Sunday, March 23, 2014

If You Do Not Remain in Me You Are A Branch That Is Thrown Away and Withers

At one time you were granted
a special position and place
Yet you squandered the opportunity
until you were thrown away and burned
For it is on the tree of life that you were cast
An extension of the root from where you were born
And so you had the freedom to grow
But through your own admission the ability to advance
was amply cut in a gr
adual
yet peculiar way
It came as the nutrients were sorely depleted
from the veins that you had worked so hard to sustain
The force that once sought to nourish
was so severely neglected
and became woefully withdrawn
For this is the grand action of Diablo
It is the cancellation of what had been given
to you and what was offered by an omnipresent god
Because death is always on the devil's side
and eventually it will come to have its way
For there is no power, no surge, no dynamism, no push
Only a deadening pulse from which you will so regretfully
live to learn
But oh how it injures, you can see it on your face
It is in the sunken eyes that now wallow in disgrace
Because you were tempted
and from this you chose to offer up your life
A maddening thrush began to penetrate your bones
and with it the desire to satiate your thrust
But ultimately it started to betray the infamous trust
And oh how it burns as the skin begins to turn
The realization that you have been rendered insignificant,
a pariah to be shunned
Fortune has its responsibility and a wastrel has his fate
So let the flower languish in its columnated blight
The twine that had maintained a vital interior
has been vanished in the night
So it is in the acknowledgement of a Zionous utopia
that you have been shaved
The laceration has produced a subterranean divot
and now you have the homesick blues
But it is betrayal
and this is all that you need to know
It is the decline of Arcadia
But in this case there is no prodigal son
Redemption has its residence
but you have become a homeless waif
Good god where is the mercy, the felicity, the rapture
and the mirth
What had been a state of optimism has become a virtual dearth
Please return what had once been given
Indigence is horrid and scarcity an inviolate crick and pain
Gerald Marchewka is an American freelance writer currently living in Lowell, Massachusetts. His most recent books, "Straight from the Heaven's: Li Bai's Poetry in Retrospect" featuring the illustrations of Seb Fowler and "Poetry for the Beat Generation, Volume I" are now available on Lulu.com He may be reached