Up there on the pulpit, they speak -

This is the moment which many do seek -

“We have come together to make this happen!”

A sleight of hand - a pencil with a bubble filled in.

 

How many posters and flyers were made?

How many prayers did they ask to be prayed?

How many marched for their hopes and their dreams?

How many times have they been ripped from the seams?

 

Every single time - when the old clock stalls -

Intense frustration is sprayed all over the walls.

Do what you say - and say what you do...

All that we ask is your words to be true. 

 

How many lies and promises not kept?

How did you sleep - last time that you slept?

How many moments were full of untruth?

How did you do it without any proof?

 

It’s not just you - you unnamed politician -

It’s all and above, our country’s mortician.

Death by vote - ironic at best.

So many times they failed at the test.

 

How did it happen - this time and again?

How did the cycle not find its end?

How did these become our only choices?

How did they win with our borrowed voices?

​
 

___________________________________________________________

​
 

BONG!

BONG! 

BONG!

The 

Sound

Of 

The 

Bells

High 

Above 

The Yard.

BONG!!!!

BONG!!!!

BONG!!!!

Ringing out each 

Hour to alarm and

Scare the squirrels. 

No, no. They ring to remind us

That time is ever present and the

Day - it moves with the sun - now and

For eternity? Will it last? The bells that have

Rung from under the steeple for nearly 400 years

Will they last for 400 more? Will we last for that long?

Or is this familiar sound echoed against the red-bricked

Walls of this ancient University - but just a whisper in the

Song of time? Shh. Think twice and you’ll miss it. A blip on

The invisible radar that is the Creator of all that is seen and 

Unseen. Does this all encompassing ear, our friend, hear the

Bells as loud as we do? Each hour for us is, perhaps, a nano-

Second for it. For him, for her, the Goddess or the God, the dark

And the light, the everything and the nothing. Tick tock, tick tock

But I do not hear the clock. Not the tower one or the inner one it

Seems. Time - here in the Yard - is fleeting but it also feels like it

Will never end. When the rain falls and the colors of the chairs are

Dampened by the tears of the unknown, we sit upon the ever grand

Steps of the library built on the memory of death - and we shelter our

Thoughts and Selves and Others under the awning of limited knowledge.

For even with the millions of books that lay within - the books who have heard

Those same bells for their whole lifetime or but a mere fraction of their lifetime

- do not hold the answers to everything. Do not let the glittering logos and promise

Of veritas fool you. The truth is that no matter how many bells or how many books

One obtains

There

Is no

Answer.

When the bells

Call out to

You.   

​

Because I stopped for Death --

I saw something I shouldn’t see -- 

A man I helped just days before --

Life-less was he.

 

I turned his body over  - 

And when I saw his face

I knew that it was too late,

For he had left this place -- 

 

I felt a chill and sorrow down 

my spine -- on the street --

Where people passed all around --

No shoes upon his feet --

 

His name -- we did not know --

And so I asked around --

“Mike,” one person said --

“Is the man that’s on the ground.”

 

Before I could start the CPR --

The EMTs arrived --

They tried to do their very best,

But, it was clear the man had died.

 

No one should die -- like that

In front of a wealthy university --

I wanted to write a tribute --

For all the world to see --

 

This man was our neighbor --

He was a human being --

He deserved a life much better,

I hope, now, that is seen, 

 

Because I stopped for Death -- 

I found life -- a complex story --

Gratitude and Anger --

For a man no one could see.

​

___________________________________________________________

​

 

The elevator with its golden door smelled like piss.

Leading me to supposed salvation was definitely a miss.

A needle on the floor someone had recently used.

My inner self cried out from being constantly abused.

 

“I did this to myself,” was not something I thought. 

The voice in the bottle was not something I fought.

Drink. Drink. Drink. The silencer - so loud.

Smoke. Smoke. Smoke. No reason to be proud.

 

Crushed crystals in snapped-off pipes.

Outside the shelter walls, I could not see lights.

No guidance, no love, no hope - all lost.

A multi-momentary high came at such a great cost.

 

Darkened rooms and a darkened spirit.

Peeling paint - I just had to get near it.

The white specks on the black door - so curious -

A message lay below, I scratched quick and so furious.

 

I scoffed as I scuffed and unveiled the note…

Words from above printed - not wrote.

“The Lord is your shade,” it started out

The Lord will keep you? I almost did shout.

 

Where was this God that let me get here?

Where was this God that let me feel fear?

 

When the message was fully revealed at 2 1 2

I had a moment of clarity that came into view.

I could have been dead - many times near death

What does this mean? Is there a little hope left?

 

It would be nearly a year before I found my sobriety.

But it was then that the message was so clear to me.

The unexplainable, the universe, a being with no strife.

The light in my darkness - keeping watch over my life.