Scraping the Sky

 

Towering sentinels of inspiration,

What do people feel in your presence?

Are they awe-struck by your visage,

Long shadows covering the Earth?

Are they jealous of your elegance

masterfully dressed in glass and stone?

Do they feel the sway, magical and fearsome,

As the wind caresses you in powerful bursts?

Do they wonder at your majesty 

While standing on your shoulders?

Are they proud of how you emerge 

From the crowd when seen from afar?

Or do they, like me, recognize the imagination

That created you from nothing?

Do they stand at your feet mesmerized

At your effortless beauty?

Can they look up and find their dreams 

Amongst the halo of clouds you wear?

Pregnant Pauses

 

Anticipation is a calm lake

Or a bubbling sulphuric spring,

Reaction held by surface tension,

Steam showing what is to come.

You wait both excited and anxious

Frantically searching the facade,

Expecting the piercing screech,

Yet all remains silent.

A single external movement

Of word or deed,

An imperceivable internal image,

Can trigger an explosion.

The spouts of rage touching

Everything within reach,

The quaking subsides quietly,

Tension always just under the surface.

Long Forgotten Ghosts

Parapets unmanned
Moat of dried tears
Landscape littered ruins
Museum of unrealized dreams

Crumbled walls
Dungeons bars ajar
Uncovered passageways
Screams of sunken lies

Stale stench of centuries
Shadowed empty corridors
Cold walls bereft of tapestries
Echoed sounds of laughter

Knights darkened in their cups
Brandishment of steel
Ladies still in waiting
Hopes misplaced and unfulfilled

Mossy dampened stones
Spiralized stair
Visitors still and milling
Halls of dancing ghosts