The Late Hours: Loneliness Finds the Hopeful

The Late Hours

When the clocks seem like they’ve stopped and a figure in the room

Is no one

A loneliness that holds on your arm in an icy embrace

And the shadows are long

And the daylight is absent

Nothing moves

But time is always

Slipping by

And you open your eyes

In Octobers surprise

And feel more cold and empty

Than seasonal

As the autumn leaves all

Seem colorless

And you sit pending

As the very state of being

Seems so abstract

Hanging in the balance of a liquid

That keeps the mind suppressed

And allows those moments, deeply depressed

Passing by

Like water under a bridge

What the self in a mirror

Changing by the hour

Light color flowers the happiness in a day

The dark blue violets scream the late hours….

 My Crooked Spine

My crooked spine

leads me through a forest of doubt

biding my time

dark faced birds wrestle with words

sing a song you won't forget

waiting for the sunrise to open my eyes

it hasn't happened yet

My crooked way, a path we all walk

we all question the light ahead

I walk alone in the darkness

instead

a smile to the strangers with kind eyes

a silence, an absence

no on realized

my crooked spine

it's been a few years wrestling age

disgusted with time

walk on the path, the darkest forest

God smiles, everything's  fine...

Evening

So happy to be here with you

But I can’t

I suspend in hours

A ghost, holding, no ones hand

A fiend with teeth that glitter from beneath grey bone

Sits on the edge of the couch

Across the room and reminds me, I’m alone.

Call it a skeleton of the self,

The sripped down reflection in a mirror

The wireframe image of laughter

On white walls where the sunlight

Lost its way long ago

All I have is the shadows of hours

Shadows of a day passing by

I should be thankful if not for the space

Between us

Even myself keeps its distance

The grays in this house

The disarray

Even my son stays away

All acceptable, I understand

But loneliness gives me so much

With a heavy hand

I lay in a bed in an empty room

And the morning figure

Coming soon

Wake with that panic

Or the insatiable feeling of life

Through my lungs

Where have you gone through the dark

Bends and twists of evening dreams

Its lonelier than it seemed the day before

And I can’t stand this feeling much more

Just for a moment to bask in your glory

But there is nothing you need to do

The absence of the this weight, this cumbersome self

such a pleasure to be with you.

The Absence

You tell them, you’ve lost your job

But some of them seem surprised

As if you’re barely awake

And barely alive

Did I fool myself into thinking this was a weight I could bare

It’s the absence that’s killing me

But I'm always absent

And you’re never there

The absence of that space

I should be joining spheres

Leaving here

But the empty rooms

The shadows of a day

Keep me here

So comfortably we make our beds

We sleep alone

Remember what you said

I like to be alone

but when everyone turns away, the solitary insists dismay

Assume your okay

It’s what you’ve always said

And they’ve heard it for so long

But what if loneliness is a cruel friend

and you were always wrong…

Silence Inside

The weight of the self, you lie there awake

A blade of grass in a field

Where you seek the end of summer

To feel

That hopelessness come fall

My father laid down

This time of the year

When I was ten

That feeling of the cold evenings

And beautiful days, remind me again

We lose our place in the text

Forget what we need to protect

I wait in this shadowed hall

Hoping no one will see

And yet the sign on the wall

My badge is lonely

And it sits on my shoulder

A petulant blackbird

Singing it song

Fills in the gaps of life

When the hours seem too long

All photos and words copyright artbygordon 2016