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

The Turning Point.  


   LuAnn walked to the kitchen and got another beer, and stood watching the birds on her bird feeder. The suction cups holding the feeder to the window were turning yellow and starting to slip and the red plastic was fading to an unnatural shade of pink. It won't be long before that damn thing falls right off, she thought. The beer was cold and the condensation felt good on her forehead. She rubbed the back of her neck and blew the hair out of her face with a jet of air from the side of her mouth. Another night alone. Another night in Texas with a six pack and a dog. Sounds like a country song. She began to sing, her voice cracking from lack of use.
 I guess I'll stay another year in Texas.
My old man left me but the damn dog stayed behind.
My truck broke down
And I lost my job
And now I'm gonna cry.
She stopped singing and wiped a tear away with and angry wipe of her hand.
  The sun was just starting to peak over the slash pines on the back of the lot where her trailer sat, squat, and old, and faded, the lattice around the bottom broken and falling in the dust. Just the site of it made her depressed. Just me and the birds, she thought. Sometimes I wish I was a bird. Then maybe I could get out of this dump and figure out how to get rid of the junk in my head.
   She drank the beer and lit another cigarette, and she leaned against the counter top, her arms crossed, her expression one of depressed exasperation. How long had it been since she had a man hold her, she thought, or fix breakfast, hell just eat the breakfast I cook, or just talk to me. She drug her toe around in a circle on the dirty linoleum, the dog watching her, his head resting on his paws. This is bullshit, she thought. I'm not gonna just stand here and feel sorry for myself all day. She poured out the beer and sat at the little table and opened up her laptop and placed her fingers on the keys, staring at the ceiling. And the words fell from her fingertips. All of the pain, and loneliness, all of the hate and despair, all of the fear.
   She closed the laptop and wiped her face and walked to the bedroom and pulled the suitcase out from under the bed, and she packed her clothes, not bothering to fold them. She took one more look around the tiny bedroom with its fake wood paneling and crooked pictures hanging on the crooked walls and she called the dog and walked out of the trailer, the storm door banging in the wind behind her.

She stood

And the words fell from her fingertips

Her delicate fingers danced on the keys

With the grace of a bird, they flew

Writing her symphony of expression

Writing the words that were written on the back of her soul

The speech of her heart

The words her mouth could not allow to escape

For fear of their reality

Her tears fell to the keyboard

Her blood mixed with the pain of each letter

Each syllable pulling the id from its hiding place

Pulling the hair of a backwards glance

Pulling the pain of a lost point of chance

Words fell from her eyes

Words fell from the skies

Words fell to their knees

And blessed the day that they met her

Words worshiped at her feet

They became her disciples

And they spread to her thighs

And she shook through the heavens

She burned through the lies

She shook off her self-loathing

And found something new

Something useless

And borrowed

And broken

And blue

And now with the courage

Armed with new found truth

She stood and turned words

Into gold from her proof.

Tony Whitford  9/14/2012 5:44 PM

Things to do

How can we find the time to do the things we want to do (need to do).

Where does one find the space, the money, the freedom, to fulfill their dreams, escape from reality, and run through the fields of nevermore? Well, the reality of this is, I don't know if you can. Sure, if you were independently wealthy you might. But would you really appreciate it? Maybe it's the need to see everything and touch every texture of life that keeps us pushing ahead to a better ... you. Maybe it's the fact that some things, some dreams, can or never will  be, and that keeps us stepping into the future with a sense of hope.

I don't know about you, but I have so many things to do...

Things to do

All of the things I want to do sit in a pile before me

The stack has grown so tall

I can no longer reach the top

Without the aid of a ladder

The things at the bottom of the pile

Date back to my childhood

Something that seems so very long ago

These are barely remembered

Or, forgotten

Among them lies, a song

The Grand Canyon, wolves on a rise

Silhouetted by a pale yellow moon

Horses running on a field of grass

A doctor, a poet, scientific discovery

Paintings and instruments leaning in a corner

Furniture to be built

Planes to be flown

Fly line playing out behind Bonefish, slashing clear water

Garden paths of stone

A hooded raptor resting on my arm

Books to read

Stories to write

People to meet

Collections and photographs

Houses to design

Schools and cars

Rebuild an old Harley

I jot the newest of them down

Climb the ladder

And add it to the pile

A few of the newer ones tumble down

I descend, pick one up and read it

A trip to Scotland

I weigh it in my hand. (nice one)

I add it back to the pile

Right where I can see it

And go to work

© 2011 Tony Whitford