"The Optimist"

  

I cannot spend my days counting losses   
focusing on withered branches and leaves   
opening my heart to your dark decay   
I refuse to bear your broken crosses   
over my threshold—into my beliefs   
by allowing your destruction to stay   
like a hurricane that swirls and tosses   
my gentle soul upon wild waves that heave   
and boil, pulling me under and away   
to the mirage of  dead albatrosses   
where your empty eyes gaze restless and grieve   
for the simple joy of a sun drenched day   

"Worse Case Scenerio"

 weakness tangles within rigidity   

and involuntary movement demands thought and discipline   

requiring repetition and obsession to manage endless days   

even as neurons decay 

 

no hope    

only loss crossed off the calendar day-by-day

  

the fight for dignity fatigues    

an unbearable weight constricting life   

she is Prometheus, bound   

punished for bringing enlightenment    

tortured in mind and body until eternity   

speech struggles against silence   

and suddenly words flee   

what is this?   

confusion adds to the overload   

helplessly caught in disintegration   

too much misplaced   

not enough forgotten   

gone too soon   

or not soon enough   

Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

"Future"

            

            We walk through nightmares of the past,

living an existence of future fears.

            Desperately struggling among the mountainous

crags of pre-fabricated foods and chemically made beer cans,

our test tube babies weep with bitter need,

as automated mothers

rock rhythmically back and forth.

            No one saw today as it was to be.

            We run through our own living hell,

Never feeling, desiring, or loving.

            Mirrors are no longer needed,

nor are youthful photographs taken—

for images of ourselves are seen scrambling

among the barren garbage dumps

searching for rustic vestiges of yesterday—

an identity.

            No one saw today as it was to be.

            We trudge through old decaying minds,

trying to forget our own impotence.

            Whimpering trepidations never cease,

for like howling canines long starved for passion,

the souls of society disintegrated

into a pile of biological residue.

            And no one say today as it was to be.

Copyright 1975 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman