Tag: poem

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Dance with the Dead

Sometimes the things we think we’ve killed and buried are still very much alive. How those terrible things can rise from their poorly dug graves when we don’t properly lay them to rest. How they take, and they take, until we make it right; for the living are the envy of all the dead. 

They rose from the mud, mangled, ugly, and unloved. They reached out with longing limbs, and I burned every one of them that dared to touch me. Only after staring at my own singed flesh did I see that the only thing the fires of my wrath was burning—was me. 

So I went down. Way, way down to that great graveyard within myself, and finally let the dead have their say. They showed me the path I sought was always the path I’d avoided. That way meant going back, and I had come so far from that awful place. Together we traced the fractures back to their foundation, and gazed upon all I had refused to see. Staring at the epicenter of every tremor in my life that caused the earth to open up to swallow me, I did not blink.

As I smiled back into the abyss of that malicious maw, I learned that bravery is not defined by the absence of weakness; but measured in how many paces we move forward when we are at our weakest. Step by fumbled step, I walked weakly into its jaws. For the only way out is through. 

The dead are all sleeping now, having finally completed their great work. I couldn’t tell you if that rest is forever, but you’ve seen what happens to people who get used to the ghosts.

We are, all of us, haunted. We must, all of us, be brave.

– I G

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Son of Saturn

After years of silence
the man who made me said,
“If my sons could stand up to me,
there is nothing in the world they couldn’t face.”

How the barbed flowers of hate again did bloom,
as I plucked their petals
and ate that truth.
I would trade all of this strength for you.

And when I did finally face you,
the great dragon of my life,
I realized after all this time
you were only a snake.
A deceitful beast without wings,
armed only with poison in it’s teeth.
I’d made of you a Titan in my dreams,
that devoured his children
drunk and gluttonous off curses and a prophecy.

I was the son of Saturn.
The Patron Saint of Patricide
with thunder in my heart
and lightning in my eyes.
When I brought the storm you conjured
you cowered and slithered beneath the ground,
and I parted the sky out of pity
lest you drown.

I know well the myth of our legacy,
what your father did to you–you did to me.
So I offer unto you a new prophecy;
the curse of Saturn’s Father
is broken by me.

– I G

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The Advent of Aries

In fevered dreams come profane desires that quicken the flame I learned to keep low, lest it overtake me. For I have been burned, and singed others’ skin in return. So I stand before an ocean and kneel before Poseidon’s feet, to drown these embers of longing beneath the waves, holding them down with both hands in a place where they cannot scream. But they resurface, baptized in the wake, with blue faces and forgiving eyes. Mercifully, they lay siege upon my shore, and all my walls are now made of sand. All defenses laid bare by a patient sea, the heat turns the sands to glass as I gaze into the eyes of what I once thought of as an enemy. I hear their song now in my ringing ears; they tell me to fear the fire is to fear myself. As Aries heaves his mighty axe over all the stars above, I open myself for his bloodied blade. Unmake me. Forge me in fires not born of my father’s flame. Make me the sun and watch me shine.

Ian Gallows
3/21/2021

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One Voice, Louder than a Choir

In this parade of charades
you are but lighting and shade
in a never ending guessing game.
Who can we portray to you
to make you believe what we say?
Woven symbols of a narrative
we so meticulously orchestrate,
What is a name? What is a face?
Everything we say will never be erased.
Press the spine and watch us break.
A fictive biography of would be histories.
Superficial symphonies sang in the key of Me.
An opus higher than an opiate;
push the needle in and watch it bleed.
In a measure sung by a pack of liars
can one voice ever be louder than a choir?

All conjured illusions interlinked,
A spider web of mirror deja vu.
Woven so tightly,
lest we all be crushed by the weight of truth.
You’ve so many faces,
I never know which one is you.

Have we ever truly met, my friend?
In a world where reality shifts and bends
I fear we have lost sight
of where the stage ends.
Cover your ears,
we can still pretend.

– I. G A L L O W S

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Of Bones and Blood

It’s not enough.

It’s never enough.

A brilliant star collapsed inside my gut
and it’s a hole that since
has never shut.
It takes,
it breaks,
and it unmakes
in a fever of bones and blood–
and even though I know,
I know,
I cannot endure this storm alone.

