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He 'Ought Be Opal
He ‘Oughta Be Opal
Kelly Quick
They say he ‘oughta be opal
And all a-soul reckoned so
He swirled, a shimmering propagate of charm
Oh, the places he’d go
Though sweltering suns dared
Above their furnace, he forged his tenure
The daylight doted on his grace,
Gave life to amorphous splendor
With his work, he sparked flames
Lit lanterns, adrift to dusky skies
Brought life to darkened days
A kaleidoscope to one’s eyes
His silent, animated smile
A wave of a satin-clothed hand
A blazing fire feasting on wind
Roaring in triumph—vibrancy from hued sheets of sand
His illuminating iridescence,
Not a crystalline scaffold to obey
As calmly fits a palace in a basket,
One heeds his bounding display
To his brothers, he brought wonders,
His honey-trickled clutch
His beautifully sweet harmonies
That blossom at the touch
To his home, he blessed beauty,
Gems and jewels strung abound,
Silk draped on muralled walls,
And quaint lullabies they do sound
And from within the light of laughter,
in speckled leather boots,
trudged in kinship’s sugar-bliss,
He walked.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
But from behind curtains of eyes, he stared;
a whispering of thought—
a ruminating impaired—
A maundered soliloquy of a softened, whispered dream
Swept away from ambitious talk,
His reach abandoned in bazaars
Before his eyes, he donned mirrors,
So they thought too he saw the stars
Night left him a crazed shadow
Dawn encroached with deposits of dread
Carved for luster like a desert rose,
That left his soul unwed
Words scattered in serpentine courses
An elusive reality to clasp
His undertakings saw him a visitor;
His pen rest not within his grasp
Stood before his house of many years,
He met its apprehensive gaze
The door dared him in jaded scrutiny
He unlocked it in criminal haze
He lurked forth, automatic
Making way his piecemeal path
An amalgam of youth eroded,
He cowered from abrasive wrath
Jewels dangled from the ceiling,
pondering his name with every subtle gape
Past the foreign eyes of ones he loves,
To a bed long forgotten his shape
And snug deep within his hollow, little home,
He slept.
And allochromatic, his mind mistaken
The basal cusp of what stood true
It was unnatural, what lay beneath
An infant’s growth without review
It was what he stole, not what he sheathed,
From the lungs of a child,
Never from a child, breathed
And from a world to be observed
before his eyes of green,
Never, from green eyes, colored pretty and seen
And from a heart of whom beats,
A diffusion of silenced need,
Never given, once and for all, a meager chance to bleed
And shallow, in temple
The cornered crevasse of the mind
Met not with his melody,
Nor memories to bind
Never within a life skull-pent
Could he forge conchoidal repairs
Flora of skin lay miles a-past
Bearing fictive prairies of hairs
His bones but commodious caverns,
Mottled and hollow and fissured,
His limbs—marionettes of veins,
With mere comical commissures
A war waged within the form
Gory details ripped and torn
Lost from interest of remoted skies
An escapade of termination
And from above this toiling sea of flesh and blood,
He sang.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Returning home, he found his body roaming streets
Akin to a buffet and store
Who would be his cutlery, this time around
To dinners he could stomach no more?
He ventured to the cornerstone
To find warm welcomes from a woman in gray
The polite motion of the crowd awoke him
Had she truly remembered his name?
Upon chiseled stone, diffracted sunlight danced
Vines bled along columns in rapport
With greeting passersby, he smiled quietly to himself,
And wondered, dreadfully, if he’d been here before.
It was the amorphous thought, muddled whim
Drinking life’s nectar as epochs raced by
Perhaps it was that he never learned to swim
His poor soul reckoned he could fly
He abandoned clarity
for peace of mind,
and a turbid conscience
turned him blind
While he lived a mere means
for light to pass through,
not weight nor even form
could borne him anew
His orientation
his icy disease
keeping him lucid
at the notion of breeze
He need not gall.
When thrown within a spiral,
Would he fly, or could he fall?
Should he take another step,
Would his heel meet the floor at all,
Or would he fly,
Or would he fall?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alas, at twilight, he was found
Before a guilty creek absconds,
With hands from gloves they held him tall
Muttering hardly a response
He knew the cold embrace of palms
Fleeting, as always, to last
Meant soon to take the chilling plunge
To bitter days en masse
And sure, with that, they neared the shore
To bid farewell, the end
To the drunken summer’s amity haul
To their faceless pebbled friend
The young boy dropped him after all
He kissed the water, brisk and cold
Before losing the mind he’d desperately brawled;
A sepulcher foretold.
From the watery scene he bore the smolders of his tale
Dragged under the weather—
Swept with the stream—
With the asphalt and diamonds—
He whispered
He dreamed
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I began to write this poem in tribute to someone I loved, someone who meant the world to me and dealt with so much. In the end, it became a greater reflection of my own state of mind: hidden, lonely disorientation. In this piece, I included many terms from mineralogy to help connect the reader to the many ideas I had in store. What you, my dear reader, find, is your own interpretation. I'm still a novice writer, and this is the first poem I've completed in a while. Enjoy.