This is my Last Serenade and Other Poems

By Alex Guffey

This is My Last Serenade

Floating in the span of space, hearing the hymn of my swan song. This is the infinite sadness of song, sung on a moment’s notice, sealed on a permanent staccato. I feel you as you fall away. I hear you say you want to stay. This is my last serenade, singing my heart out, all for you. From yourself you cannot run away, I grab your hand, keep you at bay. A notion of notes, a collision of keys, harmonizing in rhythm, homing in on tones. Come now, sing me a song, let me believe I have not sung my last. Let me believe I am not done singing my tender tune for you. Let me believe, let me trust, let me have faith in you and for you. You cannot float away, you cannot fly away. You try to drift in the vast black, away from listening ears. Float to me, sing to me your fears. I listen for the quiet in the middle of us, and it fizzles and nears to fading out. Fade in, fade out, fade, fade, fade. 

To Each Their Own Wishes and Dreams

Completely surrounded by the blackness that was created, is comprised and maintained from the countless generations here and gone before me. It’s unfathomable and it’s epic. We wonder where it all ends when we end, and all we have to do is look up and stop wondering. 

The endless vastness of this deep void, it is pulled over our eyes. But it’s not there to blind us or to cover us. It’s there to remind us of the truth. It’s there to remind us of the way of life. It’s there to show us, in all its twinkling and glowing and breathless magic, that all our goals and desires and aspirations actually do happen.

Wishes and dreams aren’t real, right? That’s what we tell ourselves. We tell others too, but we know they are not listening. They’re too busy telling themselves the same thing. There’s no physical proof that we can grab and hold onto, something that convinces us we can stop the wonder, or rather stop the questions.

But here’s the question that every individual here now, that has been here, that will be here on the floating blue sphere that’s a speck in the black ocean spread out into an infinity of other black oceans; what happens when we die? 

This is what bakes your noodle. It’s going to seem ridiculous. It’s going to seem hard to believe. If there is not something more than this place, if there is not something more to this life, if there is not something that continues for us after we leave this blue sphere, then why are we here? Why do we die? There would be no point to any of it. That is why we wish. That is why we dream. We blindly and loyally give into these actions, while all the while knowing it is for nothing. The word results does not exist.

But just have faith. It is probably the hardest thing that all of us will ever do in our lives. It may seem like a cruel joke, but it is the single most important thing we all will do. Even if you feel like giving up, running away or quitting, just don’t. This is not all for nothing. The very definition of all we do here, the reason for everything we do, the questions we seek all have the same answer. The energy we possess, the spirit that is held within us, the soul that encapsulates our core, the journey we all will embark on ends in the forever universe. 

Follow and chase your dreams. Make your grandest wishes. Gaze upon the twinkling and glowing. To each their own galaxy among their own universe. To each their own, and own alone. Your wishes and dreams are waiting, and they will be whatever you want.

Reflecting by the Riverbank

Peering in time. I’m hearing the running river as it rolls over the rounded, smooth rudiment. The water bounces the sun's rays as it mirrors the blinding beams, a tiny fraction of striking light.

Gazing ahead and behind, through the watery ripples of what is gone and what is to be. I sit and I reminisce, remembering memories of the life past, watching jays and sparrows as they casually glide and fly by.

Not believing the yesterdays are over. Rather they hibernate in the frozen sands of time, reversing in my rearview mirror like an upside down hour glass. The yesterdays do not disappear, they reappear in dreams, playing in the fabricated minds’ eye.

Reflecting my days gone by, playing them over in my mind, remembering them for what they are; an intricate part of my life now ended but not forgotten, a stationary piece of background on the stage of life as it progresses forward in the spotlight.

The leaves on the trees are rustled by the moving wind, in a whispering conversation of the deepest context, discussing, in a palaver, of what is to come on this trail that is the version of my life. I cannot hear my name on the wind, too subtle to discern. But I am spoken of, by the spiritual space that fills overhead.

This is a moment of remembrance. This is a moment of reminding. This is a moment that is speaking only to me, letting me in on its secret that is passed onto me now; that my life is not ending, nor will be ended, as long as the soul knows it’s passing onto eternity.

Where do the waters wade me. Where do these walking paths move me. Where do the wheels of bikes roll me. Where do the ever-climbing higher trees carry me. This is a story of a life reflected to the South, of a life anticipated to the North, of a life ebbed and flowed to the East and West.

Living, seeing, being, existing, simply letting what was become a glyph in the tunnel of night, allowing what is to come etched onto the canvas in the beacon of daylight. The energy, the light, the soul, the aura, the sparks of unseen electric waves, carried on the particles of wind, tousle my hair and tingle my skin, touch the tips of fingers and brush the ripples of my existence in the now.

I gaze forward and around, behind and up and down. This life and its events, its times, its occurrences, its memories, its situations, its good and bad, its heart breaking and rejoicing, its melancholy and joyfulness, its happy and sad, its worthwhile and wasteful, its jubilance and rejecting, its ecstasy and sinking sorrow, its EVERYTHING that was, and is, and what will be, is a time to reflect.

