Lost Poems In A Basement
By Richard Moss MD
October 30 2024
I wrote them when a youth,
I read them for you to hear.
I read the great poets too,
And whispered them in your ear.
We crossed the golden bridge each day,
And laughed in that fallen city.
But we were young and sought not penance,
And the mist dissolved all pity,
We sought virtue in each other’s eyes,
And the poems concealed the lies.
We scrambled amidst the thorns,
Blinded by the shadows of the dawn.
Your voice inspired new medleys,
Amidst pyramids, solemn visions spawned.
Can we dissolve our souls in the meadows,
Find rest in words that mourn?
If there was hope in abandoned memories,
Our wishes rested in dreams not born.
We sought virtue in each other’s eyes,
And the poems concealed the lies.
I had to leave the soothing vines,
That wrapped the viper’s nest.
We pretended we could laugh forever,
And incline thy words in jest.
How we dreamed of sacred meadows,
Where we would laugh in the dwindling sun.
Were poems a potion for the soul?
Did your songs conceal a gun.
We sought virtue in each other’s eyes,
And the poems concealed the lies.
If the morning raised pillars of doubt,
How to quench your vicious appetite?
Poems were weapons in the sky,
They blessed your immaculate sight.
I left the poems to betray your lust,
In the basement on Hugo Street near the park.
Covered over by sands of memory,
In the shifting perfidy after dark.
A lasting edifice to your innocence,
I would seek them, for mercy, and the desultory ark.
I grasped for their clemency,
They are trapped in time, concealed by a star.
Abandoned at birth,
They are lost children at night.
Brought into the world,
I left them in the basement, seeking fragments of light.
Still, I could not survive the web of your voice,
It enchanted as if an instrument.
Yet they wounded souls in despair,
Our survival were the lost poems in the basement,
They ravaged my soul in the ravine.
No tears arose from the firmament.
We sought virtue in each other’s eyes,
And the poems concealed the lies.