Atlantis Sleeps

Atlantis sleeps
Cold and deep
The silent and blue
She is a victim of the shifting earth
The rising tides
The agents of destruction
Ringing bells of sin

Above her on a sea of concrete
Extraordinary beings swim the reefs of steel
Heads bowed to the gods of circuit and screen
In the distance the sound of a horse
Breathing the thin dark air
Plumes of mist rise from its nostrils
Golgotha his name, black as night, strong of heart

His rider waits
Standing beside his withered shanks, tattered cloth
Hair and blood, beard and bone
He watches the waves
Waiting
Watching from the dark shore
An agent of destruction
Patient behind the dunes
Listening for the bells

The water rises
The horse sidles, lifting his head, ears scissoring
His rider mounts, tack creaking
Blade gleaming
Salt mist in their eyes
Silence now
Not even a dog
The bells begin

Listening

Listening

 

I think I have forgotten

To talk to him

I haven’t heard him speak in so long

Maybe I lost the will

The ability to hear

I used to talk to him

When I was young

And missing him

Words beneath my heart

Hidden from the voice

A language

Only the lost can hear

I heard him call my name

 

I think I have forgotten

How—can that be true

Talk to me now

I promise

I will listen

I am listening

What is there left to say

What did you forget to tell me

I have time

You can have all you need

I have not forgotten you

 

 

Tony whitford   9/18/2014

  

The Words Of Our Fathers

 

 

What will become of

The words of our fathers

Speaking

Through atmospheres of impatience

Through lives unattended

Or unexplored

 

What will become of

The message there repeated

Falling

Through attitudes too sure

Through expectations unmet

Through hands held together

In unexplained loss

And love

 

What will become of

The hope in the whisper

Rocking

In a quiet room

Soft breath on his cheek

The gentle beat of a heart against his

Looking into a future

Uncertain

Unprepared

But willing to believe

 

What will become of

The child of the father

Running

From the words they will not hear

Crashing against the hope

Of the other

The quiet room forgotten

The meaning somehow lost

The words that held no cost

 

 

Tony Whitford   7/15/2014

 

 

 

Memento

 

She gazes in the mirror

As the memory of a younger face begins to fade

A shaking hand reaches up to wipe away the steam

To wipe away the dream

And there in the glass

The past falters to a red beginning

To a distant horizon

Where a man stands shaving

His neck stretched upward

His chin pointing to the mirror

A razor in his hand

Triumph over the weak in his countenance

A bottle of Jim Beam on faded Formica

To steady the nerves of a man's last day

The burning brings courage, chasing the fear

Liquid fire drips through her chest

The devils tears

In another room she hears her mother

Sobs of regret behind broken doors

Holes in walls

Stains on floors

Her fallen angel

The angel that could not fly

Looking through this window into the infinite

Looking back with no fear of the instrument she has become

She remembers the sound of the gun

Echoing in the small bathroom

And the spray of a man's last day

Covering the walls in pathetic loss

Living fluid beating through the heart of a monster

Now nothing more than paint

The smell of the shaving cream

She opens the drawer of the vanity

And gazes at the razor

Yellowed ivory, stained with one scarlet drop

Never to be wiped away

One raised chin

One shaking hand

One memento of him

 

A.W. Whitford

11/10/2013

 

 

 

Strange Captain

Dawson adjusted himself, sliding sideways, and picking up his books, allowing the man standing in the aisle beside him to sit down.

 As the bus pulled away from the curb he began to feel the familiar melancholy weight of a thousand days spent in a robot repetition of work, sleep, eat, work, sleep, work, eat, slowly pulling him beneath a wave of depression.

 How had it come to this? Where had his life gone wrong? There had to be a different life, a different way to live somewhere out there. He suddenly realized that his life had somehow gotten completely off course; this wasn’t what he wanted. The endless days floating aimlessly in a sea of doubt and self loathing aboard a boat with a captain he no longer knew or understood. It simply had to stop.

