After the War, 2

My world is grown numb
My heart aches
For the war has gone long
My heart wants only to
Lay down its arms
But how can I give in
Without first seeing you
And knowing you will understand?
~I fear my heart has already given up

Would the sight of your lovely eyes
Would the feel of your honey hair
Would the taste of your lips
Or the feel of your arms about me
Be enough to draw me
Away from the brink?
My chest is heavy
My eyes bleeding orbs,
~Empty of tears
~My wounds un-healing
Will the warmth of your embrace
Will your soft beautiful voice...?
Will you...
Will you still love me?
Despite all I’ve done
In this long exhausting war?

I have been so long afield
I often wonder if you're there
Do you ken I yet live?
That I try to reach you?
Have they told you I surviv?
That I return to you?
Or do you visit my grave...
An empty box marked with a name
I still own?

~I fear to tell you what I've seen
Have you spoken to others
Who have been to the fire?
Who stood tall before our flag
~and huddled against the barrage?
Who cleared the bodies from the fields?
I am coming home
Please wait...
Please, please say you still love me,
That you want me
That you will comfort me and
Help me to heal
To Become once more
The man you once loved

I have dreamt of you~
While we tore away the debris
Carried away the bodies
I have walked a waking dream
Of cloud and dust
And could not have survived
Otherwise without you there

Please tell me you're still there
That you still love me
Still want me
For I think my heart would otherwise break
I would rather die here
On my way back to you
Than to find no love in your eyes
At the end of my road
Please say you still love
That you want me still
That you dream of me as well

Say you can give me these things
And I will be saved
My heart could then beat
With renewed strength of purpose
And I could live again
Live for you
Belong to you and no one else
Ever again
Please say I am still yours
That you are still mine
My love
My soul
My reason for living


ELAshley
September 12, 2001
Visualizing what has come,
Anticipating what is coming

After the War

Let's move to the shore
Where the salt laden air
And surf-song thunder
Ease the pains of war
Where the scars we share
That near drew us under
May find peace once more

Let's move to the sea
And lay rest to our woes
That echo our loss
Each new sun we see
Brothers and heroes
And the rivers they cross
Spared their heartaches ~ free

Let's move to a place
Where the gulls cry forlorn
In endless refrain
Our sad fall from grace
Where memories borne
Through war's cold sodden rain
Steels peace at last 'pon our face


ELAshley
102706.104811.6
Needs revision... but... I don't see it happening...
Revised
111108.095236.6
revised
042709.101755.6



..::Original Comments::..

The end of a war cannot bring peace.... only an end of its beginning can. Smile.
Posted by clown on 10/30/2006 01:40:33 AM

Perhaps, but people rarely think in those terms. People tend to think of Peace as a creature that stalks strife, waiting for an opportunity to attack and kill War. Few of us believe as you suggest. True peace isn't something that "comes"... It is a creature that "is", and wholly ignorant of War, strife, and envy. It is an illusion... An impossibility... A Unicorn, perhaps.
Posted by MuslinOpaque on 10/30/2006 04:12:22 AM

Untitled, and Rudderless

It is small, my world
Some twenty-five thousand miles in circumference*
Small by any standard
When I can
By merely glancing out the window
Watch my brothers fight amongst themselves
Clubs, rocks and fists raised
~their shouts penetrate the walls
And resound throughout the house
Father will be home soon
He'll put an end to it all

But it's a wonder the neighbors haven't complained


ELAshley
052606.102600.6
*24,902 to be precise

Resurrection

I draw the muslin over my head
Feel my breath mist beneath its weight
Trapped and drawn again inward
Last moments breath
Called upon once more
Weaker now, but alive still
My brother lies near
No mist beneath the muslin
No breath revisited
No life ~ weak or otherwise
Only the sure knowledge that moments are fleeting

I pull the muslin down and away
I breathe in the cold chill of night
Fresh and unsullied air…
Open my eyes and see the heavens turn
Each breath new
Filled with life ~ strength
My sister lies near
Unmoving ‘neath the muslin opaque
Oblivious of the passing of moments
Oblivious to the sound of my hearts beating
And the sure knowledge of the song it sings

Sing Brother!
Sing Sister!
Draw the curtain from your eyes
And let life ~ Fresh and unsullied
Beneath equally pristine skies
Fill your bodies once more
With hope and new breath
Let your wounds draw closed
Your limbs bind with sinew and bone unshattered
And lets walk once more ‘neath the stars of heaven
In the sure knowledge of life everlasting


ELAshley
020306.014802.1
with time set aside for revisions later...



..::Original Comments::..

Wow... am I obsessed with the darker things of life, or what? I can't see any need for improvement on this one... I say, leave it as it is.
Posted by MuslinOpaque on 05/06/2006 08:13:42 PM

you wrote so well..... but then, why did leave us..... couldn't you come back?..... would like to see more of you.... smile.
Posted by clown on 05/22/2006 01:33:47 AM

I wasn't aware anyone was reading. But I've been busy... 2 jobs 2 other blogs and no time for creation... This needs to be addressed. Thanks for the 'miss you'
Posted by MuslinOpaque on 05/22/2006 03:13:30 AM

Line of Fire

It is not a time for war
But rather a time for reflection
And introspection
To take stock in oneself
But it is not a time for war
For he who struggles
To survive this night
Huddled in uncertainty
Cloaked in aspirations
Sleeps below the fire line
And dreams of peace
His time for war is past
His mind freed
With care now laid aside
He sleeps the recklessness of dreams
It is not a time for war
Lay down your sword
Let your buckler lie
Among these shattered lives
Amid their hopes and dreams
It is time to rest
Here, below the fire line
It is a time for sleep
And a time, at last
For peace


