Letters to the Ephyran

"from the ashes of the old the new Phoenix arises"

I

Look, could you ever have imagined

growing up to circumvent the globe 

meant coming back here. All the ancient grievances,

still unresolved, they haven’t forgotten -- you 

remember how it was, the dead ache

certainty we’d never get out from under 

the insufferable weight of waiting for something,

anything to break the inertia of being harnessed 

to the orbit of the most commonest of suns;

how every day felt like an eternity, the black hole 

of nothing to do but wait, wait, wait 

and pray the ill-fated sword Damocles had poised 

above our heads would cut clean and true, 

severing whatever senses hadn’t already been scrubbed 

clean from our bones. Honest now: did you 

believe anyone gave a damn where we went

when every road circled back to the great slag 

of Hell’s mountain, that insatiable maw 

of a furnace stoked by generations 

of fathers, fathers’ fathers … 

drudging down into the dreary den to land’s end …

to light the lamps in the big house atop the holy hill  

our kind never ever graced the insides of. 

Perhaps, it’s to be expected, this weariness; 

an aftereffect of the hereditary jaundice 

that marked us for being Hades sons, 

beasts to bear the burden … 

Still, I imagined, the voyage should have taken us further from … 

II

No one ever spoke to the truth: to how 

infinity had a finite number of exits, 

all dependent on choices you chose before 

you ever knew you had options. 

Behind the door marked Brawn -- you left 

like you came in -- head first, bare a*s; 

an Ox harrowed the soil until he couldn’t 

slog anymore, the Mother Hen brooded 

until she’d nothing left to brood. 

A second door, Unmarked, opened 

to the select few -- the Encephalites -- 

blessed with the ability to gaze into a future.

My earliest memory is of the day 

I discovered I could decipher 

the mysteries of the world from the inside 

of a book, how the letters tumbled 

words to sentences, to whole paragraphs 

to places I might eventually find my way to --

a possibility that didn’t end in the destitution 

of limbs, some purpose under heaven. 

We were meant to rise from the ashes, 

the new Phoenix, anointed 

sons of Chiron, summoned to the hill top 

to rewire the lamps in the big house. 

Yes, that’s how, I imagined Perdition then …

III

Can you recall the first time you heard 

the parable of the firebrand? 

Were you not troubled by the injustice 

of the mighty few so full of fair-play 

they’d condemn one of their own 

to eternal damnation of never-ending labor 

for wanting to ease the misery of his flock?

From where I sat, the intent was clear: 

it wasn’t how many fingers the lady may have 

placed upon the scale, but the lethal pierce 

of her bosom when she wrapped the child 

into her gallows gown. Not even the dullest 

of bolts could misinterpret her intent. 

When Hubris, the favored son, pronounced 

all manner of crimes poor men were guilty of 

for being born below the heavens --

did your heart not skip a beat from memory 

of our own humble fathers stations? 

The great mystery, for me, has become why 

men like us still believe Sisyphus might once 

have been a King? The more I read, the more 

I grasp what’s written between the lines -- 

some of us are noble, but others are Noble,

and the division is a mountain 

no son of a mule will ever scale …  

IV

These days I sense how Lazarus must of felt 

on being summoned back from the rest of mankind. 

More and more the morning rise finds me 

wanting nothing but -- to be left behind, 

free from the never-ending strife of having 

to explain myself, the choices 

I chose to leave scattered along the roadside. 

I remember the reasons well enough for leaving:

the smothering ennui of our small town 

existence, the grim glimmer of a rusty toolbox 

promise of endless tomorrows stretching out 

beyond any point the mind could imagine; 

a wife, or two, three kids and a cottage, 

maybe a third generation before my time 

card got punched for the final walk through 

the closing gates. Though how much different

than the world we’ve managed to make,

I can’t calculate beyond the central decision 

the misery of generations will end here. 

If winning was winning no matter what 

the cost: they win. Except, 

I’ve won as well. Maybe not in the way 

we imagined all those years ago, but still, 

I’m content to count this as my victory --

they never broke my back. I’ve never been 

mistaken for a mule. No Noble’s ever robbed me 

of my will to speak my mind, or stand on my own 

two feet. I never bled for the devil’s mountain. 

And if, growing up I never imagined, 

circumventing the globe meant coming back --

I can say it’s on my own terms. I haven’t forgotten

what I earned along the road back to Perdition.  

Ken e Bujold

 

Reviews

[Marvin Thomas Cox-Flynn..]

Ken,

What can I say, but ... WOW! ... This excellently smooth and flowing piece of Poetry reads like a Thomas Wolfe novel (I'm thinking, Of Time & The River) ... Wolfe was a Novelist who wrote most wonderfully, Poetically, so much so that after his death several books were published comprised of his many and countless Poetic Prose passages: The Face of a Nation, The Thomas Wolfe Reader, and A Stone, A Leaf, A Door come to immediate mind, as I do own all of Wolfe's books as a most avid and devoted fan of a late and deceased author, whom both Hemingway & Faulkner declared to be the next great American Novelist, though he died at an unexpected young age ... I enjoyed this very much and look forward to more ... Thanks for sharing ...

Marvin Thomas Cox-Flynn de Graham

[DIVYA]

I thought of this as a very poignant statement on the state of mankind. It ends with gratitude for one's achievements or perhaps their present state. True, that though we still live in the binds of monotony and drudgery, we do have liberties our forefathers didn't enjoy and our heros fought hard for things we take for granted. A very impressive write with great things said.

[Ken e Bujold]

thanks D. This is to be one of the hinges to my upcoming volume. The 4 letters are in many ways an address to myself, at various stages in life. Sort of an inner monologue if you will. From the first, which is very much the current self looking back to the youngest self...the arc is intended to try and illustrate the arc of my journey through the various stages of success, to disillusionment with an unjust system, to recognition the system is what it is, we muddle through as best we can and hopefully learn a few things about ourselves along the way

[DIVYA]

Indeed, this is a work to be read more than once to absorb and appreciate its depth fully. So much is said.
You're most welcome, Ken.