Tag Archives: common

The Porcelain Doll

On the midnight train watching the world pass by;

You’re a porcelain doll sitting opposite,

Subtly, dolled up to the nines,

With eyes vaguely blood shot,

Shedding tears of sadness,

For a loved one no doubt,

Trying your best to wipe them away on your sleeve,

Yet they just won’t stem the flow,

A kindly black lady beside me offers up a entire pack of tissues,

And, you accept it with a graceful ‘Thank you’,

Managing a embarrassed smile somehow;

We may not be a homogeneous whole (if we ever were),

We are though part of a collegiate,

Of common courtesy,

To observe from a distance and not overly pry,

And, I’m proud to call it my second home:

London town.

Lake of Salvation

Plucking at the strings of emotion,

Bringing a masterpiece casually into being,

A soloist’s rendition mirrors your condition;

Like the crown of flowers nestling on your head,

Fluttering in the gentle breeze,

Slowly loosing each of its petals to the wind,

Falling away, and leaving only stem and nettles,

To soak on the surface of a lake of tears,

Before submerging and resting at the basin to be covered in detritus,

An apt accompaniment to sudden bout of grief:

As you wade into the middle seeking elusive redemption,

From your memories and dreams, turned harassing nightmares of late,

Toward the inevitability of your own drowning,

For, the further you move out, the deeper the lake gets;

And, what you search for is nowhere to be found,

Searching for solace and meaning in a soloists melancholy,

As your tears trail down to join those of thousands of others’ before you,

Who have found themselves in a similar state,

For you are not the first, nor the last, to experience this feeling of loss;

And it is our feelings and not our memories, that are the true common bond and uniter, both then and now.