In these echoes
Of fin de siècle somnolence
We wait in apprehension
Of the next great conflagration
When we wake up
Again
After it all
It will seem so quaint
The way we live now
In such fearful security
Balancing the knife edge of
Civilized barbarism
Against possibilities of miracles and magic
With one hand on technology
And the other placed above your heart
All you want
Is one more day
Of normal
One more day
Until it starts
David Trudel © 2013
Filed under Poetry
Tagged as anthropocalypse, apocalypse, blank verse, creative writing, creativity, end of the world, end times, fin de siecle, free verse, metaphor, middle east, poetry, Syria, war
If I could talk about beauty today
I’d talk about whirligig seedpods spiraling down from maple trees
Whose leaves lie yellowed and rusted
Beneath the green canopy that has begun its fatal turn
Anticipating the fall
Or the smell of the forest moments after a rainshower
Evoking distant memories
Walking along the trail
My feet play an arpeggio of crunches
But I’m not listening to that song
My mood is as gray and ponderous as the clouds
Massing like warships off the coast
There is little room for beauty
When the ugliness of war is imminent
When the ugliness of violence is prevalent
And the mean spirits of the convinced
Crush any non-conformist view
With the finality of the fallen
Yet even though I ache with empathy
For the lost and beaten
For long lost spirits vanished in genocidal flames
That is not my truth today
My truth is my own pain
The dull ache of bone regenerating
A scabrous tug of congealed tissues beneath a zippered line
Of reddened welts
Ascending my chest like angry punctuation marks
My truth is stolen by my self-absorption
I isolate chaotic messages of a disrupted nervous system
Comprehending metallic intrusions
Listening to the mechanical insistence of the new valve
Then, drained and enervated I fade
Into somnolence
Unable to maintain the illusion of reality
I slumber unconcernedly
Aware of nothing beyond my next breath
Finding a solitary truth
David Trudel © 2013
Filed under Cardiology, Poetry
Tagged as beauty, blank verse, cardiac surgery, cardiology, creative writing, creativity, free verse, healing, inspiration, metaphor, nature of time, post-op recovery, sadness, self-absorption, social commentary, tranquility, truth, universal peace, war
We became indifferent to the suffering of others
Since otherwise we would have been broken
Shattered in the pain of it all
As it happened we grew filters and justifications
To walk by corpses on sidewalks
We didn’t look
But we saw them anyway
Every way we walked
We walked past need outstretched
We walked through regrets into simulations of grandeur
Refugees from truth camped in illusion
Feeding fear with terror
Becoming indifferent to our own hearts
David Trudel © 2013
Filed under Poetry
Tagged as blank verse, casualties of war, creative writing, creativity, free verse, indifference, metaphor, poetry, refugees, sadness, suffering, victims, war
There’s a war going on
All over the country
There’s a war going on
But it ain’t been declared
And if you want to see who’s fighting
You got to follow the money
See who’s paying the freight and who’s running scared
There’s a war going on
Even though you don’t hear it
But check out the food banks and the cold city streets
For collateral damage and the bandaged feet
Look in the doorways of the closed up shops
For the huddled bundled bodies of the forgotten lost
There’s a war going on
Where we fight with words
In courthouse chambers and legislatures
We write in the papers and the magazines
Right against left, no in-between
This war of words rages
Stretched out on all fronts
There’s a war going on
We’ve dug these deep trenches
And laid landmines across no man’s land
And there’s no mediation
No sign of peace talks
Just smokescreens and camouflage
And the bombs that get dropped
There’s a war going on
And its mean and its nasty
It’s all about ownership and resource extraction
Distribution of riches and wealth untold
The few get the most
The most get the shaft
Devil take the hindmost
So better watch your back
David Trudel © 2013
Filed under Poetry
Tagged as blank verse, class warfare, collateral damage, distribution of wealth and power, foodbanks, free verse, idle no more, metaphor, poetry, protests, social commentary, war
Rainswept
I stand alone in darkness
Letting the soft erosion of a million tears
Wash over me
Remembering the ones who no longer live
Feeling the gentle tug
Of the fallen
Unlived dreams
Love unlived
Dissolution of so many hopes
Laid low
Face to the wind
I am scoured by cold droplets
Machine gunning out of headstrong clouds
Swirls of memory dance, beguiling and bittersweet
My skin is taut
Thin enough to burst if I allow the depths of my emotion
Free rein
So I restrain the mad sadness
Tamp it down like a musketball of old
Let the memories fade
Declare an end to remembrance
Sign an armistice within my feuding thoughts
Rapprochement
As tears mingle with broken heart blood
Washed away into the night
David Trudel © 2012
Filed under Poetry
Tagged as armistice, blank verse, free verse, memories, metaphor, peace, poetry, remembrance day, unrequited love, war
Chores
Today is a day for small chores
Bringing water like some forgotten sky god
For my green prisoners
Next, I vacuum
Stirring the dust and detritus
Harvesting peanut shells and dust bunnies
For memories and lost thoughts
My routines are commonplace
Comforting in their normalcy
Giving me the illusion of some fragile permanence
That might stand against the intransigence of power
Forgetting that state control is as prevalent here
As it ever was in war zones and dictatorships
Where terror slams like bullets into unarmed crowds
And poetry is bloodwritten on pockmarked concrete
By the dying
Who no longer water houseplants
But bleed out their innocence on city streets
David Trudel © 2013
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Filed under Poetry
Tagged as blank verse, civil war, creative writing, creativity, free verse, metaphor, peace, poetry, social activism, social commentary, universal peace, violence, war