Winter’s Soul

Your winter cold
Holds me in an escape
A reverie of distant
Guiding stars
So easily visible
About this cloudless
Waxing gibbous;
Cassiopeia now
Directly beneath Polaris.

A soft hand reaches
For the twines of mine chest,
Slowly breathing
To hold onto each
Breaking moment of day
And soft light
Emenates from the portal
That will soon be
Taking me away.

But this is the calm disguise
Of a growing winter day
As icicles clutch at
My deepening breath
Fusing the crisp daylight
With essences of my soul
A relaxing moment
Amidst my growing motivation
Toiling in my way
As soon, in all hope,
It shall all pass my way again.

Fragments of Meaning

Take my visual fragments
And place them at the foot
Of an old chedi,
For I don’t want my queues
To scatter my own thoughts
Like a back alley
I’ve stood for too long admiring.

Take my meaning
And lessen it’s grip
For it crawls
And has not yet learned
The intricacies of
Falling and getting up,
Though these scuffed knees
Have surely tried
Against the pain.

Hold my hand and remember
That I’m not here for a long time,
This shall become dust
And my subscriptions shall expire
Like organics back to earth,
Like music into silence
For it is without question
That life surely begets death.

Fragments of Meaning by Ned Tobin

Inner Heart

Cold pangs of my inner heart
Have wildly swung amidst this wind
Clanging loudly against
Metallic edges of home
Where doors have been hung.

To aid my truth voice
In a song of no-mans-land,
I’ve wrapped my steel blades
In a leather sheath
To keep my quivering hand
From starting in a blur.

But pangs in message
– A lonesome call beyond forest’s wild –
Share what can never be drafted,
For a dove doth always take flight
Though eye’s embrace
Captures feverishly each beating wing
Against late mornings glow.

There doth echo
Memory once laid
And dreams yet played
For in a forgotten breath
A clang, a pang,
A caress of death
Deeply embraced
Amidst this inner heart.

Inside Cobwebs

I awoke with steam
Overtaking my barely opened eye
Stretched cobwebs holding
My eyelids
In a foggy embrace
That reminded me of fishnets
In tunnel vision
Locked in sweaty fantasies
Of a late night low light
Where forbidden
And forgotten
Are both flickers of imagination
And soft light
Of a golden new day
Controlled my reaching hands
To stretch across
Open areas of cobwebs
To feel around inside.

Whisper (day 3206)

Whisper-by-Ned-Tobin

This hurts and I’m not sure
And I don’t want to guess anymore.
So I clap both my hands
To suggest who I am.

Not for a way,
Not for a guess,
Not for a little bit,
Not for the end.

And I whisper
Into the death of my vision
So I may not know
The next steps to be taken
With wind in my face
And a slump, lacking all grace.

The New Normal (day 3143)

This is the new normal
No handshake, no smile.
This is the new normal
Lineups with seperation
And stickers on the ground
Telling me which way to walk
Where to stand.
This is the new normal
Where by law
We are no longer able
To gather in groups
More than fingers on my hand.
This is the new normal
Where social distancing
And isolation
Are words of our common vocabulary.
This is the new normal
Where walking down the street
Closer than two meters
To a passing stranger
We get anxiety
That this stranger just might
Transmit to us
An unseen death card.
This is the new normal
Where government declares
A business can no longer stay open.
This is the new normal
Where humans no longer have
Medicine men and women
Available to help
Because their knowledge
Relies on the antidote.
This is the new normal
Where I pay a bank monthly
To hold onto my money
I have saved from spending
And told that method is safer
Than guarding it with my own life,
And that money
Is better in digital plastic
Infused and inflated
By central banks at will.
This is the new normal
Where the government
Of my home country
Feels the safety and security
Of its citizens
Comes after the solvency
Of its biggest industries.
This is the new normal
And we must resist.

Un-Changed (day 3138)

When the wild worlds awoke
A thunderous cackling was heard
Mystics remained calm
But civilians, no they ruptured
Into the great wide open hands
Of the Gods they revered.
Some, well, some squandered their money
Buying useless diplomas and
Servitude obligations.
Some fell to darkness with devices
Emitting radioactive lights
And chaotic beeping.
Some fell into wildness
Like the river in Spring
Bounding over freshly fallen trees
And moss so thick
It became a cloak for their own dreams.
There was no end promised
To the deafening roar,
No scientific projection
Or mathematical calculation
That could speak for the Gods
Who had thus become maddened.
And in the end,
Well, there was no end
For it was never signaled,
Never announced over loudspeaker
Like each modern God so famed to do,
It was subtle, and thus remained unchanged.
It was the civilians
Who had changed, too busy caught up
To notice that they had changed
And what they had changed for
Had long since been gone away.