Saturday, September 19, 2015

MICROCOSM

MICROCOSM

I am just a microcosm,
Of the larger world I see,
All my thoughts and recollections,
They echo back to me.
The world is just a macrocosm,
Reflecting back my truth,
My thoughts are ancient myths colliding,
My life it stands as proof.

The world is but the tv screen,
Upon which I project.
All my scarlet dreams and fears,
The imagination interjects.
When I close my eyes to sleep,
When I laugh and when I weep,
I am just a phantom,
These joys and miseries I keep.

I am the captain and I am the master.
Ever changing in my evolving,
Like the earth around the sun revolving,
The light a shade of alabaster,
The better self is calling.

If illness is a teacher.
Then I hope to learn my lesson well,
Like the waves they crash against the shore.
And the winds they start to swell.
The ocean it is in my mind,
The winds in my imagination,
Microcosm of the fire and ice,
Echo of the final conflagration.

I come and go in stillness,
I come and go in peace,
May peace come to the larger world,
May my inner wars surcease,
For so with every man and woman,
So with every child,
The outer world may seem desolate,
More than a little wild.
But close your eyes and find your garden,
Listen to your breath,
Seek ye love and seek ye pardon,
From this den of death.

For you are just a microcosm.
And you control the screen
You are the director,
And you can steal the scene.
The world is just a macrocosm,
Reflecting back your truth,
Your thoughts are ancient myths colliding,
Your life it stands as proof.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2015
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Saturday, September 5, 2015

HUMBLE MUMBLES

HUMBLE MUMBLES

I dread it coming, the horizon I see,
Where I am only merely,
The shadow of what used to be.
When my words shrink from the page,
Turning into humble mumbles
That require interpretation.
When my mind shrinks from lofty heights,
When I resemble lowly vegetation.
When I can no longer stand and hang the moon,
When my heartstrings are as broken,
As a guitar discordant and out of tune.
As ivories that tickle a sad melancholic rhapsody,
A travesty in black and blue.

Today the bruises gather,
A stray one on the ankle,
Another on the knee.
I must say that it rankles,
That I know not where I got them.
I guess I've banged this body around carelessly,
A shadow of what it used to be,
It falls and fails, lets out its sails,
Goes forth ambitiously,
But badly underestimates,
The strength of the sounding sea.

We shrink the present down to molecules.
We romanticize and canonize the past.
Covering it in plastic like the living room couch.
Or else we pick it apart with perfect hindsight,
Until we turn quite down in the mouth.
We shout regrets, eschew contentment.
Until it all goes south,
And we rewrite our history,
Mired in unfathomable mysteries.

God help me, for I have no pride,
And I'm slipping over that great divide.
The time that stains my barren hands,
Revolves in the wind like shifting sands.
On the precipice between life and death I stand,
Stranger in a hollow land,
Trapped here for eternity,
A shadow of what used to be.
All is as it should be in the end.
And all I leave are humble mumbles,
Twisting in a garish wind.

Bruce Potts
Copyright 2015
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

SERENADE OF TWILIGHT

SERENADE OF TWILIGHT

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