THE ALLEY

Shattered brick, brown rusted iron
Testify; the gutter, strewn with debris
To overflow with dark passion, fire of

Misplaced loyalty, seeking only to flee
When discovery is imminent,
Truth hangs overhead unimpeachably.

When blood and nerve flow and fray,
Glorified in their absence, mummified as the remains
Of a pitiable lie, then those blinded by it, sick enough to stay

Bonded, bound to putrefy as witness, the stains
Of darkened memory, free only of freedom's constraint,
When honor melts away, the heart grows faint.

The heart turned hollow, bloodless as stone
As the walls so blank and tall revile
The crawlers, the flesh, exposed bone

Bleaching white in the city's white heat
And the soul count mounts in a deathless pile
Where so much life becomes so much meat.

There are rats here and smaller crawling things
Leading barely an existence,
In instinctive prowlings, appetites soon bring

Untimely catastrophe to creatures void of sense
No disaster is great or small, only unfeeling consequence
Of having been done unto before doing so, a mindless penance.


© Celeste Plowden 2010

WAITING IT OUT

The lingering is as always
Brooding, confidently patient
As what is expected
Shall turn and face, fully
Defiant, equally confident
As what is unexpected
Shall make itself scarce
Scarcely known, more to the point
Less available, for IT
Knows the lingering is static
Knows the waiting is forever
Knows the air is thick with distrust


The brooding is always
Lingering, darkly insufficient
To manifest a real hatred
To support any real love
In the turned face of seclusion
Hiding still in distant shadows
Unaware that the feeling has stopped
At the knees and the toes have numbed
And the disinterested in the cold
Unaware of fate's fatigue
Unaware of deep time's darkness
Unaware that sleep has been overcome.


© Celeste Plowden 2010

TOLD YOU SO

Friend, why whine and point
To where you thought you'd find
Dead certainties kept?
In some bleak and tenebrous place
Hidden so none would find
Save you; your anticipating face
Grown long and brooding, sick
With the nagging notion
That through all the commotion,
The swell and fury of your concealment
Amounts to naught, since
All you thought was for yourself
To lay tough claim to truth revealed
Though now you find it not in the dark
But in the light most clearly marked.


© Celeste Plowden 2010

THROUGH MY OWN EYE BACKWARDLY

Through my own eye
Backwardly thrust from brain to heart
Inwardly peering toward my life's star
The forgotten years cry
That I have yet to find
The bridge that spans the altruistic act
And the sadder and incontestable fact
That I care not for my own kind
Without a complaint to lodge
In any court or common rule the offender heeds
In everyday discourse ‘tis more his mindless need
That causes right be dodged.
That virtue needs to suffer
So in the shadow of grim purposes abstract,
Strange partnerships malign in unholy contract
Seems still I cannot buffer
Myself with thoughts of fond
Remembrance, trust in actions well intended
When contradiction places beliefs suspended
And my doubt I fail to reach beyond.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

SPRING

Through inhaling reeds,
Exhaling rushes, the bending
Voice in sweetness, moist
Music, directionless and poignant
In its unmaking, its
Unraveling melody
In perfect tonelessness
And inharmonic pureness,
The grand pristine fugue
Delivered on angels' rhythmic
Wingbeats, droning siren chants,
The singing rocks, warbling
Jetties and pool tones
Muted, hinted at by
Passing, cooing birds
A furry swish at hushed
Riverbank, soothing downward
Swallowing of mud and tall grass
The trout's glinting sunlit
Back, chimes of breaking water
Splash to shoreline patter
The heaving, swaying loom
The sparkling chatter of heron,
Loon, geese aloft
Unbounded tune, tonally
Unbridled, sweet and soft.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

SLEEPLESSNESS

Doubts and devils play mischief with the night,
Mispeakings linger in the ear otherwise deaf
As the dark is deep, quandaries better abandoned
To daylight, exposed to reason, than herewith
Struggled by Fear and Fright.

Breath too long kept imprisoned in the chest,
Faint heartbeat grown inexplicably louder As the distant walls begin to crowd
This expanding bed, comic refuge sought for rest.

Rest denied well into the early morning hour
Still so distant from first cock's crow or sunlight's grace,
An interminable, unbearably impatient place,
I'd drag the sun up from the depths had I the power.

With inadequate excuse did I seek sleep, Firstly to avoid fatigue come next day, Foolishly, untired to bed I went, then lay
Nervously awake, pray away to drift
the blissful Lethean deep.

Rise to pace the floor again, the room from end to end,
Skin cooling under vanishing to renewing dampness, beads
To vapor; stiff hot brandy could not now meet my needs,
A stubbed toe to tease, the pain forcing me to bend

At least, to a distraction, to break the brooding melancholy,
This flight from my own solitude, resigned
In panic to gorge the fear with food I find,
A feast in midnight's kitchen is double folly

The frets and furies of anxiously borne hours
Play wickedly my conscience, nagging,
Nagging over the last day's haggling,
The tastiest morsel in my mouth would sour.

Leave them back Get them gone
My yesterdays, like yours are over,
Yet they linger like some jilted lover,
Spurned, abandoned, left to suffer alone.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

SHE LIVED

She lived
after awhile
after the noise
had died down
after the rolling eyes
had squinted their last
measure of accusingly righteous revolt
dreams dashed, damned stunning jolt
her future, her past
rolling uncertainly loaded dice
having been around
knowing the boys
would smile
she lived.

© Celeste Plowden 2010