Issue
#8 

a poem by Paul Sexton (2 of 2)

LET THE DAYS BURN AWAY (2010)

Let the days burn away!
I barely care anymore.

I used to dread the passing of them,
clock ticks like thunder claps,
hair gone grey.
Time like a mudslide,
such resistance to it in my soul.

But what does it even matter?
My longing to resist the inevitable
meaningless now,
whether or not it ever held meaning before.

I have sought truth!
Like a Matador, stylishly
courting death upon its horns.
Savoring every utterance to paper,
only to discover truth less than enrapturing,
carried away on heavy breath,
like the wind.

I have known life!
I have sang its glories,
and cried out in its depths.

I have known love!
Only now love is a ghost.
Snapshots of facial expressions
inside my mind.

Let me then slip comfortably into it,
fading away, sipping coffee,
cautiously blinking distant eyes,
hands gesturing while speaking nostalgically
of things that no longer are.

Let my children age into their own.
I will befriend them as they do,
and learn to laugh again
as we leave our troubles behind.

Let me embrace a dignified solitude
in quiet motionless rooms
with yellow sunbeams streaming in.

Let me live again,
upon a whisper,
an acquiescence of sorts,
a barely spoken transformation,
walking in the light of actual days.
Not the moments in-between days
like wild men and poets
and those with something left to lose.

Time is only kindling for the fire,
and it doesn't seem to matter as much
once you've realized it.

One state of being or another,
fulfilled or defeated,
alone or in concert.

It's all just burning away days.
Be they filled with laughter and tears,
or a mere passionless endurance,
they burn just the same.

© by Paul Sexton
 
Gutter Eloquence Magazine ~ Issue #8 ~ March 2010    previous poem     return to top