Poetry: Untitled - Earlier Composition

His eyes are waterfalls,

Raining saline streams.

Look closely

as they tumble past,

see a brief flicker,

a flash of misty color,

vague and intangible,

like convictions

of a man you know,

a wanderer who never moves,

lost in worry never seen,

but in the spectral streaks

of fearful tears.

The droplets coalesce,

A pool of evidence,

Reflecting not the man,

but the inverted images

of judges at the bench.

His tears are criminals

to be locked away,

the waterfalls condemned

are dammed and used

to spin the wheels

and turn the gears,

to power the machine.

Insistent and untiring,

The crowds cry out against

the feeling and the fear,

so openly expressed.

The man, he slumps,

And bows his head in shame,

Looking at himself

With vision blurred

By liquid lenses,

at his quivering hands,

luminescent with the colors

of light bent, but unbroken,

more beautiful for the change.

The man’s head rises,

Slowly as the rising sun,

Certain and unstoppable

as the insight’s dawn.

He sees the world refracted,

Bending through the tears,

And now it bows to him,

For his is a strength born

Of their weakness,

and impossible to break.