ELAshley
Begun in the 11th hour of New Years Eve, 1999
Finished: January 25th .084142.6
Revised: 012600.122112.1
121700.042116.6

Trilogy of War

Part I

"The Poetry of War"

We all lie still
In the poetry of war
We all lay slumped or draped
And do not move anymore
Strike a pose macabre
A pose more resolute
Than lines drawn in shifting sands
The fields our lives pollute
The eyes that cloud
In an opaque glassy stare
Do not see the dogs that feed
Upon our carcass' bare
Of life. That spark is gone
Robbed by the poetry of war
Humbled, frail, broken, torn,
We do not move anymore


Part II

"Long Corridors"

Hard won the closing of my eyes
pillow my head upon dreams
Weeping the loss of one too many
and each day lost
in the hard won war
Sheets muslin and opaque
diseased with ochre 'd age, and torn
rough spun upon my cheek
Eyes closed with slumber unchecked
and rough dreams of gore
of pain
and loss
Hard won it is
each second of mindless rest
night and day
heat or cold
frigid and burning, both
beneath similar skies
The clamor of war about
yet i lay a’ sleeping
still and undisturbed
calloused hand clenching
the spasm of dreams translated
into moments brief and unconscious
preternatural, perhaps,
to one set above such things ~
Eyes gummed in sleep
delicate
and fragile
beneath twin veneers of flesh
covering tumultuous wells
from whose depths
dreams are stirred…
Breath shallow
stirring molecules
and shaping the next moment
in eddies and currents...
a grace under pressure
and soon forgotten
on pillowed dreams
And subconscious i
kneading the id
in preparation for i's rising…
Yet for now i sleep
and hard won it is
each measure of time
wound like thread upon the Sisters skein
Fates chasing with shears at ready
and i
blissfully oblivious
chasing sleep down long corridors


Part III

"Euphrates"

We claimed her soil and changed her name
Euphrates now
Not merely a river
But the whole of the land
Euphrates… west of the Tigris and
East of our homes
But it was the space between rivers-
Ribbons of life amid desolate wastes,
Green palms and empty palaces,
Where we slept ‘neath vaulted ceilings
Pillowed our heads on marbled floors…
And where kings once bathed
Washed the war from our skins

And the souvenirs, toppled like dictators
Cached in our packs
For reminders down the long years
Of where we had stood…
Where friends of old found sleep unwanted
Sent home with taps ringing
Like the staccato sound of weapons fire…
Ringing…

Not unlike the clink of Turkish teapots
Upon saucers and cups
The sound of boots scraping cross roadways
Not unlike the propagandas rolled like posters
For souvenirs…
Photo stills of camaraderie and bravura…
Pieces of statue
Like lucky rocks in our pocket
And the memory of lives taken
And lost.
Was it really so easy?
Despite the toll in lives lost
Did we gain all this
Only to lose more, much more
In the Honor esteemed us
In the Eyes of the World?
Is Honor lost
In the fires of Vitriol,
Or is Honor burnished bright
And proud?
Despite the blood we've shed... and bloodshed?

Now I find I’m caught, weeping
Upon the precipice
We were not made to kill
Yet neither was the world meant for peace
And I remember Yeats who aptly penned
“The world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand”



ELAshley


Part I

December 17, 1995
Between 2 and 3am


Part II

122000.020645.1
"...chasing sleep down long corridors"
Revised: 122100.112407.1
[deemed perfect with but one revision]
but how wrong I was…revised again on:
051501.024817.1
and again on:
052001.054625.6
and again on:
061401.013611.1
and again on:
091201.113924.6
and again on:
042602.012741.1
and finally on:
092905.021644.6


Part III

040903.123920.1
Revised on:
092105.092331.1


..::Original Comments::..

You have the gift. Etienne! You have the gift!
Posted by romantica on 09/30/2005 05:51:39 PM

in Memorium

What is coming?
I asked of the sky
No thought that blue
Could ever reply
But countless birds
Away did fly
"Something comes"

What is coming?
I asked again
And felt the brush
Of Insistent wind
Pursuing a path
That Avians winged
"Something Comes"

What is coming?
I asked of the sun
The air grown hot
To blister my tongue
Flesh to ash, and
In a flash, done
Something has come

Yet I remain
My ghost, my bone
Remembered this day
In memorial stone
Etched in apology
I've no right to own

Something has come
...and gone
May it not be forgotten


ELAshley
080605.102501.6

Of course, factually, birds were incinerated in flight,
and no wind rushed save those winds atomic,
and those that held Enola above the fray.

I am Atef

He burned through the desert ~ hate and rage
Sight searching and hoping for respite
Hearts vitriol grasping for life,
And no purchase for scalded hands
Screaming down the barren hills

                    “I am Atef ! I am Atef ! I am…

“…bereft! In an ocean burning white
Where is paradise? My reward?
Pools to cool my blackened feet?
Where the virgins to attend my whims?”
Now screaming vast in a fiery demesne

                    “I am Atef ! I am Atef ! I am…

“…the sun! So hot! Might this be that star?
Where is God? Where Allah the merciful?
I am Mohammed Atef! Martyred son of God!
Surely Lord, Thou hast made a mistake!
I am burning pitch, embers cracking with pain!


                    I am Atef ! I am Atef ! I am…”



ELAshley
17 November 2001
In memory of Mohammed Atef, Osama bin Ladin’s chief of security. Atef is credited with training the terrorists responsible for 9-11, and was killed during a US bombardment in Afghanistan on November 16, 2001 during the Holy month of Ramadan.