Door to the Worlds

I place my fingers on the freezing latch

Twist the knob

Open the Door to the Worlds

Some people call it the library

But I know better

It's a world of portals

A congregation

Universes colliding

Pocket-sized doors on every shelf

Take one

Open the door

What new world will you find?

It doesn't look like much

Only 

Endless pages with small bit-words

But turn it on

Read the first page

And find yourself falling into the portal

And you wonder……

Will you ever want to come back?

Trembling, shaking;

Mind breaking,

Everything quaking--

Can't keep it in.

Confusion, chaos-

As the world crumbles down around us,

And suddenly it's only me.

Where have you gone?

Is this fated payment for what I've done?

Where to run? Nowhere to run.

There's nowhere safe beneath this sun.

That's not true. Not entirely true.

I'm safe now. I wish you were too.

But now you're gone,

And I must go alone, bumbling along. 

But here I am: trembling, shaking;

Nothing's wrong, nothing to caution.

But somehow it is all wrong.

If I'm safe, if everything's fine,

Then what are these ebony steeds 

That terror, strike and plague my mind

With memories of my deeds?

Why are events of that horrid past

The only thing left; first to last? 

Have you ever run your soles out

chased by streetlight-illuminated shadows?

Have you ever tried to flee 

from the scuttling skeleton hands

that are pavement-clattering dry leaves?

Have you ever glimpsed the silhouettes of

Wind-strewn trash bins and instead seen bodies?

Do you hear the whispering of the breeze

Threading its way through soulless, barren trees,

Full of desperate, haunted, star-spurned pleas?

Can you hear the bombs, flaring--  falling,

through the foghorns and train, blaring-- calling?

Do you flinch away from night-soaked reeds?

Full of marching soldiers whom by destruction seeds;

Lonely civilians snuffed out, their cause needn’t heed.

Do your eyes, like mine, glide over empty, gaping 

Windows and doors, 

Haunting, taunting with unseen, yet ever-present horrors? 

Are you tugged forward through the sounds;

The sights, and silence-forbidden paths ravaged by hounds?

Nonetheless indifferent, knowing full well

Nothing truly matters, here in this slice of h***.

As for me, just come and see,

This is simply life, a nighttime stroll 

up the block for me.

Memories of so

Much more fun; that time has so

Callously snatched-- gone.

Spin, spin, spin--

Little ballerina;

Win, win, win;

You’re as wise Athena;

‘There she goes,

That girl,’

They say,

‘Who only stays 

Long enough to change clothes.

Why does she bother,

Without connections, only skills,

No money, nor smile,

Nor mother nor father?’

Spin spin spin,

Blame not your curtness;

Win, win, win

For words can never hurt us.

Plastered on,

That smile shines, ever through;

Now everyone knows

That gleaming star, far above them

Is, and always will be

Just you!

Still, emptiness seems

To consume you, eating away,

Gnawing, 

like Morhigan-folk of long-lost tales;

forever alarmed cawing/

Soon you’ll sink,

Like a flower to the sea;

A wisp of mist gobbled up by the wind,

A marionette shell strung about by me!

Here's another English project, from yesterday this time:

It's a black-out poem from an excerpt of Elie Wiesel's Night.