Tag: poem

Neatly packaged

Mason LaiLeave a comment
Image by Nicky ❤️🌿🐞🌿❤️ from Pixabay

The critics build their little forts,
preparing their beige, bland retorts
which, of course, they’ll use
to keep you neatly packaged
for shipping, easily managed.

They step back,
and as it should,
the scale makes them dizzy.

But then they forget to look closer,
where we find ourselves busy.

They forget that the world was built
for one simple, brave desire;
to tend our small, very human fires.

Aka our mission,
the whole damn composition,
split into manageable parts.

Why bother with golden schemes?
The world was built for one messy, brave,
and ridiculous dream.
Multiplied.

To stand in the shadow of the infinite night.
And be, for a moment,
absurdly bright.

the infinity bucket

Mason LaiLeave a comment
Image by brittywing from Pixabay

i give,
you take.
they take
and blame gravity.
i give,
but i don’t lose,
not yet.
it comes from a bucket
i don’t look into.
last time i did
there was less of me
than before
and i chose not to notice.
my hands bruise.
the handle bites.
i switch arms.
i tell myself
this is what strength looks like.
i keep pouring-
everything,
everything.
until the word is hollow
and echoes when i say it.
i give
because stopping would admit
there is a bottom,
and i have been standing
just past it.
teetering.
i used to count
to prove it was endless.
now i don’t
in case it isn’t.
so i give,
give.
i don’t check
what’s left.

the ravenous bloom

Mason LaiLeave a comment
Image by Tatyana Pligina from Pixabay

A flower heaves up from the silt,
a soft violence split from the dark
without a word of apology.
It rises because it is hungry,
and for a heartbeat
it is the only thing
the sun can see.

It exhales.
a debt,
not a scent.
The bloom,
a surrender
to the light
that invited it out.

Why?
Because the sky gives only
what it intends to take back.

Is this the measure?
That beauty is the briefest distance
between birth and burial?
A burn in the eye
that asks to be remembered?

We do not love the rose.
We love the vanishing.
We are drawn to the flame
because we are made of wax.
Stand still too long,
and it will eat the air
around your lungs.

You will chase it
into tall grass.
You will reach out your hand.
But can you ever catch
what is already
turning to heat
in your grasp?

if i am with you

Mason LaiLeave a comment

days fold inward upon each other,

imploding yet exploding; incomplete and fragmented.

seen but not felt;

whirling,

raging,

but – if i am with you,

sunlight slips through the trees

and leads the dance of silhouettes across the soil.

it is golden –

like you

and your voice

uprooting doubt,

silencing the muttering leaves above.

the soul speaks

a thousand words –

yet the voice captures so little

while the rest are lost

to infinity.

even so,

i feel you;

your ebb and flow.

but when the wind dies

and the trees are still,

the last echoes of eden fade

to shadow.

the sun sets

ever so softly;

rainbow ink

spilling upward into the heavens.

cue the obsidian drapes falling over the canvas,

as lofty ideals

subside to cold repose

but the light has not left yet.

with you,

the soft pinholes in the sky open up

and the stars sigh.