Voices I I

You cannot see, feel or touch me, You can only read my mind- thru' my stories, if those stories are absolute and true; for we are optically opaque, where impressions must be built- on tales of black Moon darkness, deaths presence and absence touch, lifting life, love... existence but still voices in your head tell you what you want to hear- about who you think I am. Am I Life or am I Death? And, if somehow I wasn't who the person you had thought, would you label me a non-entity, and my words shibboleth, like an Anaphora poem, or the graphic brush of Dali? Then again, does it really matter? After midnight, I muse, reclusively, impersonally, sometimes I'll take my pen, and place it by my sword to see if the adage holds that a Cross is mightier than an Elk-Ridge, while I write my stories, strange, beyond life's normality. [I relate to this very well] And quite content so I be- with life and love as it comes, yet if your voices whisper this come morning next upon your rise would you claim you were just dreaming? Now all of this of me you know, but does that mean you really know the "Me" that changes norm to surreal with my Elk-Ridge quill. What if this were just another- one of my many tales of Macabre, as people like me often do as Imagists of the Dark Silent Word. So tell me you believe- your foresight trumps your hindsight, and I'll sell you an Indian Island of steep peering scrapers, for twenty-four dollars... and a map to every gravesite where Donne and Poe sleep peacefully for awhile. We cannot see, hear nor touch; you have nary a cluE- as to what I'm all about, so please don't pretend or portend that you know who I am; So, go, now...tell your voices, ''stop talking...and listen. Shhhhh.....I hear a breeze, It's nothing...You are home. ©Frank James Ryan Jr./FjR MMXIX All Rights Reserved