Gone -------------------- Beautiful day, stay bright for me Beautiful skies, don't cast a pall I'm here just a moment, then I'll be gone To a world in which there is too much of all "Your world," they say, "is not like ours" "It's full of flowers, you walk on stars" But what they don't know is what it is like In worlds where fleeting shadows are nights What it is like to walk, spellbound Through miles and miles of nothing around To speak in silence, my voice each day Recounting in runes what I do not say A moment serene, next one overwhelmed By storms, deluges of senses, condemned By anger too fatal, by love too strong By rights too right, by wrongs too wrong Overtures too silent, crescendos too loud Mountains so tall, that clouds are bowed Colors too vibrant, vistas too vast Memories so strong, that there is no past Actions too shallow, meanings too deep Forests too dense, deserts too bleak Feelings, senses, emotions and thoughts Complacent one moment, then strewn and lost A world of so much, I no longer know How much is too much, how fast is slow Too much so too much that it overtakes Me past myself, and then something breaks The peach and pink of dusk in the snow Now a fiery smelting of copper, aglow Trees in repose, whispering psalms Now soldiers at war, humming calls to arms Leisurely seasons of beauty and grace Change fleeting, bewildered, at a breathless pace Like whorls of snow in a steady snowstorm Flurries of quietude appear, but are gone On a tin roof, the sound of incessant rainfall Like the murmur of patrons in a music hall When too much begins to bring too much on All silenced by a curtain, and then I am gone This pall of silence, poisoned intense A fog that glimmers at times in pretense Of a promise of light beyond its sheath Of colors and sounds that lie beneath The promise then causes a raging storm Battles of will against myself in arms The quiet lap of oars of a fleet of canoe Turned to deluges of floods breaking through A battle so endless, I win in this strife Like a candle in a storm, the will to survive Thoughts that were scattered coalesce sometime So strongly that words begin to rhyme My days, again, are beautiful, bright Poetry in motion, paintings in light When less is so much, that more is sublime It turns into too much again with time Like the sound of a thousand flapping wings Like beads that fall from a broken string In a flurry, the moments one by one Then fall away, and then I am gone Like a window flapped open in a daring storm Like the flap of the curtains that catch its swarm Silenced and breathless, quiet and forlorn A window flaps shut, and then I am gone Like the dance of drops on a whitehot sheet Amidst applause, my dancing feet Dance intensely, so much that I am worn The curtain then falls, and then I am gone Like the oomph of sparks from the flare of a fire Like the notes that fall from an angel's lyre So short lived and yet so bright that I mourn The world that was, that's lost when I'm gone In this endless battle of darkness and light In this restless world of defeat and delight I search for myself around and around I search for myself and find I am gone ----------------- 12 Apr 2018 5:10 PM For Joe Rigoli. He lived with schizophrenia, and died homeless.