Canadian writer Chris Vaillancourt has given us words to think about before (Walking Beyond Her Reach, Contributor Series 3: Resolution and Resolve, Unheard). His poetry has been widely published; click here
to read more of his work. Chris is awaiting the release this year of
his new book of poetry. Today his poem is despondent, but the reader
can decide for herself if the narrator is leaving room for rebirth
after the pyre.
Black Funeral Pyre
By Chris G Vaillancourt
I’m a wounded chalice, filled with thoughts
of redemption, of forgiveness within.
Roaming through my failing happiness
like a whisper from a winter’s icy wind.
My thoughts have turned to daze long ago,
when I felt as pure and innocent as an infant.
Remembering the desires held like crystal;
delicate glass which shatters in an instant.
Tears won’t come, I am too deeply ingrained
into the mindset that big boys never cry.
Instead, I close down my emotional valves,
letting my despair come out in a silent sigh.
I would, if I could, embrace a dangling hope
of glowing rainbows filtered through my rain.
Letting the whisking whispers of contentment
filter like diamonds into my emotional plain.
It is not meant to be, that I now see; for instead
the undertaker will measure my containment.
The drooping silence will become my friend,
and I shall enter into a rusted sense of spent.
I have nothing left to offer, no words which may
bring anyone a golden shower of beggared desires.
Though my body like a knife, pleads for release,
I shall instead build myself a black funeral pyre.
Some great imagery. I like “a rusted sense of spent.”