TAE Gallery: artwork, photography, poetry, songs, and book arts


A Clash of Distant Purpose

There is no place between the lurid sheets
To shy away from what is created
At conception. A heartbeat new to life
Just pumped 1, 2, 3 and left no question
That everyone move aside for this one,

For in that cry roared possibilities
Of dreams to come. Deep forests will tremble,
Mighty mountains will quake, deserts will blow,
Rivers will dry, oceans will rage in vain
Against a darkened sky of invention.

Children’s voices heard among tall grasses,
Musical play in a hot savanna
Shimmer, a simple, tuneless overture
To usher in great symphonies of change.
Winds grow, earth begins to listen and hears

A clash of distant purpose, confusion
Of destiny unbidden. Tools are forged
As rising smoke forecasts a grand design
Of polished gold, gems in silver settings,
Swords ground keen for emerging empires

Requiring vastness. A forest raped,
A mountain mined, a desert lost to a
River dammed, oceans rage in vain, hurting
In slow pain, caught beneath a darkened sky
Of windy wings slapping waves with passion.

Flies must be the oldest life, maggots
Born in flesh’s fetid decay, worming
Through rotting tissue of what was before
And will yet become. A passage of years
Embracing lost memory, unsettled,

No recollection of tyranny’s rule.
Reflections live in deepening heavens
Untouched, moving from within and without,
Passengers in kaleidoscopic craze.
The newborn roam restlessly seeking space.

Time is shorter, eons are in the past,
There is no future of a million years,
Only now, and now mountains must crumble
Beneath tracked ‘dozers seeking coal and ore
For fires of design and intention,

Concrete foundations, gossamer bridges,
Forests lost, logged for structural scaffolding,
Spanning rivers’ course tamed by dynamite.
Too soon beauty’s landscape turns to desert,
Oceans agitate soggy algae bloom,

A sky turns muggy brown, air uncertain.
Each new day brings sadness, new tragedy,
New struggle for air, for food, for shelter
Against madness unnamed, unseen, untouched,
Felt by our souls, creator of demons

None other than us. On this small planet
The mountains seem tall, misty forbidding
Shadows, caves in dark sockets among rocks
Perched precariously taut, harboring
Changes. The roar of avalanche is heard.

Waves, possessing, finger fragile coastlines
To return beneath the sea its fossil
Remains now embedded in landscaped stone
On distant mountain crevice. Yet rip-rap
Jetties and strong sea walls halt the advance.

A weak gesture by high-minded spirits
Hoping to gain an immortality
Of sorts, a short-lived, raw longevity
Against all odds. And still they breed their kind
In great numbers. Mountains, oceans, wasted,

Wash the coast with dirty water, acid
Rain, foul smells and worried forests dying
Where breath once flourished in abundant life.
The road rolls up behind the march toward
Tomorrow. There is no way to turn back.

 

 

© 2003 Thomas A. Ekkens