denial of mortality ceases at undeniable news

we screamed against the coming of the night
our howls blending into a chorus of life
righteous beauty rained on and sparkling bright
in the failing light of waning afternoon
and then the gloaming the sunset the song
sung sad of day dead at night’s glorious
hand . . . sudden came the darkness though only
perhaps seeming sudden from the dying light

agog we stared as the distant stars took up
our song to sing night alive. fear assuaged
we took up the halting dance of one seeing
only vaguely and vaguely understanding
until jubilant faith replaced fear and we
came to accept transition as a gift.

david m pitchford
26 feb 2014

Foolish Poet

he said he wanted an angel to love
him and give him reason to live,   some sweet
muse to inspire his art and drive him forward
toward aspirations of immortality
in paint and ink.        love after love affair
he searched for her and begged the heavens,   gods,
to send him the one,   the only,   his true
angel.     he bargained and blustered endlessly.

fleeing from his own strange sodom,   he gazed
back over his shoulder to see heaven
and his angel waving goodbye in his
rearview mirror,    rented truck turning to
salt and his vows blazing before him,   hell
his own creation of denial and grief.

Artists, Madmen, Saints

and always,   this struggle toward normalcy
as though birth an accident and everything
following a happenstance of should,   could,
would,   must   .  .  .   life a plague belying holy
myths of predestination;     we amble toward
pleasure,   skitter hither and yon avoiding
pain   —   or trying in vain,   rather,   to fly
from infirmity, calamity, and all
manner of inconvenience or distress.
yet what about our revered saints?          monsters
of faith who welcome the fire of arch angels
into their minds and hearts for the sake of holy
revelations and swallow the sins of us all
in the name of salvations unattained  . . .

David M Pitchford
27 March 2012

Promise Us Promises

could I but take your poisoned teeth from my heart,
your tongue from smothering my tongue, could I
but lift your words from my heart smothered in bad
love     .     .     .     I might shake free, unfurl these bright wings,
fly upon song     —     one livid poem of angels
so stark in beauty              all the world          would pause
to breathe     quietly     an hour     to     listen
in the language of angels          my soul,     she
would sing so to me and I to all
this world’s wonderful peoples     .     .     .     and back from
the     edge     of this final age     we     would     crawl
together in the majesty of sweet
compassion;     and with our unity     buy
from God     a new messiah     for our age.

David M Pitchford
Oct 2011

Blue-eyed Girl from Nowhere

she always seemed to me an angel dropped
down the long arc of azure sky, fallen
as though too soon leaving the nest of heaven
to wing across the milky way. she stopped
short of gravity’s tragedy, and popped
from the clouds sans trumpet, sans harp, heathen
angel without message, scroll, or even
warnings of world’s demise, god’s wrath overtopped . . .

it was something in the way she moved, danced
really, some animal grace married to
coy innocence contrasted with a glance
wise and knowledgeable as the stars; to
say she was beautiful would to be to chance
understatement, and yet her virtue is true.

David M Pitchford
14 Oct 2011

Visitation

you appeared to me in a vision, you spoke to me
from the dream side of night, deep from shadows
only angels could penetrate. pitch night
so deep the moon cried out its plaintive tune,
stars drowned in oblivion too distant
but for heavenly beings to intercede.
you approached me in that vision, you said
I was to be the instrument of some
plan, divine or otherwise you would not
confess; in the vision you spoke with tongues
of fire and the smell of apple blossoms,
your breath was ripe fruit, succulent, fragrant—
you unwound the scroll of prophecy, signs
and symbols adorning, showed me my fate.

David M Pitchford
6 Oct 2011

Moonlight Poem

Reflecting on the Moonlight

Golden glory crowns her, yet she cannot
see herself in glory, for she is the moonlight
and lingers within shadowed orchards
dancing among trees clad in seasons’ array
too often seeing more the darkness
than her own luminescence

And I, dry drunkard poet, admonish
her: remember that you are beautiful
never knowing when she might
realize that words are not empty
platitudes, but magic spells cast
at midnight to glamour the moon.

Ugly, they say, goes to the bone
but beauty, I say, shines from the spirit
to illuminate the minds and hearts of all.

14 January 2010
David M Pitchford

A nod to Nietzsche

Nodding to Nietzsche

They say that god is love: yes, then, Nietzsche,
god is dead. Its bloated corpse is my heart—
my mouth and stomach fill with these buzzing,
stinking maggots and mind crawling, creeping,
lurching in broken swirls of worms and roaches
eating the carrion of my thoughts and
feasting on dead idealism and
corrupted vows—corpses of guardians
slain beside their dead god, angels dancing
no longer on the pin’s head, but rotting
in the fetid stench of human frailty
and failed faith. Yet death feeds life. It cycles
in apotheosis even stone dead.
As maggots become flies, so love’s death bears hope.

David M Pitchford
21 July 2009