Artistic Integrity – 2nd Place Winner, Fr. Callan Poetry

Artistic Integrity by Renee Angle 2nd Place Winner, Father Callan Poetry Contest

When your poem burned, I wasn’t there; I was writing another one.

Your parchment was swept into unattended flames, Carried by capricious, uncertain breeze – I never dreamed, full of hunger, ill at ease, Unraveled; driven mad by buried shames – Hands ink-slathered, I ached as I labored, Too complacent to see that the story was done.

Quite content in unrest, Though my life’s work was done.

My happily ever after – but all foresight gone, Engrossed, I fitfully sought to write on; The Artist, bleeding; more anxiety than brawn – So I painted a beautiful sunset I’d dreamt With my back to a setting sun.

I had there a panorama beyond conception, But the catatonic blind seek a better one; In agony, striving, colors blend, false perceptions – Until the last filtered threads of the twilight had gone.

And so now, she stands hopeless in reckoning darkness, All her pretty self-deceptions winding swiftly undone…

Too late for her pinnacle; the fires have come, And they’ve long since languished, well ahead of the sun.

But then, the Artist opens filmed eyes and sees – (Alchemy…)

Enlightened, I perceive the path of absolution, With your poem reduced to black carbon ruin… So now, I shall follow it into the embers; Immolating, white-hot, my body may be – but never again will the sun set on Me.

Conclusion averted, the Creator stays free, She need only restructure all Destiny.

(There are harder roles I could have been called to be…)

Transformed to the ashes of my true masterpiece, And mingling in smoldering Eternity (Where Form has no bearing on being Free!), We’re indiscernible ashes, martyred artistry – …This may very well be the device I conceived, But nothing is too strange to soothe Love’s bereaved: Not too late for a last draft, (Never.) My Love – Do you see? I have sacrificed body for the spirit it freed. All things are as one in Infinity.

Thus – even the sun now left behind in our story: As we realize our live dream state’s transparent glory; Final crumbling fall sacks a once-noble city – But… I’d seen her finite futility Already.

And loosed from such delusions, joined again we shall be, So I burn, screaming out my apology: Please forgive me; I know you’ve by and by come to see That the sun cannot set now On you within me.

No, the sun can never set again – Not on the dust of You and Me.