Tag: despair

“Eleven Days”

On By Mike U.In EssaysLeave a comment

“Eleven Days”
(c) 2021 by Michael L. Utley

The wind blows
Those shadows deeper
Into gloaming recesses
Of pine corridors
As aspens
Denuded and shamed
By autumn’s fickle fury
Huddle shivering
In dim dusk

In my heart
Those eleven days
Of silence tore me apart
Like carrion birds
My soul chipped
Away like frost-cracked
Rock on frigid granite tor
Mind numbed by gelid
Confusion

How could I
Have foreseen my gift
For you would shatter your heart
Send you spiraling
Into your
Personal abyss
Disrupt delicate balance
Leave you retreating
In the dark

How could I
Have foreseen my love
For you would turn you away
In anger and fear
When all I
Wanted was to say
I would wait for you as you
Sought to find yourself
Once again

I was so
Afraid that you would
Disappear into the void
Of black depression
Lose yourself
Among demons that
Barred you from the healing flame
Of lucid mind and
Sanity

I was so
Afraid all was lost
All we built on tenuous
Foundations destroyed
Fragile trust
Dashed upon the rocks
Of hopelessness and despair
Fledgling dreams of joy
Now sundered

And how could
I foresee that when
You returned to me at last
Those eleven days
Of heartache
Gone in cautious hope
Never to return were but
A harbinger of
Our demise

That the next eleven days
Would last a lifetime
Without you

The wind blows
My sorrow deeper
Into gloaming recesses
Of my heart and mind
Memories
Denuded and shamed
By regret’s fickle fury
Huddle shivering
In dim dusk

“The Trunk”

On By Mike U.In Poetry1 Comment

“The Trunk”
(c) 2021 by Michael L. Utley

There is a place for things
That don’t belong in
Other places
That sere and weathered
Trunk that hunkers lupine-like
Amid dust-addled attic shadows
Wood split and gouged
With time and neglect
Iron bands and fittings
A crumble of rust
Lockless clasp broken
From endless breeches
And pryings
I should have
Replaced that lock
Eons ago
The ill-fitting lid
Is too loose
More decoration
Than function
And tends to rattle
Of its own accord
Much too frequently
For what’s inside wants to
Breathe
Stretch
Pop knuckles
Champ teeth
And feed
And only I can
Contain it

I am the guardian
Of my thoughts
The gatekeeper
Of my soul
The sentinel
Who slumbers
Far too often
And I have the scars
To prove it
Pandora knew nothing
Of depression
Of the sticky ichor
That coats minds
Chokes souls
Rends hearts
Ends with
Restless bones
In paupers’ graves

There is no light
In this trunk
Rather
It devours light and life
Siphons energy
Drains minds of clarity
Its bitter harvest
A wretched bounty
Of lies and darkness

I have discarded
This trunk hundreds of times
Thousands of times
Banished it to
The furthest reaches
Of the void
And when I turn around
It’s still there
Lurking stealthily in
Tenebrous attic shadows
Slavering
Grinning
A dead-blue
Feral glow
About it that
Bespeaks of
Baleful knowledge
Best kept under
Lock and key

Mere vigilance is futile
Hyper-vigilance exhausting
This night never-ending
The callous sun
Cannot penetrate
The claptrap slats
Of my mind
I must stand
On my own
In this blackness
And fight to keep
This trunk shut
To render impotent
Its contents
To save myself
Or die trying

“The Footbridge”

On By Mike U.In Poetry9 Comments

“The Footbridge”
(c) 2021 by Michael L. Utley

That derelict footbridge
Has finally failed
Stranding us on
Opposite shores
Of the abyss
Words
Like rotted planks
Litter the gorge
Below
Desires and dreams
Dashed
Upon indifferent rocks
Silence is all
I hear from you
Subdued echoes
Of regret
Perish
In opaque mists
Impenetrable
To starlight
And hope
The absence
Of closure
Rooting me
In place
Heart seized
By fear
And uncertainty
Did you turn
And walk away
Or did you
Plummet
Like our words
Into the
Sepulchral gulf
And must I
Remain here
Forever
Waiting for
The answer which will
Never come

“The Daisy Ring”

On By Mike U.In Poetry2 Comments

“The Daisy Ring”
(c) 2021 by Michael L. Utley

“I found thee in a faerie copse…”

“Hmm?” she murmured
Her gaze caught somewhere
In the rainy neon night-world
Beyond the coffee shop window
Her fingers weightless
Feather-like
In my hand
Ethereal
Furnace-hot

“I found thee in a faerie copse
Alighting on each flower fair
And as I ‘proached thee in the hopes
Of snaring thee in lovers’ ropes
Thou disappeared into thin air…”

She looked at me then
A faint smile teasing
Her lips
“Your poetry is terrible,” she said
Her tired eyes regarding me warmly
For a moment before
Returning to the
Pouring rain beyond
Our personal universe
Of rickety little table and
Untouched mocaccinos
Her brown eyes
Glistening
Misting
As she scanned the night
A single tear tracing
The curve of her cheekbone
In the garish glare of the
Outside world

