Lost

There are no winners
in war -- where the
living stand in houses
wrecked by shells,
their lungs coughed
out in the dust of
ashes from the burning
dead. Perhaps,
the victor's crown
might look polished
for a day, but still the
screams and horrors
of ten thousand guns
and lives and loves
snuffed out amid the
keening echo of the wind
dashes against the gold
until it looks no more
burnished, but cold
like the dead -- buried
in unmarked ground
or rotting away to be
discovered a thousand
years from now when
the oceans rise and
fall and ebb away
to reveal bones, white
and crumbling -- a
bullet hole through
a skull that housed thought
of poetry or mathematics,
that held the cure for
whatever ails the world.
That loved, lusted, lived.
There are no winners
in war -- only the dead
and dying remain,
and the keening of
the wind.

© Eleanor Clark
1 June, 2016

Dissipation

Standing on a knife's edge
the pain floating like
a searing, serrated edge
hacking away to
dissipate me into a
thousand strands of nothingness
and morning dew --

I look up and see a smile
or hear a laugh and word
of comfort keeping
me in this balancing act
on the thinly bladed
existence that is pain
and pleasure and everything
in between.

Perhaps it might not seem
that I dance in a shadowed
in-between of nothingness
of self and tears - leaving
smiles for sunshine or a
shaded day where once
we walked uninhibited
by fear of what might be.

I still laugh and cheer
and watch and wait while
I dissipate and float
away -- until nothing of me
remains.

© Eleanor Clark
30 May, 2016

Daydream

In blue-skied afternoons

in shadows past

we gaze among the stars

and a moon lit by sunshine

at midday. 

This hazy wandering of

this planet's shores

has lead me here to 

now - this moment.

As I gaze up at the sky

and down at the ground

and wonder, wandering -

I find you. 

© Eleanor Clark 15 May, 2016

Summer Daze

Like a corpulent slug
the afternoon hung
with the lazy cawing
of magpies and the
chittering chirps of
sparrows immune to heat.
The pungent sound
of the listless breeze
stirred the bees
nestling in the azaleas
and made the ears twitch
of the cat lying
somnolently in the shade.

© Eleanor Clark
2 May 2016