Tapestry
By Harry Fagel
The thread running through it
a tapestry of time
One eighth billion is my part
Purple and blue and yellow and red and
all me
My yarn is a short and colorful journey thus far
a lifetime is
when it’s the length of one eighth billion
yet it’s long during the telling
Every aspect has to be
seen
to be believed
poetry a clumsy tool in the hands of the
self
yet it’s what I have to use to describe my
blip my
moment my dash
my life
so the words form in a pool
ancient and green
alive in the bottom of the world
Perhaps it is the first garden
perhaps it is the place the soul is born
regardless I awake from a dream to learn I am still
dreaming
scheming,
practically beaming ear to ear just at the absurdity of
my own endless questions
Why what how where when why why why
Tears drift like race cars from the corners of liquid eyes
we try and try and try to understand
the answer like all tricks
confuses and misleads
We bleed and bleed and without
a bandaid in sight
Night closing in on the limited
experience we have
balanced by the infinite possibilities of the imagination
here inside such chaos lies the order we crave
Please God save
us all
Or mom, or dad or someone
maybe the stranger leaning ominously on the corner
maybe that is the elusive grace hiding in plain sight
the truth that every solitary moment
passing through the middle of us is just a prelude
of the vast loneliness of death or
of the possibility of retribution or
a solution to the problem of existing
Or perhaps it’s a cosmic sneeze
dried snot and mucus painting the truth in
verdant stripes running riot
where is the veracity now
hidden in ancient books and writ large by the great spenders
who tend to believe they know (they know) the
Great Big Everything and the poor rabble must be
Contained, controlled, managed
Damage is done, like everything under the sun it’s just
power has a way of weeding out the truly dangerous
from the merely annoying
in this rolling countryside where some fellow
who is named for lack of a better thing
King
decides his thread is more
thready
so he declares it so and when the people say
No
he blows them away and eats lunch after
At the end some fellows
stand over shiny apparatus
designed with the sole concept of
wiping out every living thing on Earth
over and over and of course
let’s make more of those
the tapestry is so bloodstained
It’s insane anyone could see the truth
buried under cryptic messages and
conspiracy theories
none of any which has resulted in a single actual fact
yet tales are so compelling and yelling won’t help
it's all about the story, you sorry?
Don’t be
The truth is as fluid as a jar of water
holding it up to the light (or dark)
tipping it this way and that
parsing out the pictures revealed through the clear walls
trying to see it so it fits
really fits
my view of things
Alas such thing trivialize real truth
that hammered out in our endless belief we can
kill our way out of any problem
see it’s always been those people
Those Jews.
Those Christians.
Those Muslims
those of no faith
those of great faith
the Buddahists and Janoists
the Animus and the Witchcrafters
the right and the left and the person in the middle
the great and the small
the not nearly here at all
dumb, smart
willing to help (or not)
the shameless and guilty
both hang from the same tree
while the bloodstained martyrs dance and scream
Indigenous folks and colonizers
the many and the few
fundamentalists, mentalists, Atheists and magicians too
Satanists, Catholic priests
Seven days and Mormon folks all looking to find their feet
Tribal peoples
Nomads
Bohemian girls and boys, ladies and lads
true believers and lazy believers and
non believers and
believe me
we are all still here
still spreading fear
keeping danger near
so we can thrill in the dark
lose sparks and
die knowing
I Was Right?
You were wrong oh no
you were right I was wrong
we were wrong and they were right and
they were right and we were wrong
a song sung
through humantime
a dirge, an elegy a reminder that no matter the reminder
we still fail to remember
every single time
Once again the world dances in the grave
and on the beautiful grass
at the same time
each step bringing us closer to
comfort or death or
both
We murder for the men we foolishly follow but
I must shrug here for we seem like we really enjoy it
because we do it
all the time
I can’t help but wonder
as I wander this asylum hallway
where fate will finally terminate my thread
leave me eyes open and unseeing
basking in the sunlight or
colorless weeping and lost in the moonlight
regardless a shell, an empty wallet a
oarless canoe
waiting to cross the river and enter
Hell or heaven or maybe just
some marked rest area
It’s a gate it seems
a waypoint, a turnstile and
I want to go through it
just not right now
when I do
fate will cut the thread
I will be dead but there in the
quilt you see me
spread out and real and
absolutely
like all the rest
part of the whole