 He decided he would take the elevator to the bridge and introduce himself to the stranger at the wheel; he would let this alien captain know that his services were no longer required. He decided that he would take the wheel, check the compass, and make the necessary course corrections. He saw himself standing on the bridge, the blue water of the future shining like diamonds ahead, the dark water of the past churning beneath him, lost in his wake.

 He smiled as he stepped from the bus, the wash of exhaust fumes filling his lungs, the noise of the city and roar of the diesel engine fortifying his need for change.

Captain, allow me to introduce myself.

When Darkness Comes

 As a new year rushes toward us, we often look back and try to remember the time that seems to have washed beneath us as though we were nothing more than driftwood, pulling away from the shore, only to return again, as the waves of daily life push us toward the sand.
 We think of the people we met, the friends we lost and the family members that fill our memories with love and happiness, the feelings of a life well lived, and the prospects of the life still ahead.
 And we think of the people in our lives that fade into the distance, there one day, and gone the next, leaving us to wonder if we will ever see them again.

When Darkness Comes

 

Light fades from your eyes

Like water from the shore

Pulling away to touch the sand

Of another place

Another time and space

I breathe the air you push away

And listen for the words

You forgot to say

Your voice

Like a falling wing

I have forgotten

The momentary Illusion of life

A moon disappearing into the daylight sky

Left here among the living

We wait for the turn

For there are other worlds to see

Another us to be

Yet somehow among the stars

I feel your living pulse

I feel your reaching hand

And I see through the night

I remember

And I rejoice

For there was a time

I knew you

I feel I know you still

It was not a dream

And when the darkness comes

Two moons are there for me

In the quiet of the night

Your eyes are what I see

 

 

Tony Whitford 11/30/2012

 

Oil Beneath The Sand

He couldn't understand his failures

It was as though ashes were falling from the sky

Intent on burying his pathetic attempt to build

To reach

To move

Nothing would load

Why would a god that called himself a shepherd

Allow so many to wander lost

It was a question that many would toss at the devil

But these kinds of thoughts served no-one

And no-one would ever see his greatest accomplishment of all

But it didn't matter

He closed his eyes again

Allowing himself to feel nothing more than the buzz of the booze

Feeling himself slip into the void

Every night a voice from another world

Would call him from a fitful sleep

A world of smoke and blood

Burning tires and shouting men

Pulling him into a nightmare where a cell phone lit up the sky

With burning steel and ball bearings

A world of sand and the sounds of bullets singing past your head

Supersonic,  stereophonic,  madness

The smell of gasoline and rubber burning

Choking your eyes and throat

The cries of your brothers trapped in a medieval sandcastle

Where life seemed to have stopped in the fifteenth century

Did enough people die to keep the oil pump flowing

How many did it take

Sheets wrapped around his thighs

He kicked out and threw his legs to the floor

He could feel his finger still trying to pull the trigger

Yanking on the steel that wasn’t there

He could feel the barrel burning his hand

Searching  the floor for another clip

Falling from the edge of the bed when the sound of a oil barrel exploding

Pulled him back to the day he signed up

The few

The proud

The defenders of the faith

The defenders of SUV's, Baseball, and Rock and Roll

The defenders of the oil

Those people didn’t give a shit about that

We gave them weapons and they killed us with them

Great plan

Great fucking plan

Oil beneath the sand

Who knew it would lead to this

Shaking in a dark room

The smell of oil smoke in his nose

Morpheus pulling his veins apart

Crawling under the bed

Digging through debris under the Humvee

Lightning cracking through the clouds

Rain tapping on the window like bullets on sheet metal

Oil dripping from the sky

Burning when it hits the ground

He pulled himself up from the floor

And made his bed

Pulling on his boots he thought

Today's going to be different

I'm going to lay off the hooch

Stay off the dirty boogie

His right hand trembled

A synthetic vibration

A sympathetic realization

Who's  gonna be my shepherd

God…are you out there

He wiped the sleep from his eyes

Slapped his thighs

Time to roll

Time to rocket

He pulled his keys off the hook by the door

Grabbed his helmet

And with the smell of oil smoke still burning in his nose

He hit the road

Time waits for no man

Time

Like the oil beneath the sand

AWWhitford

8/12/2012