Esmeralda May.
- {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}
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 here. If not home, he is probably in the ocean.
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