Hybrid Car

By Mark Bishop

Should I pray now?

Should my hands find the steeple

with all God's people

casting forth amens like old pillows.

Weeping willows bowed low and dreary?

Eyes tired but not driven to tears.

Some days this vehicle takes us high above the clouds

into that resplendent throne room where the angel choir crowds

where warm welcomes wash barnacled feet and dark desires flee

Some days it can't quite make the drive

Instead this lifeboat springs a leak and gives us to the sea

Is it not good that wields both blessing and cessation?

Is it not for my own sake I bear this pain?

Perhaps oh Lord I do not want

to be as good a man I claim

Yet discipline unasked and un-kept

Produces as before this lament:

that I did not suffer more truly those trials he gave to me.

instead I sought escape

and I cried out to be free.

And I Bled Ink

Poetry is what comes out of me when I'm cut.

When I bleed it's ink,

it's words which pour and weave 'long parchment roads to arrive at places I never will

to stand for things I can't support.

Lasting languages, promises, purports

to know and feel more deeply that which was once mine

but now I've passed on.

Poor words.

Why should they suffer this pain.

Why should they hear as I hear?

Oh why create them at all?

Because I am lonely?

Because I want for company

and words are just the friends.

They will reflect and demand nothing.

With thoughtful care they will console

In their forms mirror my soul

Their's is the script of the heart

Be born fair words 

and listen thus.

Today's Prisons

 by Mark Bishop

He got a poster today

it covers up the black and gray, well at least in part

He wakes up every morning straightens that colorful square on the wall of his cell

and prays for a roommate to talk with and wish well

He got a friend today

And all those things he had to say found listening ears

Every night they talk just before they go to bed

and pray for a candle to give them warmth and light for stories they haven't read

He got a lamp today

Every joyful golden ray chases darkness from the cell

after his roommate falls asleep he stays up late with a good book

and prays for a nice meal to fill his ache and warm his heart

He got released today

He had to leave the poster and the lamp.

His friend still had another 10 years.

All for which he'd hoped and prayed was gone, a sentence idly paid.

Yet this was freedom, surely this was good,

but still he longed to see again his friend his bed his black bared door

but knew he never would

Hallow

By Mark Bishop

This shining globe

this golden orb is rotten from the inside out

dying for another fix

another drop of value from humanities puddle of borrowed time

Absorbed into the desert of self to quench the heart and wet the tongue

Well I grow tired of this addiction, of these sponges to oft' wrung

These melodies just tell of these happy breaks from pain unsung

So I'm giving up on living because I heard I'm going to die

and I've said farewell to laughter for I'd so much rather cry

As for love it's not about me so I find it hard to swallow

but I'd rather choke on life's full course

than live and laugh while hallow

Horizon

Read On

By Mark Bishop

I've got a list of favorite places

favorite foods and favorite artists

Where you went last weekend, no idea where your heart is

I can pick out your face in a hundred photos

see your age and who we both know

from these pages black and white I have the facts about your life

I can even know what hurt you

hear all about that thing you went through

how he did this, she said that and every word could be true...

But if I just learn where you've been I miss out on who you are
These periods of time aren't just dots at the end of a line
These sentences pronounced over actions and words
These paragraphs, these chapters sad endings and ever afters
are what capture the glory behind what's authored 

If I can talk about your life but haven't lived it for a minute

careful not to touch the sticky ink upon these pages or stepping out and being in it

What good are lists and likes and looks

because people are novels not textbooks

When the Stars Seem Silent

By Mark Bishop

On a starless autumn eve in a graveyard at rest beneath the shroud of darkness sat a maiden, fair, and sorry for life's toll

She mourned for life cast too soon into yonder field and stoney bosom

Time, anxious to leave this piteous haunt hastened onward until the moon shown bright above the leafless trees and cast it's glow on every quivering tear

They fell from beauty and smote themselves upon the sod

'round the corner of the sepulcher at which the maiden wept

a ghoul waited in silence enchanted by this twilight dirge, this fount of crystals

For a long hour he stood and stirred not as the maiden cried

And all that was dead amongst his crooked limbs and gnarled flesh yearned for life

He shambled forward startling his midnight guest

She gasped and cowered backward

Her form, pale as it was awash in the warm lunar tide became frozen and ivory

The ghoul stopped. And spoke softly.

"Tell, what sorrow spurns sleep and bids even the night to suffer broken hearts?

Perhaps two may bare more patiently the afflictions of life."

These words seemed spoken by the darkness itself, for surely the tattered lips before her were long since bled of such kindness

And yet his gaze from gentle jaundiced eyes extended to her the same offer

Seeing that, like her, he was well acquainted with death and suffered still under its heavy hand

She replied to the darkness and added to its depth

"Here lies the body of my father, his soul not yet accounted for

Perhaps the stars can tell but tonight they hide

how can hope be such a small light? such a distant thing not radiant but flickering... and almost gone"

Her words struck the ghoul where his heart should have been for he had been a father

and he had left a son

and he would come, and cry, and break his soul against the walls of stone and lose his voice among the rocks

"My dear, there is pain so great not even the stars dare answer,

Even the watchman of the ages cannot hold back the night.

But hope,

hope is like the moon,

It shall rise and show most brightly on the eve of your despair.

It harkens you to daylight and reminds you of the sun."