For the Times (A series)

Four poems that I wrote over probably about the same amount of years. They aren't related, except by title. I think I have them in chronological order...but I'm only sure about the first one.

For the Times When Reality Dresses Up in Ideals, Damn You

 

If you could take a walk with me,
And you could see that I am scared,
(That detrimental memory
That renders me now unprepared),
Would you then comfort all my fear?--
Or leave me here for greener fields,
Or bury me in Nashville's dirt
To sing of hurt that never yields?
The song, I’ve heard, and heard again;
I listen when I start to change.
So sing to me your medicine;
Sweet heroin, that is my pain.

For the Times When My Greatness is Revealed, and I am Found, Again, to be Nothing but Myself, Damn You

 

Oh, failed nights of vis'tant love--
Oh, raptured beating heart;
How can you burn the way you do,
Then tear yourself apart?

For the Times When Beautiful Summer Days are Ugly and Eternal, Damn You

 

How fitting is this summer breeze,
When miseries of mind's imprint
Turn all that's beautiful and right
Into the night and discontent?

How fitting is this sunlit grass,
Where shadows pass from snowy clouds;
When I see in them yesterdays,
All colored gray, in lost and found?

How fitting are these summer songs,
That sound upon this quiet light,
Illuminating all that's born
(For the forlorn, painfully trite)?

How fitting are these thoughts of you,
And what I'd do to span that bridge
That separates us now, and time--
That father's rhyme, that endless ridge?

How fitting is my failing heart,
So far apart from cage of bones,
Where I am left with setting suns,
And loaded guns, and the unknown?

For the Times When I Forget that I No Longer Believe in Love, and Am Faithfully Reminded, Damn You

 

Little light upon the hill,

I see that you are shining still;

But don’t you know that soon you will

Be buried by the sun?

 

It’s not that I would have you dim,

But did you think that to begin

To show your heart against the wind

Has never kindness won?

 

You fade.  I see you’ve fallen down

And made yourself one with the ground;

I wonder if your final sound

Was worth what you have done.