John P. Drudge

With an inability
To inhabit my life
I’m a cut-out
In a windstorm
A tempered restraint
On a whim
Where re-owning
One’s self
Is the only way
But I sway
To beats unbecoming
And a rhythm
Surrounded
By the night

Forgotten worlds
Under canopies
Of rainforests
Slipped by time
Abandoned
And grown over
As the old tales
Told by firelight
Fade
Reclaimed
By the sun gods
And every golden trinket
Gone
Assimilated
And absorbed
By a new kind of time
And the truth of things
Lost
To the shadows
Of old stone

Addicted to Socrates
Going crazy in cafes
Using colors symbolically
To paint
A perfect picture
Of self-disdain
Barefoot
On the splinters
Of sharp relief
In the overpowering
Darkness
And the nagging uncertainty
Of the certainty
Of disbelief

He awoke
Before the light
Remembering her
With a wistful longing
Before the skies
Had turned to ash
Like the eyes
Of the dying
Back
When they were young
And eager
With the hunger
Of the morning
And the sins of sorrow
Buried deeply
In the anticipation
Of welcoming flesh
Excited to be alive
In the glistening
Moisture
Of another coming
Sunrise

Through bold
Thickets of energy
Into slow passing time
Before that night
When you came to me
In pieces
And on fire
That night you fell
Toward tomorrow
And tumbled down
Between the lines
Of measured necessity
And never ending
Sorrow

Stumbling
Into calmness
Past the horizontal lines
Of bliss
And the emptiness
Above thin air
Where strangeness
Strikes out
Breaching dimensions
Moving beyond beauty
And the long bare beaches
Of despair
To the rocky
Craggy coast
Where the sea
Is beautifully bleak
And austere

Over the edge
And straight on through
Into fields
Of ancient geometry
Our inner reflections
Dangling high
On the wandering wing
Of a condor
A helix
Of humming shapes
And cascading colours
Sweeping over
Holy pillars of grandeur
Down the paths
Of the cosmos
Beyond time
As I shrink and expand
Hanging tight to the tail
Of a spirit molecule
Leaving behind
Only the echoes
Of a lone monkey’s
Scream

Over the soft edges
Of curiosity
Into the uncertain woods
Of movement
Spontaneity and light
In an atmospheric shimmer
No actual sky
To be seen
In the wasteland of the real
Delicate and ephemeral
We walk on tenderly
Samplers of experience
Voyeurs of modernity
Grasping new from nothing
Where optimism
Is not naive
In the awe of fresh sunsets
And the power
Of a relentless longing
To be free