A Reason For Being

A Reason For Being

A poem like a story, or a song, a yarn, a tale, a communication, or just a conversation has a reason for being. Thoughts come to mind that need to be, are itching to be, amplified.

The following poem, A Cry From Mid-Space, was written at a time in my life when those things I dreamt about doing were not going to happen. In a long life, unrealized dreams are commonplace moving on in spite of desires being unfulfilled enabling a person to dream anew. When we lose the capacity to dream the flames of hope flicker out as the path to fulfillment blurs until a new spark lights the way for dreams to reoccur.

What's the old adage ? "It's not the number of times you are knocked down, but, it is the number of times you get up, that counts."

* * *
Cry From Mid-Space

God damned you Dreams, whore no more to me, release me
To covet grayness bleating from a sullen sky .
Don't show me violets pure nor roses gay that cry
My inter soul awake . No ! I must not think free .

Chain my mind, please stem that emotion swell
Within this hide so I do not hope in vain .
In image of his maker, common man can train
As oxen are yoked to circle around the well .

I can not define mid- space where dreamers dwell ,
Far sight a scene then slowly squint it into
Mental pictures, like a frosted pane looked through,
Is it real ? Is it heaven ? Is it ? Well, is it, hell ?

Theater must be hell for a lost dreamer's soul :
Not in dance around soothing flames and crackling sounds
That flow the senses' veins ; but of grey ash mounds
Staged of choking soot waiting to fill a dreamer's hole .

Accept the young, they have not traversed the gorge
Left by dreamers old whose torrent thoughts erode .
Fill the young with placid manna lest they explode
With alien notions thinking they're their own Saint George .

Dreams - damn you ! Lay not your head on my breast this day .
Free me, so I may see what our Nation antes up :
Those dull, brow bent cast of actors who hold the cup,
Which keeps America hostage and wastes a dreamer's play .

Ronald C . Downie