yet immaterial...
with stage fright, and silent cinema scream
The dogged wandering, of worldly Soul...
The trail of apparitions, in our role...
01.21.2024
"Life's but a walking shadow..." @dctezcan
Life’s but a walking shadow.
For some, it is a constant presence that follows them reliably as they traverse the unknown that is their future, like a friendly figure that paints the sidewalk behind you on a bright, summer day. It is an afterthought that you only come to recognize in moments of quiet acknowledgement; when you’re contorting your hands to make blobs that resemble dogs or frogs. Life is a friend who silently watches as you exist and grow, and it grows alongside you.
For others, it is a monster. The shadow in the corner of your eye as you walk around your house alone in the night. It is that dark spot across the room in the form of a man, or the form of a creature who could reach out and touch you. It is a source of fear, like a child being chased by their own dark figment for the first time. Their shadow is a constant presence that follows them reliably, constantly nagging at their brain as they wish for peace and pray for help. Their shadow carries a weight, and it blocks out the light of the sun until there is nothing but shadow and they can only blame the dark for every iniquity of the life befallen them until they wish for nothing. They wish for the shadow to be gone, even if there is no sun thereafter.
Life’s but a walking shadow.
Rose
I deceive pale night
sweet rose burns in lies.
Altered fate breaks my gentle state,
they want a machine, blood thirsty ghosts.
Blank mind buries me in ten mountains of snow,
sweet rose thorns my sides.
Crown of sorrows,
murder bound gentle beasts peck..
Flesh filet mignon
with squirming maggots in deep red.
Some notions return in apocalyptic scent,
hellfire bends afar- we dance among ghosts.
Slow december days winding to january gloom,
dearest friends learn my absence, off i wilt.
Sweet rose burns in lies
strange pangs sink and burst.
Dandelion love swallows goblet sun,
ruby wine thorns your midnight dress,
Red tie holds me like cerberus chains,
vain shadows meld my fate.
Valleys flooded harp your angelic entrance,
slopes splashing sol radiance
Wedding bells toll,
cold hel welcomes me.
Sweet Rose,
burns my veiling eyes.
Darkness, My Asylum
It's in the light that you see the shadows. And it's in the dark that you see the light...
Tonight, I sit in the dark. There's but the faintest of shadows from the light outside my window, and the lamp in the corner of my room. My shadow is stiller than a frosted lake but, perhaps, just as cold. It feels foreign to me, now. A stranger hiding amidst its kind in this grim room.
Despite its stillness I feel the length of my life, toiling beneath my skin; just as the water beneath the frozen lake. It rumbles, the endless cry of running water. Ever thirsty for more. The only dead water is still water.
I cannot bear myself to move. The weight of my years has settled upon me like the finest of dust layers. In my motionlessness is my shadow caught. It cannot but obey me. It hides now. Perhaps, so do I.
From what? The toil and froth? The unrelenting waterfall of life I've temporarily captured in my silence? My still serenity of the moment?
All of these things, I'm sure. For it's in this moment of motionless that I am free to hide, just as my shadow. The world turns outside these walls but, for now, until the desperate morning, they shield me. From the light. The shadow-giving light that demands I live. For even now, while the water flows heavy with current beneath the ice, it is thin ice.
Though I move not, my shadow ever creeps. On the morn my shadow will not be where I commanded it to stay. To hide with me. Instead it hides from me. It lurks amongst its brethren to circumvent the fury of its owner. Me.
Why do I cower from my own shadow?
Why do I cower from the roaring waters beneath my stilled ice?
Why do I cower from life, where my shadow doth walk?
Evermore it creeps along these walls, through the night. Carrying the burden of the life I've lived. For it is in the walking shadow that the past lies, and in the darkness my only asylum.
Life and Spring on a bench
Life once told the god of spring,
Immense beauty suits you quite well,
To which she smiled and responded,
I touched death as the night fell.