As if pain were a tree you diligently water,
for the shade of its branches
has been all you’ve known of shelter.

– I. G A L L O W S
November 3rd, 2016

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The Carousel

I

My life has become a carousel.

A beautiful ride. A brightly lit amusement teetering along a set axis of imaginary lines.

Thoughts turn to memories and memories to translucent dreams as a familiar tune I know now all too well sings just for me. Under the alluring spell of nostalgia, soothed by the smooth porcelain hands of familiarity, I am anchored in the deceit I sell myself that this is what it means to be free.

The comforting weight of knowing that today will spin on forever, keeps me in place.

Tomorrow becomes a forgotten friend I told secrets to in the spring of my youth. Under canopies where we carved our names into towering titans whose changing foliage was our only sense of time. When we ran naked and wild in limitless fields of our imaginations and flew about with invisible wings.

And now, we dream digital dreams birthed from the wombs of screens. The Gods and their magics have all faded away, starved out in disbelief. Pregnant with the knowledge this age of wisdom brings, tomorrow seems a happily never after just beyond my reach. Like the limbs of impossible trees that taunted me in that childhood of virgin spring.

I am far from my jungles now, lost in the crowd of a parade called, “Someday”.

These painted horses and magical seats find me and carry me aloft. Destination: unknown, yet certainly familiar. For the everyday happens every day. Again and again and again. Seasons merge into seasons at an accelerating pace. Years skip along the rippling surface of time like weeks, never sinking; still finding me in the same place.

And when I lay my heavy head down again, that song becomes a lullaby and on whatever surface my body finds tonight, I will dream the same thing; of a life I don’t constantly feel the need to escape from,

And the dream remains a dream.

II

Then, dawn finds me again.

All fades and recedes like the black curtain of night, as I get back on the carousel stage.

Allured by it’s siren song and captivating lights, blinded to all else that would enter my sight, the ride will cough and sputter to life. The circular motion provides an illusion of progression. I am moving, if only further from the point of origin that was myself. The wind is in my hair and the lights dance about like fire flies in a Southern night. Artificial stars guiding me to a destination I’ll never find.

A rat in a wheel aware that it serves, in spite…

Be still, my rampant mind.

For it’s all…

just a ride.

III

And this,

this is goodbye.

For I am that which must collide to break the constant spinning of cycles.

Farewell, ye well oiled machines, whose machinations are beyond me. Whose design produces assembly line drones and counterpart white collar clones existing in living limbo on the fresh cut lawns of suburban purgatory.  You, who sour the Earth with pollutions that poison the imaginations of minds and darken the native born, holy exuberance of men’s souls!

They sold a Nightmare donning the mask of a Dream with tickets bought by those lost in perpetual sleep. Our dreams orphaned on a busy street. I cradle my newly adopted son of insomnia.

Farewell to the painted horses whose instinctual trajectory brought me to memorable places I have since forgotten. The people I passed by passing through. Out of focus, brightly colored silhouettes who painted a picture a thousand others could paint rather than signing their masterpieces with scar or stain. Momentary loss for temporary gain. Spinning each other around, again and again.

The innumerable static distractions and few starving affections. The angel choir chorus of slapping skin and creaking mattress; spun round the willing impostors to an endless waltz and grand skeletal ballet. Spinning in pretty circles until the scenery recycles.

Allow me to forget the steps. The modern dance of romance that leaves me dizzy for the band is always off time and off key.

Rapturous melody! Oh, harmonious discord! Fill my lungs and teach me a new song!

Or, let the music stop.

Turn the fire flies off.

Enrapture me in silence and cloak me in a void,
So that I may find my voice.
Leave me deaf and leave me blind.
So that among the muted progression of seven billion songs screaming towards heaven I can find myself in this passage of time.

– I. G A L L O W S
December 3rd, 2012

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Gardener

I swore once
that there was a magic in desire
that could give flight to creatures born without wings.

I levitated on this feeling once.
But butterflies are all but a forgotten memory.

Remind me.

Please.

For all I have are dreams of what has yet to be;
for that is all I will let be.

Here, amidst the soil of this savage garden,
I have come to fear the thorns of every flower
from the times that I have bled,
yet still–
I am intoxicated by the scent.
And this love would bloom if only I would fetch the water,

But I am not a gardener.

– I. G A L L O W S
July 15th, 2012