REFLECT. On it all. On absolutely everything, on every single second. It’s you, it’s me, it’s what made and will make, everything gone and everything ahead. 

This life. My life. It’s an infinite rope that floats on the river beside the riverbank. It goes on forever. It does not sink. Every inch symbolizes every time in your life. This life for us, in this form, in this exterior, in this vessel, is here but for a mere instance that’s over before you can blink, before you can take another breath.

We all will be gone, but this is not the end. Our souls in this new form of energy will drift alongside that rope, where time is not real and ending is not an existence. The river flows on, it never dries up, it never flows into the riverbed. It roils and ripples and runs and reflects the infinite shining of the sun.

I’m reflecting on it all. I’m seeing how important it all is, how meaningful and special every single moment of my life was and is, and especially what is to come. It all made me what I am, it’s still making me what I will be. 

I sit by that riverbank. I watch the water. I listen to the calming natural sounds of the natural world. I will just be. I just am. I’m there, I’m here, I’m everywhere. I reflect on my life, and the world I lived in and the life I led will reflect on me.

Lambent

Brightest light, brightest shine
Refracting
Existential telescope
Choreographed kaleidoscope 
Colors fighting, invaded mirrored eye
Overlooking the ominous clay covered canyon
Wishing a wish in the wealthiest of wells
I stare in endless time
It stares back
On and on, forever the red walls expand
What am I but a lost ant
Milling and meandering
The makeshift mazes
Of millennia molded in the colony
In everlasting eons
Sliding and sliding
Slipping
Skidding and skirting
Shirttails flapping
I’m falling and faltering
Flailing
The bright light shining dimmer
The shadow shifting
Lost in the lengths of limestone
Hues of maroon and mango
The Mandarin is not orange
It's not even that pulpy fruit
It’s a strange language I can’t understand
Why is the orange Mandarin
It does not speak to me
It speaks in trees spilling up to space
Upon descent I thought I saw a tarantula
Why did I think of a spatula
They don’t rhyme
Tell Marshall he’s not retiring
It’s okay, your rapping is fine
Without insects and utensils
I lost my train of thought
Tumbling, tumbling
Trying to train my twisted thought process
Trying to tactfully take a leap
This divide is not lambent
Not ambient
Not shining and blinding
Anymore
The sky flew away
The sun slid away
The clouds rolled away
The walls plummeted away
My existence winked away
Into the dullest and drollest
Darkened surprise party
The lamb is lambent
Funny, black and white
Ironic
I’m the black sheep
I look up
The white light climbs
Blue canvas spreads
Red ridges radiate
Its echoing in this chamber
Its crumbling in this crevasse 
Its creating a collective chaos
Its clambering and clutching my soul
And now the spirit is exonerated
The aura is exorcised
Spin me out
Call it
Faith restored
The 10 deer frolic
Under the eagle

Dream Oeuvre

Lounging lazily on the carpet of green underneath me
Gazing upward at the blowing trees brushing the sky over me
The words running through my head longing for pen to paper
Born of imagination and creativity
The words thought ache for breaking captivity
Longing for a fever dream
Reaching for a pipe dream
Words waiting
Words wanting
Fill the pages from fantasy
Develop ideas into reality
Now write
Write from dream to idea to written graphite
Scribble and flow the poetry in motion
The literature is realized 
The oeuvre is real
Below the passing horizon
Atop purple flowers

Photographic

Your eyes are cameras, they store pictures in your brain
You can visit and see them whenever you please, and you will never be the same

They are unchanged but you are captured
Such a beautiful blanket of white kept secret in your mind

Endured

Suffering silently, suffering patiently, fighting with myself
Screaming internally, passively attacking the walls with the angry words
Looking to those near with pleading, accusing eyes, hearing my yelling but not listening
A lifetime of wrong place, wrong time, each year filled with why me, why me
My questions, comments, phrases, inquiring, met with cold ignoring silence
Feels like my existence faded, my self being oblivious, ignorance abound
I’m here, I’m here, please make this stop from happening every day
I don’t deserve this, I used to be a nice person
A good person
Don’t hate me, don’t misunderstand me because you don’t understand
I’m introverted, you’re extroverted, I need to recharge
I retreat to the quiet, disappear inside myself
Stop speaking at me, stop peering through me, stop glancing around me
It’s done, I’m done, enough, enduring is over, you will not ignore
You’re not there, I’m not here
Now endure me

Ghosted.

Alex Guffey is from a small town in the mid west, and he has lived in another town in the west for over 30 years. Alex has had 2 books previously published, one fiction and one non fiction. Alex has a liberal arts degree in English and psychology. He loves reading and especially writing, both fiction and poetry. Alex has an extensive book collection of over 400 books. Alex loves to get outside to enjoy nature, ride his bicycle and take walks by the river.