The Elocution of Time

Gary Beck/The Elocution of Time

 

Visions

It was a bleak winter morning,

too cold to go outside.

I sat by the window

and watched people

struggling to walk

on the icy sidewalks.

I had a strange feeling

of detachment from the scene

and started visualizing

Washington’s weary troops

withstanding the bitter winter

at Valley Forge,

Napolean’s freezing soldiers

plodding for home

from Moscow

in the deep snow

falling by the wayside,

the German army

stalled at Stalingrad

battle worn, thousands dead,

forced to surrender

to die in prison camps.

A blaring car horn

brings me back to the present

and I idly watch

Mr. Road Rage

get out of his car

and assault an old woman

who dared to cross his street

and make him wait.

 

 

Subway

I was halfway through the turnstile

when something moved beside me.

It was a man

beating the fare,

jumping the turnstile.

I managed not to trip

when he dashed past me.

I started to curse him,

saw he was bigger than me

and shut my mouth,

one more morning event

on the way to work.

 

 

Books

To some

obsolete objects

of no consequence.

To the technically evolved

electronic portal

to accessible data.

 

The mystery

huddling under the concealing covers

flashlight in hand,

pacing the cell with Edmond Dantes,

mushing Buck on Alaskan trails,

drawing my sword with D’Artagnan,

eyeing Ahab with wonder,

quite possessed me.

 

So many escapes

from harsh reality

I was powerless to control,

brief comfort

in compelling discoveries.

 

As I grew up

the books grew up,

great poets, playwrights,

storytellers, historians,

Thucydides,

filled my famished soul

as others were filled before me,

the chorus of humanity.

 

If my life

wasn’t as grandiose

as Hamlet, Macbeth,

there was philosophy,

economics, religion,

science,

endless repasts

on contributions

that elevated mankind.

 

To this day

I’m still bemused

by the prodigious output

of so many

in times of oppression,

endless wars,

greed always overcoming

our better nature,

age after age.

 

I have seen the signs

heralding the disappearance

of physical books,

replaced by touchscreens

in the unstructured journey

of a peculiar species

that creates beauty,

Beethoven, Monet, Whitman,

weapons of mass destruction.

 

I do not know

if we will survive

the march to civilization

as a tormented youth

huddles under his/her covers

without a flashlight,

reading a Kindle,

possibly the great books

that nourished me,

as long as there is power

to light the screen.

 

 

To The Lost

I see the faces

of tortured children

in prisons,

homeless shelters,

mental institutions,

places of punishment

for victims of poverty,

deprived

of the benefits

of civilization,

plunged

without protection

into systems of despair

that relentlessly consume

remaining prospects

of a dismal future,

consigning

rejected youth

from a harsh society

to brief lives

of confinement,

constant suffering

temporarily relieved

by acquiring the prize

of stolen sneakers.

 

 

Waiting

We are the only animal

who produce plastics,

endless toxic substances

that poison the planet.

 

We pour, pour concrete

strangling the land

oblivious to the need

for respiration

for everything that lives.

 

Nature waits patiently

for our species’ demise

to regenerate the Earth,

if we don’t destroy it

before our departure.

 

The Elocution of Time is an unpublished poetry collection that reveals some  of the stranger and more unusual occurrences that trouble our society. 'Visions', 'Subway', 'Books', 'To the Lost', 'Waiting'.