Parson Brown

  Parson Brown

The low hanging clouds, like my thoughts, seem bland;
insipid shells devoid of all vital substance.
In zero relief they lie against a cold winter’s sky
w/o depth, w/o imagination;
much akin to my mind and its false sense of intelligence
which serves my thoughts as fallow ground for its elemental seed
and the fecundation of reason.

So I litter my table w/phrenic comestibles; music, books and poetry,
Philosophic tracts filled w/promised truth..
Resolve without result.
So I seek stimulation through the physical; naturally- chemically- excessively.
“the body fuels the mind.”   
yet my crimson mulatto blood grows thick inside rubbery veins.   
Blood and genes habituated to steamy island climes,
a heat that is cooled by the wind that blows from
atop snow covered mountains. A wind that mingles
w/the fresh salty breeze from the sea.

In the mirror I see a pale,
ashy complexion that begs                                                                                           
for the warmth of equatorial purlieus;
places where the sun is ever smiling.
I see snow covered plains and am shaken by instinct’s urgent
admonitions. The plains should bake beneath relentless heat,
they should crack and open wide like mouths thirsting for
refreshment that never comes.

I go now for days never seeing a single celestial object,
for the blah of winter has swallowed them all and now
must wait ‘til spring for regurgitation.

The nose runs w/a constant cold,
hands remain dry and cracked from the
chapping winds that confuse the soul,
never knowing if the eyes are crying or
only watering from its incessant chill.

How may I write of lush, mysterious thoughts
when all I see is frozen misery?
Snowmen and ice skaters make for
delightful pictures on a calendar’s winter months
but do little for the psyche and the pen.

Snowman, Oh Snowman,(I plead) speak to me of beauty,
beauty and truth.
Let me gaze into your charcoaled depths and see life,
to see love and tender moments dear.
Do not stare down that tapered orange root and
lecture me on simplicity;
on simplicity and inspiration from within.
Of God’s creatures and the true artistry of life
which through the simple acts and routine movements
of the common people, their accidental austerity,
manifest a hersey, lucid & pure.                                                                                                               

I wish only to see your carnage, you in puddled repose,
under the blazing hot sun of summer.
To hear your final pleas in a single lined song of farewell,
a requiem to my nightmares of el invierno.