WAILS OF THE WRAECCA

PART IV: WAITING IN DARKNESS

I won't believe a word

Anyone tells me anymore--

The road to any hell is paved

With crushed optimists

If I followed their advice

I'd be with them now

Stinging from a divine betrayal

Staring up out of the ground

*

Big luck's not mine--

The last things I need

Being the first things I get--

The only good being

You're ahead if you break even

And that as rare as Grace--

The biggest gamble

*

This is Life--

The World perishing in the busy talons

Of those imposing their reptilian wills

On the intractable facts and no visible doom

Strong enough to pierce the old training

Of moron delusions of transcendent comprehension--

Yet in perpetual heartache with no cavil

This is Life--To be spared knowledge of what knowledge crushing you--

*

Reduced to self-pity

Like those with the least to complain about--

Precisely the type of fool

I never thought I'd become--

*

Lord--we're all tired of the pain of life--

What ears have you for that? As the helpless manipulate

Conscience to entangle us

With a guilty sense of obligation

Their wounded cries have deafened

Our lower registers--

Are we to rightly

Assume Grace moves in decibels beyond

This stunted human range? And does Grace

The deafen You to our laments

As we try to manipulate You with angst

And prayers? Do You yet tire Lord

Of such shabbiness we make of Life?

*

Lord what light in Your creation

Illuminates the path

We tread with misapprobation

Mounting blind into wrath?

What sight unsealed at long last

Shall pierce the veil of vision

To see what matrix holding fast

Our actual condition?

*

What alone the body seeks

(But for it alone

Less lassitude in our focus)

Will be taken up with gravity--

Short weak spokes on a wheel

Treading floor that creaks With all we atone

The weighing down of miscreation--

As pledged spirit will strain

Itself in this push

Nonplussed at the loss of application

That drove the shades of appetite

From memory fit

Only for what earth betokens us--

*

Like a knife

Get it hard--

It's rust today

That sparkled once--

And taught you respect or else--

That could've broken off inside you

And spilled your blood

Like a drunkard--

That should've lost long before

It did and endures

Merely a relic of your regret--

*

I have my heart set on nothing

*

Waiting in darkness

For the Light

That seems to lose

Its way to us--

(Or which we are

Too blind to see--)

What comfort then

Our prayers?

*

I howl--

(Again?

When are you going to give it a rest?

It's not only that it's so much

But it's so much the same--

The unchanging note of despair

And of scorn for the

Spiritual aid that will not come

Because of the despair and the scorn--)

How does the amputee stand and hold?

*

wind passes

sound passes

desolation passes

always

always nothing left

[End of Part IV.]

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.