POEM

In military fatigues, the poet

trains his metaphors

to survive banality, transcience, void.

Unfazed by the noise of defeat and rain.

Inebriated by his own daydreams.

Though the golden spark, lost,

and the undertow of sadness, stronger:

he does not raise yet the ad digitum

to the shadows.

He still dreams of swanning off

with a mermaid, even brushed by age.

A belle dame sans merci

Enthralling the path without path,

the preordained beauty of love

with deathless death and no love.

                                                                      

*

His uncertain voice

besought to a certain night:

'What's the smell of the hours passing?

Has the touch its own memory

as Keats said once?

Why am I here in the same muddled being?

Why am I not the others?

When i shall be basking in the sunshine

of my true self?

When I will stop stampeding 

like horses through the fog of time?'