I stared at her hand
Too pale and fragile
Almost transparent
As it nestled idly in mine
Like some sickly dove
The delicate silver band on her
Too-thin ivory finger
Etched with some flowing
Unknown script resembling a
Daisy chain
It was all I could do
Not to look at
The rest of her
But I did anyway
I had to
And it hurt

I closed my eyes
And allowed my
Memories of her
To replace the despairing image
Burned into my mind
As she sat in somber contemplation
On an unremarkable stormy night
In some nameless coffee shop
In an arbitrary world
Where prayers go unanswered
And hope dies on the vine
And nothing is what it seems

The image that settled
In my mind’s eye was
The first time I saw her
As I made my aimless way along
Some mindless city sidewalk
In some pointless other reality
Her face ensconced in a
Breeze-blown mane of
Luxuriant onyx hair
As she peered out the window
Of a passing bus
Looking at nothing
Lost in some reverie of her own
A faint bemused smile
Causing her face to glow
So brightly I had to
Look away or be blinded
And though she didn’t see me
I couldn’t stop seeing her
And was it fate that I eventually
Found her?
A miracle?
Random chance?
I chose fate
But I was wrong
I didn’t find her
She found me
And by that point
It was too late

I opened my eyes
And all pretense fled
Immediately

She was fading
Diminishing
Before my eyes
Her essence draining
As though her soul
Had been punctured
By some eldritch poisoned dart
She must have known
What I was thinking
(She always did)
And she looked at me
Out of anguished eyes
Drowning in
Dark forbidden pools
And squeezed my hand with
All of her might
Her grip so weak by now
So frail
“You can’t save me…”

I looked at her angrily
About to deny this lie
This horrible, god-awful lie

“No…” she whispered
She reached out and
Touched my cheek
And after a time
All my anger dissolved
Into shame
And ran down my face
She wiped away
My pathetic tears and
Placed her moistened hand
Back in mine
Her sterling daisy ring
Gleaming dully

“Tell me again,” she said
As she tried to smile
“Tell me again of how you found me…”

And I looked at her
A solemn, resigned calmness
Settling over me like
A sheet pulled over the face
Of the deceased
She knew it wasn’t true
She knew she’d chosen me
Not the other way around
And I’d been powerless to resist
But she indulged my silly-sad
Fantasies
Because she loved me
And because she loved my
Puerile poetry

I swallowed hard
Shut my eyes against
What was about to happen
And said

“I found thee in a faerie copse…”

Her hand began to tremble in mine

“Alighting on each flower fair…”

The din of the coffee shop quieted
As the subtle incense
Of pine and myrtle
Wafted delicately

“And as I ‘proached thee in the hopes…”

A distant, stifled sob lilted softly
In the silence amid
The nearly indiscernible cries
Of birdsong

“Of snaring thee in lovers’ ropes…”

Her hand pulled away from mine
As gently as a parting lover’s kiss

“Thou disappeared into thin air…”

There was an almost imperceptible sigh
Like a forlorn forest breeze

When I finally opened my eyes
Her burnished silver daisy ring was
All that was left of her

She was gone

“Sea of Trees”

On By Mike U.In Poetry9 Comments

“Sea of Trees”
(c) 2019 by Michael L. Utley

To slake my thirst
With dew from leaves that never see the light
Arboreal the tears that fall and quench
The darkest dreams

To fill my bowels
With loam whose cloying scent bespeaks of death
Arboreal the taste of living earth
My hunger begs

To see the gleam
‘Neath tenebrous shadows and rayless groves
Arboreal the blackest night in day
Below the boughs

To run rough hands
O’er scabrous bark and hardened boles and moss
Arboreal the pillars scrape the sky
In breezes weep

The silence holds
Forbidden knowledge
The silence holds
The universe
The silence holds
The truth

The path wends through
This living thing, this thing that sighs and cries
And dies and eats itself a cannibal
Whose roots betray sorrowful sentience
Whose trunks hold back the sky with anguished might
Whose limbs strain forth in melancholy pleas
A beckoning

A reckoning
The path into the gloom is just a path
With littered leaves and lichen on the rocks
And overhead the canopy to keep
The sky from falling down under the weight
Of lifetimes filled with torment and regret
It’s just a path

No need to fear
The forest welcomes me it knows my name
Envelops me in arms of somber green
It sings to me a song of silent peace
It pulls me down the path on wings of leaves
It whispers of a place where I may rest
And leads me there

There are others
Herein among the endless sea of trees
Herein among the caverns and the gulfs
Herein among the secrets and the cries
Which echo faintly in sepulchral voids
Herein where many come and none return
There are others

These are my kin
These shades that linger far beyond their time
And welcome me with soundless empty stares
And follow me along the darkling path
And shimmer as mirages in the air
And fade away as if they’d never been
Into the trees

The silence holds
Everything

Arboreal
My personal Aokigahara
My sea of trees my jade remembrance
There is a place just off the path ahead
A place of sodden leaves and broken twigs
And bitter cold that numbs away all pain
A resting place

