Times Turn into Times Turned Over in Future Times

Can you remember back to a time when you were only mere days removed from getting high praise for walking on two legs?

Can you recall, those early moments in the kitchen, when you’d stare up high at those marble countertops and dream of seeing what exists beyond its aerie reach?

Have you forgotten, how disappointed you were, when you found out it wasn’t all you’re imagination painted it to be?

Whatever happened to all the comparisons?

     “Oh, how talented you’re child is, he’ll be the next Hemmingway or Hawthorne for sure”

“Oh, what amazing athleticism you’re kid possesses.  When I look at him I see the next Jackie Robinson, Walter Payton.  He reminds me a lot of Ty Cobb, as if they themselves were around to have watched him play”

“ You’re little boy has such an imagination.  He’s so entertaining. I see a younger version of Bruce Lee, maybe Errol Flynn”

When was the last time your scribbly-scrawled blots of crayon were hung up on the fridge?  When was the last time you’re great aunt called you her little Picasso or Van Gogh, not even considering what their backstory’s were?  When was the last time your grandfather pulled a quarter from your ear, and you thought you were witnessing something bigger than the world itself?

Life gets in the way.  Doesn’t it?

And you close the door behind you.  Scuffing the snow off from your dirty boot soles, greeting those inside, warmly, yet complaining about the travails you endured to simply make it to their house.  And then, you see the little one, and you say, glowing from ear to ear, “How’s my little Marilyn today?” and she shyly shrugs her shoulders…. that’s when you pull a dollar from her hair, as if it had been hiding out in those blonde curls all the day.

Over at D'verse, for Meeting the Bar this past Thursday. Victoria offered up the discussion about exploring childhood and it's memories.  I've been really sick this week, just feeling a bit better upon waking up a few hours ago, so I'm hoping the meds are working.  In any case, I missed joining the party, yet thought I'd still take part in the prompt.  I actually had a piece that I had started a long time back that fit this theme rather well.  

The idea of how children's perspectives change and how their expectations alter upon finding some answers interests me.  I wrote the second question/stanza a while back and filled in the rest of this piece from there for this discussion.  If you haven't already, I urge you all to stop on by D'Verse, read Victoria's article and check out the poems shared, as you can do for the other linked discussions as well.  

Transformations Among War-Bred Kin

The doors are open over at the pub.  Open Link Night is in full swing.  Stop on by D'Verse and check out all the great poetry in play, and while you're there, link up one of your own.

atop charred earth, decisions remain

   when foliage stays,                                   

                                  does our soil yet still grow?

Trampling beasts

                  hunted, scared

                           as herds of men

                                             frolic near

Ensiferous and cruel

the blades weep

for outcomes likely due

Stained

                           by

                                    the spots

                        we grow

Shedding our skin thrice in life

        the disconnected cord’s the first

            followed by the innocence of youth—

                      here is where mutations spread,

                                 altering the balances—

                             and the last to leave

                         is the transformation,

                  as men, we’ll never see

The Gauntlet of Time

Incisor

         Gauntlet’s thrown

Trails beyond the coil’s might

Tightly strung is carnelian’s light

         Trans-lucent milky

The crystals made from chalcedony

Impostor, so be found, deep inside, shies the arch of trothed pass

         To one’s self, insolence retraced,

                  The fiend, which feasts on veils of glass

Is nothing more than a past-life erased

Tapestries fade

And new draperies take their place

Time’s sand sifts though

But only if you forget to reverse its flow

An Encounter with Time

Time appeared to me

And when she spoke

She softly said,

                  “Take hold my hands and watch them glide,

                  And let the waves heal your seconds with each weep”

         Analog

         Communication

         Digitalis

         Cries

For the fox whispers into gloves on this night

         Animating glands within

         Pressure plated strands of yin

         Faded from the

         Withered waltz

         Since destiny passed last march

And so the fox tilts back its ruffled neck, as it sits atop its rigid parapet

         Amassing all anthologies

         Created amongst the masks of stone

         Crawls creation back into its often weathered home

         Made of clay and soil thus

         Sifting birth through plated palm

Back into the hole protracted

By the hands of man in trust

The fox’s song ignites the air, forgetting the form in which it breathes, yet the sound produced is pleasant still, mournful, yet proclaimed with such a joyous ease, so smooth, yet sung with a jaded crush, to that it lost and loved as much.

Time appeared to me

And when she spoke

She softly said,

                           “Return to me.”

Rules of this Game

Every day is like the one before,

No new trinkets, same old doors,

The sounds are all the same to me,

Rehashed words, overused slang

All thoughts displayed in flashback,

Memories on hiatus,

Thoughts deposed,

Emotions numb at best,

How do you change course mid-way through?

Do you stop and think it out?

Should you abruptly change directions and turnabout?

Is it possible to even understand?

If only there was a reset button close at hand,

If only there were roadmaps for things like this,

How do you alter your perception?

Does it matter if all those thoughts were elaborate deceptions?

How do you plug a leak?

How do you strengthen one so weak?

Is it possible even to explain?

If only there was a mulligan in this game,

If only, a long ways back, someone, anyone, would have explained, the rules to this game.