By Joseph Fries, Saxifrage 34 Contributor
I sometimes feel
like an old silent moving picture,
words flashing on the screen and
occasionally faint splotches of color
painted onto film, flaking away
and, leaving it all bare,
running through to the fin.
the lady, gloriously out of focus,
moving lips with nothing to say,
smooth and clean and white,
Waiting to be rescued and
brought back to love and laughter
which are, perhaps, too late,
for the next film is about to begin:
the world revolves in shades of grey
round and round, quiet, still, with
a faint piano tinkling tunes, notes, scales,
spreading, amoeba-like, into silence
to reveal, what? I know not,
how can I say? Too many questions
All the wrong answers. Am I, like
walking in a waking dream of shadow,
and stumbling over patches of light,
fettered in a washed-out world?
carried away into the sleeping night,
hollow with too many questions
and given all the wrong answers,
the piano stops playing at the end.
About the Author:
Joseph Fries attended Pacific Lutheran University from 2004–2008, studying French and English. He later received an MFA in poetry from Saint Mary’s College of California. He may or may not have written an alliterative heroic crown of sonnets about a Viking teddy bear, and hopes that everyone will continue to split rocks!
