Monthly Archives: August 2013

The fear that rides upon my back
And chews upon my ear
Holds me still, holds me here
To feed his next attack
And I must act
I know it well, be it a stranger
But all at risk, all in danger
I cling to as intact
Even if it leaves me sterile
And is it the fear I’ve worn
Or the mass that gives it form
That puts me in this peril?


Chance of Rain

The sky bleeds a violent gray
Like some sidewalk chalk masterpiece
Under the storm’s display
Raining in the depths of me
Rivulets of dread dismay
Is it anger? Or sorrow? Or sin?
Or just a rainy day
Seeping through the cracks of me,
Leaking in to how I pray
Dripping, dripping, each drop whispers,
Eager to join, eager to say,

What if it isn’t going to be okay?


The Soapbox Blues

Every voice begs to be heard,
And what have I to provide?
More of the same old absurd
Verses misapplied,

Thank you, sir, I tried.

Every platform speaks aloud
Of the author’s expertise,
But I live under a shroud
Ignorance by degrees

Silence Please


It Be Morrow

For remembrance of the nearly lost
Are pangs severe to feel,
But there is payment for the cost,
It clatters through the coffer seal
And echoes whence it has been tossed.

How alike we must have been,
Two fraternals in our mother’s womb
Which is the watered earth that spins
‘Til parasites of sin consumed
The features we once shared akin.

We pause on our reflection:
The dam of time.
I flinch at your inflection;
I see you glare at mine.
We pray in different directions

And the sublime quality of similarity
Is strangled with our spacious disparity.


Revolving Around the Sun

There are things in life
We cannot change,
Cannot bear, cannot
Resist to rearrange.
I throw myself upon hard facts,
But even as I concentrate
On the general consensus view
Hard facts can never compensate
For the fathomless and unfading
Longing of the soul.
Reason has been my closest friend,
But does not leave me whole.
These things I cannot change
I treat as foreign and bizarre,
But they are not so strange:
They are a part of who we are,

These wild souls spinning on a ball-
And hard facts really aren’t quite so hard after all.


Histories

Oh the heavy history of man
Who collects his wars
Long after the land is divided again,
With nothing left to explore,
And the plunder has spoiled
In the storehouses.

All these years of ink and page, and
How can these habits come to gain
Reflecting with the written word,
But that brothers in ink still have their names
And some crude caricature of who they were
Ever still remains.


Our Journey

We walked along, side by side,
You, following the path, and I
Leaning to peek in the canyon.
Glancing to see my presumed companion
Has run ahead without me.
You pursued the course,
And I lingered to gaze at remorse
Who is lovely from behind
While blind, while disinclined
To turn on me, to see
What I put myself up to some days.
He is cruel when he returns my gaze.
I wander the fringes of our route,
Do you go on without me, or wander about
To find me again?
I am aimless. I cannot wend
Through these dark woods,
I cannot find my way to good,
Without you as my guide.

Will you walk again, side by side?


Publication

I have no more words to understand,
They have slipped and tripped and
Fallen aground.
They are foreign sounds.
I have lost their definitions,
No more premonitions
Of tangled webs of words
No more using the absurd
To illuminate the apparent.
I once thought them inherent
Not some scheming enterprise.
These efforts do not energize
Under the weight of exposure.
I have lost my literary composure,
And my dear, long friend.
I cannot pretend

I know what I’m doing.


The Ruby Portal

Red Sky at Morning
And you were born in the churning storm
Following the warning.

Violence in the wind,
You board up your windows,
In limbo again

While the tempest rages-
Your most-valuables
Barricaded in cages.

Red Sky at Morning
Blink away your warnings.

 

Red Sky at Mourning
These are your days of turning,
Unfurl your sails, still forming

Warm yourself in the light of day,
Put your face into the tide
Get your strides underway

These howling winds will pass
You are seaworthy, and your hull
Will remain intact

Red Skies never last,
The sun’s fury sets

This too shall pass.


Throes

I write to you
No more

When you are still
Just who you are
And the night chills
Me from your far
Shoulders.

I think of you
Just barely

Like a book, ill-gotten,
Neither finished
Nor forgotten
A memory diminished
But not vanished.

I speak to you
In silence.

The faded ember
Has burned my hands
The scars remember
The heart understands
What memory won’t render.