Tag: buried past

438. Doppelganger

I didn’t recognize you. I didn’t want to know,

The secrets and the truths held,

Deep within your eyes…and although,

I see you near to me. I’m afraid to glance your way.

For how can one save the lost;

Trapped in a time far away?

I can not speak of the horror; Only of the screams.

I hear them slip through your lips,

And besiege me in my dreams.

I’m sorry I left you there; In that place, all alone…

Where the clock’s forever stuck,

At quarter-past “never-known”.

–I stand atop a dark stairway. I see you below,

And as your eyes look my way,

I spy a looming shadow;

And as the shadow passes o’er, our eyes, they fin’lly meet.

I know I can not save you,

So once again I retreat.–

I didn’t recognize, ’cause I didn’t want to know,

That the girl in the mirror,

Had the same bleak eyes which show…

The anguish of a child betrayed. A child left behind…

Deserted and forsaken,

In the corners of my mind.

K. Aldaya, 4/27/18

Picture: Vintage image used in the book “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” by Ransom Riggs; https://www.pinterest.com/pin/330522060122327068/

136. The Buried Past

lighthouse_landolfi_big

How can I help you understand,

What I’ve seen and known?

If there’s something to comprehend,

It’s not to use that tone.

Exhuming secrets long o’er-grown,

Isn’t your work of hand.

Tell me how to explain in words,

The scen’ry shrouded,

With stinging o’er-powering senses;

Absorbing the clouded,

Days of what is sought in crowded,

Rooms, found afterwards.

Quick, be still.  Calm inquisitions.

Forcing forth sealed-core,

To recollect its’ provincial,

Ghost-shadows, broke and tore;

Which plague the confines to the pore;

In repetitions.

Please let the time forget itself,

Be ye still and know,

That although I may oft’ look lost,

Hope is found with cost low;

To all who seek to be thou so:

Dwellers for times’-self.

For time must seal itself a grave,

In everyone bound,

By the inhalant-smells of death,

Faulting ‘long cold, hard ground,

Spreading the stark resonant-sound,

Of the ancient knave.

For in each of us there lies,

What cannot be had.

To live, be, in this torrent-sea,

We must lose olden-bad,

And forget the set-stained sad of…,

Days lost to the skies.

K. Aldaya, 5/3/05

Picture:  “The Ecliptic” by Larry Landolfi; https://500px.com/photo/339318/the-ecliptic-by-larry-landolfi?from=user