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Open Poetry #48
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Fate's Chosen
| Open Poetry #48 |
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Fate's Chosen |
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Michael
Moderator
Member Rara Avis
since 1999-08-13
Posts 7666California 
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Fate’s Chosen A child in my first prison, a bed with wooden bars, Was where she first appeared to me – the first of many scars. I took her in, quite the vision, robed in white with liquid eyes. My coherence, even a child could see, came to her a surprise. Knowledge seared deep into my skull as her eyes glanced on mine… …To measure my allotted fate – to draw that final line. …To mark my path, hero or cull, to guide me to a wife. …To set the standards, grim or great, of all I’d achieve in life. With wonder – with precise control, with interest I didn’t understand She held up a thread, pulling it tight with delicate, gloved hand. I felt the scanning of my soul and saw her eyebrows raise, Then a smile that lit the dark night I could only take as praise. Suddenly she let go of the thread, and turned to walk away. Then I saw the other, with her blade, insisting that she stay. Now mayhap it was in my head – maybe I’ve justified with time Why the other looked on me, eyes betrayed, that marked me as the crime. There were words beyond a child my age, and an anger that I feared. Still, the one in white would not be swayed, she just smiled and disappeared. The other lay blade to me in rage, yet my life was not taken… I awoke, as if from dream, dismayed – no longer a child – shaken! An adult trapped in a child’s frame, I stepped cautiously everywhere. There was always more than met the eye I soon became aware. Time brought change, but me, I stayed the same… in silence I thought clever. Second prison, though it proved a lie to a man meant to live forever. For the dreams returned most every night – Death himself holding the thread. The angry one cutting at it with shears, both wishing I were dead… And though the thread always held tight, Atropos proved quite the mime, Showing she’d be happy, through the years, to take me a piece at a time. But never had the one in white returned to claim her prize, And as a young man I came to doubt ever seeing those eyes. Till she graced me by the moonlight one night emotion stole, As I learned what love was all about touching an immortal soul. Daughter of Zeus, daughter of Nyx, in her blood craftiness dwelled. Passion and desire, too, were there, enough to leave any man spelled. But even the gifts of gods affix the common law of price… And as all loved died naught could spare me the cost of paradise. Still she lifted high the standards of my gothic principle, Though I’ll never know just why she placed me on that pedestal. But it was that instant we shared love beyond eternity – Lachesis giving her all to me, despite what she knew had to be. For I should have died – should have never been born, I readily admit it. I couldn’t pay the price of a blind world when the life I held was forfeit. And I, being emotionally shorn, couldn’t attach myself to the nothing Others did in vain attempts unfurled, for a chance to hold that something. …And I couldn’t help but give in to the temporal discord, For all want, in its leisure state, held for me no reward. So when I looked away, on cue, yes destiny was turning – ‘Twas I who sealed Lachesis’ fate, and set the bridge to burning. Still, when I hear her distant song, mellow in its refrain, I wonder how being loved by Fate could be cause to such pain. But Clotho, caught between two wrongs, sought to have the thread unspun By Chronos, holding time in wait, wishing to see the matter done. I write this not as a plea for living – not about taking a fall, But knowing that this end will be just like I never lived at all. The third prison, unforgiving, is a nightmare never ended… The keeping of erased memory while all time is suspended. But there it is, the memory, in mind forever frozen – The knowledge that this brittle man once walked the world Fate’s chosen. Now passing rewritten history, a man barely worth mention, You’ll believe me crazy rather than believe I walked in her dimension… …Or that I lived a thousand years with a goddess as my lover, Though the intricacies of the sisters of Fate are unlike any other. For in my dreams I still see those shears, Atropos with her cruel twisting Refusing to take her object of hate, now that he’s done resisting. Still, Lachesis proved smartest of them all, if by shameless decree… Asking time for gods remain untouched, while it rolled backwards on me. And so they gathered to watch fall the man who dared scorn Fate. While she stood with arms ‘round stomach, clutched, forcing her smile to wait… …Till she returned mind to a soul adrift – showed me all we manifest. …Till I saw it was all her design that I guiltlessly be laid to rest. In her womb growing, a mortal’s gift – a love that she could hold forever With tear in eye, affecting to pine 'a thread finally marked for sever. …And they spend centuries searching new ways to do harm to each other, But beware the wrath that gods unfold when harm comes from another. She told them she picked me that day, cause she knew I’d have to leave her… But the gods, stubborn as they are old, just refused to believe her. Life become but shear misery, as they spin the dark and drink the light, While I’m tethered to this godless run, much to the god’s delight. And though I’d be content, completely, sitting here babbling and foaming, Something tells me I am not done, that I’ll spend my last days roaming. The scourge of man – scourge of the Gods, the only thing that I hold certain, No matter where I choose to go, someone will end up hurtin’… And it won’t be me, I’ll lay you odds, condemned eternally ‘these same dice That destined me so long ago to live with the gods in paradise. But a simple thing I learned in youth, I can feel it on the west wind – Something out there quite angelic says that something here’s still destined. Still, the gods I know won’t tell the truth, so my fourth and final prison Becomes walking the world, a broken relic of long ago lost ambition. And it’s only here, just past nowhere, the voice truly beseeches me. Beyond the spite of her sisters, where her love still reaches me… …Only when I’m lost, without a care, that Atropos should drop her vigil, But on those days I’m truly hers, and her love becomes my sigil. The irony of ironies, that I should live forever… While Atropos, with thread in hand, yet refuses to sever Me from the sea of miseries I walk so comfortably through, And only Lachesis need understand, I’m but doing what I was fated to. Michael Anderson Death's but a path that must be trod, If man would ever pass to God. Thomas Parnell |
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| © Copyright 2012 Michael Anderson - All Rights Reserved | |||
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Ethern Member
since 2010-07-01
Posts 150on a plane |
that's deep. |
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Honeybunch Member Rara Avis
since 2001-12-29
Posts 7115South Africa |
So very deep indeed, Michael, but maybe we have enough freewill to choose how we walk that path that we are perhaps destined to walk. And that love, yes, that love that surpasses, (and I've no doubt that it exists) how easily we forget when the path leads through thorns and brambles. We're only human after all and the purpose of that eludes me. Helen |
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Michael
Moderator
Member Rara Avis
since 1999-08-13
Posts 7666California |
Ethern, thank you for reading.  Was quite deep I suppose, even for me. Helen, the qualities, demands, expectations and rewards of love surely do surpass those of mundane humanity. Sadly, we are human… but if we experience love in any measure during our lifetime, we are so much more than that, if only for a little while. Michael |
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suthern
since 1999-07-29
Posts 20723Louisiana |
A mortal's gift... I was mesmerized through every line! *S* |
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