Time Only Has So Much Time Poem by Joseph Narusiewicz

Pearl fire of aqua language
Poets purge the unconscious forms
Wings of ethereal justice and beauty
She has mercy in her piercing eyes
Stone lions chase ravens
The claws of silence
Forever past in granite
There in the wind hides legacy

Voices of the deep sapphire sea
Gardens where forgiveness glides free
Trench warfare is over
Below the equinox
By palm trees of ice
Egyptian mummies walk in the valley
She hands me a vision
A vision lacking the entire world

Freedom is a dream found in libraries
Mortal fear wrestles with morning
All the gates are locked
By the fountain a golden flower grows
Dialogue with Dante’s Inferno
Winds of Shelley’s thorns
Poseidon sails in a Roman slave ship
Spartacus meditates vengeance

Myth becomes the shields of armies
Pirates steal Caesars bold inscription
Opium ships bring their cargo west
Denizens read Verlaine and Virginia Woolf
A more perfect union visions of Voltaire
Autonomous Atlas lifts the weight of the world
Through symbols and dreams the fog lifts
Shaman prophets die early deaths

Let the clowns swim with the mermaids
Every one needs dreams that dance
Escape to the islands and look over the precipice
Along the mountain passes feel the free air
Sleep under the moon with your wise lover
Lord Byron’s black steeds ramble the night
Walk through forests of emerald romance
Let your dreams escape from self torment

Dharma mountains rise in spires
Genuflect in neurotic salvation
Holy water with fluoride
The womb of peace
Adults suck their thumbs
Deep in the caves of Greek enigma
Collective unconscious circles
The mirror of gravestones

On the road where gamblers shine
Heroes like rivers rolling to the sea
Poet readings sigh in history
The beats tap their feet to free jazz
Slowly the shadow drives the wind
The magic hour fades and the dust settles
Fire passed by the seers of art
We read biographies of bold alleys

The bells of Notre Dam ring
Along the Seines painters gather
Porcelain shrines decorated in dying flowers
Sleep in towers with winding stairways
Hands tied by stolid fate
All these questions hide in dusky caves
Sometimes the stars look like cold ice
Ideals punished by the ticking clock

Here comes the tide washing everything
All this desolate stench
All this waste
Now the sun seems just the same
Centuries move like angels
What really matters is the day is bright
Meaning the clarity of generations
These ancient alphabets are written on time

Time to live because time only has so much time