archives, poetry

Esmeralda May.

 

{via Tumblr}
{via Tumblr}
By Luke Barker

The voracious tongues of winter,

lash a bay bereft of smiles,

and the courageous city lights

have been stripped of all their wiles.

The beleaguered streets obscured

by the leering growth of dark,

Its all too eager appetite

menacing like sharks.

With deception as the mother

of the children of the earth,

and perception of the masses

savaged of all worth.

The ensuing disarray

had ravaged generations

left pursuing an illusion

With haunting desperation.

And all those veiled hearts

stood facing the wrong way,

and failed to discern

all that the winds were trying to say.

Yet purity remained,

like an insult in the midst,

in obscurity it hovered,

a tiny lamp deep in the mist.

Astride a thousand questions

At the edge of the bay,

upon the final tide of innocence,

sat Esmerelda May.

A confused and tumbling ocean

made its way up to her feet,

fumbling through the sand

of which she’d made her seat.

It was no small thing to find,

though dark and surging to and fro,

those falling waves when crashing down,

burst awash with a white glow.

That night three bottomless wells

purged the depths of their fears,

the oceans might, the teeming rain,

And an endless stream of tears.

It’s a curious thing to find

when you turn your back on time,

and all its furious gyrations

cease their rhythm and their rhyme.

When the one remaining measure

is the pounding in your chest,

pertaining to the treasure

you’d forgotten you possessed.

And she’d never felt so lost,

as she hurled her questions at the sky,

each one swallowed by forever,

then marching off to die.

Yet upon the winds darkest harmonies,

your voice will carry further,

and Esmeralda’s starkest moments

took flight with boundless fervor.

And so time lost its footing

as she took to her feet,

a line crossed, no turning back,

where heart and reality meet.

Her reachings pierced the fabric

of the framework of eternity,

thus breaching the elastic dark

That holds us in uncertainty.

Though fleeting was her glimpse

into the colors of the inbetween,

her meeting with the shade of truth

revealed an ocean unforeseen.

Oblivious to ignorance,

its relentless current swelling,

pitiless, pervading all,

and endless stream so telling.

Yet the plumage of her fading race

had overwhelmed its hue,

now wading through the undertones,

though once resplendent and imbued.

She slipped unnoticed through the city,

iridescent in the grey,

like remotest, distant memories,

set free when the tether frayed.

When the pure are forsaken

and wish for their release,

who are the mistaken…

those who remain, or those deceased?

And so the gravest of convictions

began to whisper in her heart,

Esmeralda away,

away, you must depart.

She weaved her way passed laughing ghosts,

who knew nought of shadow teeth,

who grieved not for the loss,

or for the maddening current underneath.

Through narrowing streets to cities edge

she hastened toward her goal,

where harrowing art climbed the walls,

the remnants of lost souls.

Then the concrete left behind her,

The city in her wake,

and so completely unaware

of just what was at stake.

Though the music of the writhing grass

tried to warn her so,

and the sheets of driving rain

whispered all she needed to know.

Through the manic fields rainbows swam

sweeping madly here and there,

like panicked beauty cornered

seeking freedom from despair.

A single teardrop left the eye

of Esmeralda May,

And mingled with the glistening field

which suddenly then turned grey.

For the last time she began to cry

And collapsed into the grass,

she cast her eye across dark skies

then slowly, gently passed.

Nameless, shapeless figures

blackened the coming dawn,

with a morose and gaping sameness

atop the spires they adorned.

Then all at once without a sound

swept down into the city,

and drowned all with deathly darkness,

without preference, without pity.

Yet it had not been without cause

that Esmeralda’s field had greyed,

it was merely pregnant pause

whilst a path for truth was made.

There had been rainbows in her tears

for her tears were borne of truth,

like the graceful falling leaves

of golden Autumn’s youth.

Do you know the reason why

rainbows visit us in halves?

It’s because they’re anchored so,

and from pure realms flow their paths.

And as her essence joined the in-between

there was made a space on earth,

in a sense a channel,

through which a second storm was birthed.

From above the raging seas

it swelled with fresh conviction,

and weaving beneath that dark reprise

the shapes of sinister affliction.

The dawn was proven impotent

and humanity on its knees,

but the new storm swirling above the world

would shift the fate of these.

It gathered up its seething mass

roaring with contempt,

breathing songs of thunder

with the fiercest of intent.

Then a single shaft of softest light

streamed in defiance through the sky,

as if the very heavens laughed,

and opened a single, churning eye.

A thousand luminous rainbows

appeared blazing in the breach,

numinous they hung,

arrayed far beyond eyes reach.

Then dissolving, hissing, screaming,

unearthly anguish from below,

as the pure, streaming rain

Took like acid to the shadows.

Contorting beneath the onslaught

oh how those dark shapes fled,

aborting in an instant

their long laid plan of dread.

Then for the first time in so long

silence behind the rain,

a stillness in the rhyme

and a delicate refrain.

Though still wept that cleansing storm

upon the slowly calming bay,

still fell the cleansing tears

of Esmeralda May.

 

*****

{Photo via Luke Barker}

{Photo via Luke Barker}

When people address the space he currently occupies, they refer to him as Luke Barker. Or Tron. He is a writer of an unspecified genre, who has no idea what to do with his work as a general rule, but luckily takes photos that often turn out quite poetic in their own right which, when woven with his words, make for richly textured combinations of poetic imagery. He has recently abandoned a decade of secure employment to become a student of music, though his skill in this area leaves something to be desired. He is baffled by his (and the summation of all) existence, which results in oscillating feelings regarding his place here, but generally finds himself filled with awe and wonder, when reaching beyond the petty squabbles of our kind. His creations can be found hereIf not home, he is probably in the ocean.

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