ARCO VAN IEPEREN

ARCO VAN IEPEREN

Dark

the lack of light

instils a chilling fear

as sensory input

has changed its balance

sight for sound

life’s precariousness

hits with a vengeance

and fleeting fragility

flows the veins

and yet

there is comfort

an invisible blanket

to wrap up in

an imploded world

like a childhood playground

brings a familiarity

that invokes completion

inferring the notion

no harm will come

in this thick nothingness

Forsaken

she roams the outskirts of the night,

the dark sublime in its essence and yet

reflections of the past peek in,

puncture her sanctuary, when pain sets in

like a rising sun, its unprotected rays

melting her defences and leaving bare

the inside of her tortured soul,

open to the intrusion of images

that have haunted it for so long.

retrieved pictures trigger a madness

just around the corner, awaiting

its cue to overtake, to seize control

and rule its victim’s thoughts.

she tries to invoke higher help

but her mind will not be healed

in this life.

Marooned

cast on the shore of a sea

of people, he claps his hands,

seeking a guide in finding sense

in this disappearing reality.

surrounded by glass trees

in a fruitless concrete jungle,

the suited savages push him about,

oblivious to his suffering,

lost and lonely in their midst.

he sees the fleeting futility, the decay

of crumbling values. he understands

the irretrievability of any form of Eden.

with his eyes upwards he gets ready

to face the irrevocable end.

ARCO VAN IEPEREN

ARCO VAN IEPEREN was born in Gouda, the Netherlands, but has lived and worked in Poland for over two decades. As a lecturer at the State University of Applied Sciences in Elblag, he teaches general and business English, correspondence, and economics. He writes poetry in Dutch, English and Polish and has been published in a number of magazines and anthologies. He is a member of the Alternative Elblag Literary Club and the “Alternatywny” society, which organizes the annual “Wielorzecze” literary festival. He has published a volume of poetry in Dutch, titled “De tango met mijn schaduw” [The Tango with my Shadow] (1996) and is currently working on a volume of poetry in Polish. I hereby state that I am the author of the poems ‘Dark’, ‘Forsaken’, and ‘Marooned’. I confirm that Our Poetry Archive has the right to publish these poems in their anthology of Spiritual Poetry “Beyond Borders”.