Break, oh endless winter
Flaunting your precipitous splendor
Freezing the skeletal soul of man
Excessively boasting beyond your span
Bringing your brutal fist to ground
So ice and snow and sleet abound
You have tarried too long in this land,
And we are bowed low under your heavy hand
Watching our fleeing breath dissolve
As our prayers, the sticking point of our resolve,
Waiting still, for the thaw to save
While you turn our meadows into graves.
Author Archives: viewingcamelot
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Cold as the Grave
A Breath Away
You’ve tucked your burning hands
Underneath my shoulder blades,
Inhaling fire in piercing waves
Exhaling when it fades,
And what is your name?
And where was your home
Before you made one
In the wheeze and the moan?
Are you growing, or going away,
With every pang I ignore,
Are your flaming hands holding me down,
Or are they pushing me forward?
Striking Out Colorless
I yield
This flesh that rips like paper,
And weeps at every fold,
Incapable of withstanding
The fire or the cold.
I relent
My stone fist,
Fossilizing life and days,
Poverty and wealth
And my every wicked display.
I kneel
On broken legs,
I offer the wrist to chain,
To live, to live a slave,
To die if You ordain.
I raise the white flag
Over my fortress You’ve laid siege;
I surrender all,
All my Lord, to thee.
Somnambles
Pain rouses me from slumber,
Keeps me awake to talk,
And I lumber into conversation,
Too tired to politely walk,
And if You want me to hear
I am glad for Your attention,
Only open my ears
If You mean my comprehension
But You alone are wise;
If need be
Open just my eyes.
Only the Lonely
Nothing to offer,
So little to give,
Overextended by every
Last day I have lived
And would you forgive me
If I sank in deep?
Latching on secure
Where there is no clasp,
Belittling the future
To exploit the past
And I cannot grasp the reason
I remain another season
I wait for a beacon to guide me.
Nary Go Round
Finite are the times
The carousel goes round
A painted horse is deaf and blind
It can neither hear the sounds,
Nor cast the vigilant eye
Along the sky, nor ground.
It cannot twirl forevermore,
Each ride has a start and stop.
Once you climb aboard,
And once you climb atop,
Ups and downs are sure,
And nary a rider may swap.
Crude Awakening
Night sweats, and in my dreams
All my friends turn out their lights,
“Forgive! Forgive!” I scream,
I beg the cold, the empty night.
Windows closed like pursed lips.
Doors locked like extended palms,
As always I slip, I slip, I slip
Into the black, the waiting calm
The air is cold against my skin
Where is the warmth of day?
But still you sleep, you slumber-
Awake now, while you still may.
A Patch Made in Heaven
It’s raining self-despair outside,
And the clatter on my roof
Of water-damaged words
Sings aloud its sharpened proof
Cracks along the heights of me
Allowing rain passage through
It’s dripping all around me,
And the patter of the sound
Reminds me how I leak,
How I’m at risk to drown,
But I know the roof I lost
Can still, again, be found
So I pray He takes His able hands,
And wraps them around my soul,
To protect me from the coming flood,
To plug up all my holes,
As He has done, time and again,
When rain exacts its toll.
The Flash and the Fade
My face is flushed.
I am touched again
By brevity, and the severity
Of overturned nests
And untended graves.
She stands brave,
Shields and flags and
Empty scabbards,
Foils and sharps and
A parry too late.
Each breath a rebellion,
From a bloody womb
Into a bloody world
A white-fisted petal,
A nightingale in a jar.
Siege the inevitable,
Voices only composed
Of exhaled air
Songs diminished,
Replaced, interred.
Unpacked
Each new step
Unfolds something better.
The baggage I carry with me:
Love letters.
Even I forget
The strength for new steps
Doesn’t come from amnesia
Or pickled regrets
But active Love
will travel.
viewingcamelot 