20 years ago
seems like yesterday. And, I
remember waking the morning
of 9/11 to the surreal nightmare
of smoke and death in the air
being broadcasted to the entire
world, fearing for the mortality
of folks I didn't even know jumping
from windows into the bellows
of a tragic death waiting for them
below, as the twin towers were
ignited by two kamikaze terrorist
planes and toppled like monolithic
matchsticks engulfed by flames.

Now, wandering — as I wonder
about the well-being of not just New
York but the world in the COVID
era —are the echoes of souls crying…

“To the person who uses music as a medium for the expression of ideas, feelings, images, or what have you; anything which facilitates this expression is properly his instrument.”
— Bill Evans

If music could talk, the sky would slide
Down the fender stratosphere¹ and piece
Peace, painting rainbows meant to be
Heard in the dark space between words,

Soul traveling like a ship without a sail —

From the divine
To the temple of I&I
Where sweet songs

Reside in our eyes
On reins of starlight

Giving flight to night’s song, riding
Twilight into midnight
Admiring both sides of…

i. if not us, who?

“Ain’t even much a matter what happens tomorrow, ’cause we men, ain’t we?”
— Trip (from the movie Glory, as portrayed by Denzel Washington)

There
Is no time
To fake, front
Or ride the fence, when
It comes to doing the right thing.
Born in the margins of the melting pot,
I’m made real

By
The
Ideal
That we are
Begotten by God —
To rise up…and be free! Once we
Counted only as
Three-fifths a
Human
And
All

The
World’s
Wealth can’t
Compensate
For the vestiges
Of the peculiar institution
That ended one-hundred fifty years ago.
And it…

These broken crayons still color & make masterpieces of
Art –
Clearly, as they pigment the pieced together stained
Glass portrait
Of my heart kept zoetic by the verve
Of the voices
In the street healing wounds
Of logic & reasoning

With wonders & signs reigning
Over my broken window pane

Breathing bright into this
Abyss of nothingness with love, laughter & a light
That emits life reflecting off of time
As if
I were a clockwork of spirits soloing in
Sync
With the sunship in ascent beyond the blue horizon.

If you enjoyed this poem, you might also like:

…

The playlist
Riffs like the soundtrack of
My life, with melodies that recall
Even the most minute
Of details.

If you enjoyed this poem, you might also like:

This poem is inspired by an actual playlist of mine entitled Riding Twilight into Midnight at the link below.

2021 Michael Hall is a poet and a creative, who is the creator and curator of The Bazaar of the Bizarre and a submissions editor for The POM, living in Illinois, also writing in association with Lingua: Ex Libris Life, because as Albert Camus said, “to create is to live twice”; and the…

With curious power, words
Are born as the children of reason
And evolve as the offspring
Of adaptation — unencumbered by

Natural selection

To form a world of their own
Creation conceived
On the majesty of meaning
Where their tangible
Shards are no more vital
Than the existential
Regards with which they
Are often perceived.

Only in retrospect

Is the value of nurturing understood.
Words alone are apt to exaggerations
Of imagination rather than fruition of
Intuition, with the flow of meaningful

Thought —

Curtailed on occasion before
Reaching full bloom; although,
Multiplicity of meaning is what
All good words hold within…