February 14, 2010

A Voice From the Past

Across the ruins of moth-eaten days,
Nights crawling with silver bookworms,
A voice whispers,
Unlocking cobwebbed recesses of my mind,
Misted memories of sun-drenched days,
And relentless nights,
Imprisoned with scraps of dreams long dead,
Brown stained pages of words unread.

The voice strains to be heard,
Through the shields of silence, self-imposed,
Rippling the placid canvas of my life,
Till the demons of rememberance,
Unshackled, unforgotten, unburied,
Rise to the surface yet again.

The voice demands to be heard,
It implores, cajoles, tears out from within,
The flotsam and jetsam of a lifetime,
The naked contents of a tortured heart,
Faded words fettered in yellowing pages,
A heart which is no longer mine to give,
Words I can no longer bring to my lips.

Shaken, in the deep of night, I turn,
To a torn page and a leaking pen,
My blue-stained fingers strive to resurrect,
This cross I am destined to bear,
In careworn cliches, mutilated metaphors,
Absurd alliterations, a shelter I seek.

Poetry stirs the soul, moves the heart,
But beyond the cliches, it is above all,
The last refuge of the coward.

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