Poem: Glass and a Half Ceiling

[jakebe]

I think it's time to be a bit quiet.

*****************************************************
Glass and a Half Ceiling

I was born a small black child,
and not just black but *black*,
like the bookends of destruction --
a single crust of charcoal
or the rain that fell down on Hiroshima
after the bomb.
I grew up as a shadow
and I was comfortable with that
as it afforded me many places
I would have been too visible in otherwise.
But ah! with the power of darkness
comes an obligation, a responsibility,
an expectation:
to act in such a manner that befits
creatures such as myself:
to abhor the light and all of its stars,
a constellation of music and subtle things
that were always higher than I should ever want to reach.
I did love the world that I had made my hut
but I also loved unfamiliarity
and what was more strange than a tapestry
too rich for my dirty fingers?
The celestines corrupted me, then
and I became a soured milk,
and other shadows viewed me with
a special kind of common derision.
I was back to black, a muddled half-tone
on neither end of purity,
and I've been stuck ever since.
Not really of any kind of star
but my feet will never know the ground again.
I am now part of a narrow view,
a blind spot that doesn't have a name.
All for reaching.
It's not so bad except for those days
when you want to relate yourself to other people
and you find you've lost the vocabulary
for where you are,
and there's just no translation for half-astronomy.
*****

Too pretentious.