For true poetry, complete poetry, consists in the harmony of contraries. Hence, it is time to say aloud—and it is here above all that exceptions prove the rule—that everything that exists in nature exists in art. – Victor Hugo
Dear, Old, Friend.
From maw to maw;
They cluster to you,
Fallen scavengers,
Ravenous;
But civilly so,
For instead of taking,
they pass the hat,
and ask you for your soul,
To drink the pools
that lit thine eyes,
‘Till you are no more,
No more than they want you to be.
Scurrying keeps them busy;
Tinkers of trash, of time,
Abominations of this generation,
They go by sunless clime
Whither their appetites take them.
They seek you,
For you are precious.
Your gaze they draw away,
While your heart they enslay,
Its beatings bear the ropes of life,
Your hopes like silken sails,
But on the windless nights,
When inspiration ceases to forward you with its gales,
They come clad in shadow and wrought in strife,
They come to burn, without flame or knife.
Trust not in flesh, fickle as it is,
But trust your inner workings;
The organs of your spirit:
Emotions.
The poem begins with “Dear, Old Friend”, because I am writing to someone I once had goodly affection for. Recently, after having moving halfway around the world, I started a Facebook account and found her. I won’t say directly what I found but this poem pretty much sums it up.
On the fourth line of the third stanza I use the word “enslay”, which when I was writing began as enslave but I felt it needed to be a stronger word and I then realized I could emphasize its intensity by making it rhyme with away. It itself is a combination of the word enslave and slay but means neither fully.
