The Prayers of Wind

The prayers of wind and rain and the cold incense

on which they’re carried this New Year’s eve

are prophecies of what is not to come again

as the dance towards the summer’s solstice has begun.

Dancing is a kind of prophecy as long as the music

is the blues, that Janus-faced form of harmonies

holding now as if time exists as we say it does

knowing there’s not a chance of this being true. 

Hence, the blues and the dances of truth dressed 

in a revelation of desire, the slow revealing  

of love that not even a cold December rain can keep away.

Of course, we’re always dancing towards the darkness

and then towards the light, one step there, one

step here and that low, constant sigh of delight.

-Byron Hoot

https://www.facebook.com/hootnhowlpoetry/

Seasons of Love

He did not come cloaked in fresh spring lover's lust

Nor in a summer sky-lit shower of lunar stardust.

And with autumn's pallet of bronze radiant rust,

He painted purity with a winter's wet, white brush.

I found kindness there beneath the rousing rush

Of seasons falling, pouring pure down upon us.

Oh, clean washed heart, how sweet the muse

That teases thoughts and love reproves.

You are all seasons, my reasoned rhyme,

Cherished with tenderness throughout our time.

And through each season of smitten shy smiles,

I pray one more day of my desperate denial.   

-P.S. Colley

 Dec. 2024 

Cave Graffiti

Cave man didn't know what he was doing

As his hand sculpted frantic on wet wall,

Stopped, stepped back to view his stone-crafted vision,

Then proceeded through some shallow shadowed hall.

How ironic that a dark dank ancient museum

Should impart art that in earnest is least.

How ironic that the boorish, unknown artist

Should be man with hand and mind of brutish beast.

Cave man didn't know what he was doing

As he labored to a dazzling drafty flame,

Then darted to display for few friendly others

To preview, then proclaim by clan acclaim.

How ironic that a dark dank ancient museum

Should be understood by mere meager men as these.

How ironic to learn literacy's lost, first artist

Should be man that can neither write nor read.

And what future race may find Picasso dangling,

Suspended on some dreary dying wall,

Only to study for years yet never quite reveal

The intended significance of it all?

~ P.S. Colley

      Fall 1974

B.B. to the Next Generation

Gen X, Gen Y, and even Gen Z,

Please stop blaming your life on poor B.B.

We didn't invent hate.

We didn't invent war.

Actually, we believed first what you're fighting for.

For peace in a clean world

for us and our kin.

For unity, for harmony,

among all righteous men.

But especially for those

         who bear burdens of woe

To heal sweeter friends,

and forgive bitter foes.

For the enemy one fights is born

and lives deep within,

Falsely blames all others, 

as Mother Earth's nurture spins.

So, hear my advice,

Stand humbly in the rain.

Let disappointment wash away,

And from blame, please refrain.

P.S. Colley

August 2024

A Poet's Nightmare

Awake, I shake! Enslaved by a parade of  bad-day dreamscapes:

Where ebony elephants hang on tiny tightropes by twisted trunks,

And wailing walruses waltz within reels of jeering jester's junk.

Odd-shaped ostriches oscillate in time to foul trouble's onslaught

Of demented demons daintily dancing to tunes of torment's insults.

AI void, crude humanoids, splatter fear's page with their enraged moods

That echo mothball musty, hairball dusty, cobweb-cornered courtrooms ,

Where speeches vented by vicious victims cry for vengeance

And judges scowl cruel lies aloud until the proud erupt in violence.

Grey-ghoulish offspring juries sing off-key curses that rouse the rubble,

Bursting bubbles of glee that float aloft freed from seas of roaring trouble.

Dare I dream the swift demise 

              of those who chose to avert their eyes

from my jumbled Rubik cube disguise?

Damned am I, emersed in my own stew of maniacal madness.

Dare I try to fly sorrow-stained skies of my self-contrived sadness?

Spare me with gratitude's grace and tear me from this imperfect place

Where horror's haze haunts inhumanely, this half-human born disgrace.

Here deep, the clever never dare to sleep, for fear that an unreality

Might crust their eyes behind the guise of a vain-wanton futility

And forever steer them blindly, unkindly into their egoic vanity.

Oh, take me pleasantly please into peaceful ease of slumber's silent sanity.

Shake me awake ! Save me from my plagued midnight poet's grave.

Lest I swallow.......

                    my

m e l a tonic

m  

i  

r   

a   

c      

      

   l     

    

  e...........

~P.S. Colley

Summer 2024

Rev. Nov. 2024