I am not that boy who saw the sun
I have never seen the sun nor shall
I see only trees

“The Golden Door”

On By Mike U.In PoetryLeave a comment

“The Golden Door”
(c) 2017 by Michael L. Utley

The golden door is caked with blood
A patinated crimson tracery
Its gilded crest a filigree
Of ruined hope

There is a sense of something there
Beyond this barrier intransigent
A light a balm a restful place
But not for me

What lies beyond is out of reach
No matter how I pound my broken fists
Upon that door immutable
I can’t get in

My voice grown hoarse, I cannot call
Aloud, my screams which echoed through the years
Are silenced now, a whispered wheeze
Is all that’s left

The gulf that separates two shores
Impassable, impossible; a leap
Too great for wretched mortal minds
And riven souls

What have I ever done to earn
The wrath of all creation? Even stars
That light the velvet void grow dim
Regarding me

With pale scornful eyes, the moon
A frigid face inscrutable, its gaze
A blazing condemnation of
My life’s disgrace

And still I stand at golden door
With bleeding hands balled into angry fists
And pound away as stinging tears
Burn blinded eyes

In futile faith that things will change
Before I can no longer will myself
To fight this fruitless battle and
Abandon hope

That something better lies beyond
The golden door

“The Thing on the Corner”

On By Mike U.In PoetryLeave a comment

“The Thing on the Corner”
© 2013 by Michael L. Utley

The thing on the corner
That squalid revenant
That only I could see
As my daily peregrination
Took me through the city
Past vulgar monuments
To capitalism and greed
Through roiling seas of
Soulless apathetic drones
The mindless rhythm of
Humanity
The ebb and flow of futility

The thing on the corner
That filthy phantom
That caught my eye
And no one else’s
A sort of uncanny gravity
About him
That caused my pace to slacken
As if I were being lured into
Some kind of anomalous orbit
Around this peculiar specter
Just a tug and then I was free
To continue along my way
In my daylight world of
Noise and glare and stench

The thing on the corner
That wretched eidolon
That haunted my dreams
That stood in judgment of
All who passed before him
On this unremarkable corner
In this forgotten city of despair
The bastard kin of
Minos, Aeacus and Rhadamanthus
His throne a decrepit cardboard box
His shroud a blanket that reeked of
Age and disease
His crown a greasy scarecrow of gray hair

The thing on the corner
That defiled shade
That I can barely see as
I approach him
He is a mirage
A flicker and a shimmer
I squint my eyes as I stand before him
There is static, a signal dying
Over the expanse of eternity
An imperceptible howl from
Another universe
I reach out a tentative hand
And touch him
For an instant he is there before me
Vital and filled with the
Energy of supernovas
His eyes are alive and
Radiate truth the brightness
Of a hundred suns
He is real
He does not speak but
Only looks at me
For a moment
For a lifetime
Then turns away
And fades to
Nothingness

And the oblivious masses mill
Through the city streets like cattle
To the slaughter
And the city sighs
As anesthetic night descends

“I Stood at the End of the Earth”

On By Mike U.In Poetry2 Comments

“I Stood at the End of the Earth”
© 2013 by Michael L. Utley

I stood at the end of the earth
As it trembled and moaned
Beneath me
The great dark monstrous Pacific
Infinite and unseen
Before me
Mindless
Inexorable
The cliffs below me besieged
By the stentorian onslaught of
Night-cloaked sea

A lifetime of fear has deafened me
I cannot hear it
It does not exist

I stood at the end of the earth
As it shuddered and groaned
Beneath me
The obsidian veil of the void
Stretched taut above me
A canopy of moonless ubiquity
A spray of crystals muted by
An eternity of
Distance and time

A lifetime of sorrow has blinded me
I cannot see it
It does not exist

I stood at the end of the earth
As it writhed and spun
Beneath me
The virginal rays of an
Ancient sun gilding all
The soaring albatross
The breaching whale
The crying gull
The gamboling dolphin

A lifetime of hubris has dulled my mind
I do not know these things
They do not exist

I stood at the end of the earth
As I sought to uncover
The great mystery
The answer is all around me
Everywhere
And forever out of reach

“Air/Water/Air”

On By Mike U.In Poetry1 Comment

“Air/Water/Air”
© 2012 by Michael L. Utley
 
There is no air
Down there
Down in the dark
Where I choke
On my life
Nature abhors
A vacuum
But rage
Thrives
Therein
 
Emptied
Gutted
A carcass
Rotting
Under a red
Alien sun
Gasping a mere
Reflex
I am a fish
Cast upon the shore
Drowning on nothing
Dried eyes
Blind
Bulging
I see nothing
So nothing exists
The calm susurrus of the waves
Is the great deception
I cannot reach
The water
I am not fit for the
Fisherman’s net
The cry of the gull
The sigh of sea grass in the breeze
The languid flap of my tail
The hard hot stones of the beach
The stench of all things
The sea
 
I try to scream
But there is no
Air