In autumn, the wind was heavy,
it carried past me, notes of death.
but when the sun came out again,
the wind felt like a fresh breath.
Spring brushed a petal from my hair,
and handed me a wilting flower.
Do not confuse beauty with life, she said.
Giving the world beauty is not my power.
With my breath, I only can give life.
How you see it, is left up to you.
People miss beautiful things every day,
The most beautiful things are seen by few.
Life wrapped a hand around mine,
The signs of life surround you, my child.
When will you look up and see them?
Then Life closed its eyes and smiled.
Later, I walked through a dormant garden,
and like a tree, I planted myself in the grass.
Through the winter, I stayed there.
feeling like ice, transparent like glass.
There was warmth coming from the soil.
Where I touched the earth, the earth made room.
If I hadn’t looked up, I would have never noticed,
The flowers had already begin to bloom.
Sound and Fury
Flitting darkness and bullets lighting up the night sky like Christmas lights we used to hang before our safe microcosm blew to pieces. The air we breathe smells of destruction and the gunpowder of neighbors we once called enemies but now use all the oxygen in the room to pray for, lest God take us as sacrifice for being untrue to our words of thoughts and prayers. Moments of silence and salutes to a waving symbol of indolence and laziness. Blind eyes suddenly saw when the fire returned and turned the blue and red into bruises and blood. We carried a big stick, but they took it and knocked us at the knees and watched our bashed heads roll on roads paved with people underpaid and overlooked. But now we see them. We see each other and plead for each other like the world pled for us, but we didn't come just like no one will come now that the mighty have fallen.
Spin Love’s Tale Anew
“If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”
Romeo and Juliet
An endless, immortalized devotion
Didst fill my heart with steadfast, true felt love
A brimming, overwhelming emotion
Flying amidst skies like a soaring dove.
Canst thou not hear my deep, profound longing,
Carried on the wind in a fervent cry?
A new life awaits us, a pure dawning,
Thus, meet my rough, tender touch lest I die.
We pilgrims will meld with rapture divine
Lips will blush, colliding as only one
Whilst souls will combine, forever entwined
’Til twilight greets us and our time is spun.
Unworthy though I be, my heart is true
Come, my dear, spin love’s tale with me anew.
“Life’s But a Walking Shadow”
Darren stood that night in the swelling black
That spilled like a ponderous throw carpet
All throughout his neighborhood,
And the mess of local and chain businesses
That jutted out of this once cherished;
Now maligned side of town...
Her lips had descended upon him like a hungry rat
Before she vanished into some crater somewhere,
While his head was still spinning,
Muttering that she just wanted to know what
It would feel like to kiss him...
It was like a sped up relationship in reverse...
He'd become like a bronzed legend in this city,
Like one of those statues of war generals that
The birds did their business on
In Central Park...
A lot of the old company had dispersed
Like windblown leaves in Autumn,
But here he was still planted firmly
Beneath the shadowy ballast of time...
Tonight he sat in Casey's, tasting the bitter coffee,
And basking in the ersatz 50's decor...
He was recalling Jennifer's kiss again,
And the way the streetlights bled into the river
When he had wandered out onto the
Downtown bridge in a daze after she fled...
Gazing off in a distance from his post
He saw the giant outline of his shadow snake up
The side of the Amway Grand Plaza
That stood impressively to the right of the bridge
That was peppered with a mosaic of brightly shining
Bulbs that further enhanced his darkened replica...
Darren waved at the shadow,
And the lofty shadow's arm waved back
With what seemed like almost a
Delayed reaction time that bordered on odd...
Tomorrow he planned to pull up stakes,
And take a trip outside the confines of this burg!...
Early that next morning, Darren awoke
With a newfound obligation, and appreciation
For the narcotic that was his city...
He couldn't imagine a move;
Not with all the memories and faces that he wore
Like a bandanna around his neck,
Long into the numberless starry nights
He plunged forever like a falling star...
1/18/23
Bunny Villaire