A Tribute to Poe

Dash! Go the titans Reeling, tumbling, stumbling, Madly making catastrophe Clashing, slashing, smashing, Over the rumbling waves of the sea, Beckoning lost ones back to me, While clouds in the air swing happily by, Not knowing they each nearly make me cry. Thunder! rolls vastly Lightning, so frightening, Clinging to shadows Of young children pining! Refining the sense Of fearful misplacement Among constellations and vague recollections dispense. See the great gods, In anger colliding, Licking wounds, hiding, Deciding, contriving, While mortals go on, Not seeing, believing, Deceiving their seed By starkest of dreary responsibility. Roar, thou, the heavens, Crashing and clanging, Through space upon space, And past ends of time, Restore the great order Of Chaos unwinding, Slowly unraveling into utter depression of life. And whisper, faint winds, Of what can be known, What shall never be known, The secrets found, Lost by the lovers their own. Given to sighing, Crying, chiding, residing In darkness in a day without night But by candlelight Retrieve the good night And by hocus pocus Your eyes shall refocus Upon the sweet image of fire undying. And burning, rise up Into seas, skies of fire! Not funeral pyres, But passion everknown! Be one to taste What never should be A faintest hesitation, Then broad generalization, To seem to be what the dreams said you deplored! So go, now, just be, In your own reality, Be one with the consciousness Destroying thou and thee. Shirk not from what seems, But neither from dreams, For in this response you shall see what I mean. But if you nevermore, With grave retrospect, See the things I detect, In this world cursedly dying, Living, Being born unto others as it was to you, To each every mother a death warrant grew, And seemingly gentle, your lover’s light touch, A stab in each heart of the dust of the grave. Mark Burton Tuesday, December 07, 1999.