The story of an orphan


El Baptisme

The footsteps grow silent in the long and hallowed halls.
The vicar stops and continues as the rain falls intoxicatedly.

Seats are taken and hands are shook, smiles are carved gratuitously
into the faces that don't want to be there.

Innocence in the tears is amplified by Christ's likeness in white,
Open armed in the spirit of acceptance.

The ambient music in the background does not come from the organ,
but from her arms.
* * *

Forbes Halden, known as Forbie to the friends he doesn't have,
Coughs with percussion in the churchyard strangled by the arms of ivy.

Every drumbeat leaves a painted note of red on the cobblestones
that have seen better moments than this.

His arms, once a deep brown, now reflect
a shade of coffee with too much cream.

The warm soil embraces him unlike the mother he never had.

In exchange for the warmth, he offers the earth his tears, his blood
Himself.

As if orchestrated, the percussion stops and in comes the droning voice of the strings to start the eulogy.

They break with intermittent sobs as the conductor is stricken with grief.

In the last scene of the final act of the last play his life will act out, the thespian morosely delivers these lines:

"Mother since you've left me, I have never been the same.
Mother I adore you and think it is a shame that I never knew what to call you."

"'Comment t'appelles tu ?' was the first line of French I ever learnt and would be the only question I would ask you if I had gotten the chance. So tell me now, Comment t'appelles tu, Mom ?"
* * *
Beat those damn drums like never before screams the conductor flailing his arms in feverish frenzy.

He is hysterical with grief and with the descending passage of notes, he hurls his baton and weeps.

The soliloquy has been delivered, and the bows have been taken.

The curtain falls.

The painter sits impatient, frozen in the dilemma of choice.

He decides to finish the eyes.

Two dabs of the white coffee brown over the eyes.

The epitaph is calligraphically scrawled above the bed of soil in the Valley of Sleeping Babes.

It states," And here, he remains baptized by his holy tears.
Here he sleeps, no longer feeling the cold outside his bed.
Here he lies, by his consumption he lies consumed."




Poetry by Jack R. Schade
Read 578 times
Written on 2009-11-01 at 19:15

dott Save as a bookmark (requires login)
dott Write a comment (requires login)
dott Send as email (requires login)
dott Print text



A fabulous write Jack! Absolutely transfixing from word go....These lines grabbed me...

The ambient music in the background does not come from the organ,
but from her arms.
* * *

Forbes Halden, known as Forbie to the friends he doesn't have,
Coughs with percussion in the churchyard strangled by the arms of ivy.

We all need the love and guidance of parents, preferably both. As a woman who never laid eyes on her father...I know where this great write is coming from. I was given a blurry photo several years ago, but I have built my own bridge to him all my life.

An orphan myself now I lost my dear not so old mum last Feb

Smiling, because she wouldn't have it any other way.

Tai
2009-11-01