Shadows – where faces hide –

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Shadows
         - where faces hide -

In time dawn’s shadow
Would dim the cruelty,
A face deemed bide 
From its carved path,
Will transmute hide
Said nature’s trap,
For wind burnt flesh
That reads like brail,
Or weathered mesh
On skin humanly frail,
Finds soon be paired
To rock-strewn canyons,
Reflection of a dire face
As pain unravels memory,
Of its passing shadows
Hence where faces hide,
Among phantoms of the past 
Where these faces did emerge! 

                                                           © Jean-Jacques Fournier

Images – Private authors; Malik Earnest 2015

Music – Leaving by Chet Baker

Audio Recital – Jean-Jacques Fournier

                                                                             written in Sweetsburg

                                                                                   January 2, 2022

                                                                       edited January 10, 2022

Valorizing – a state of being –

Valorizing
     -a state of being -

 Between desperate 
 and distraught,
  
 spare ye be invested
 in disparity best forgot, 
  
 But between pain 
 and naught,
  
Take ye the pain,
As alive be right as rain! 
  
                          

          © Jean-Jacques Fournier
              February 18, 2021  

“ One Word ” ~ a picture ~

One word

Facilely said

Offhand,

Be a picture

Amid a thousand,

That describes

Of pain’s stead

What therein lies,

Though want tell

Of their chagrin,

They’ll hold inside!

“ Pain ” ~ of a moral vane ~

There is such pain

Of moral vane,

Tho you may try

Hence to explain,

Seem never able,

And so you live

A kind of otiose

With others close,

The while most

Walk away

On feet of clay,

Unless the injure

Should impair

Their being,

Or indifference,

Elicits then concern

Beyond the inane,

For their crusade

Of narcissistic egoism,

When too they’ll pain

But of immoral vane!