• Winter

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    February 11, 2016 /  Writing

    All must die-
    So I am told-
    And death appears
    As creeping cold.

    Fiery leaves,
    defiance bold;
    They quake in wind,
    they lose their hold.

    Color flees, and
    Flowers fold;
    silver steals
    The place of gold.

    The last of warmth
    And life is sold;
    An aging world
    Is become old.

  • Knights

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    February 11, 2016 /  Writing

    A priceless gem beyond compare
    Has fallen in the dirt;
    Trampled low, its faces soiled,
    And sullen in its hurt.

    Beneath the filth you see the light,
    The flash of beauty, cowled;
    The muck is all the sadder for
    The glory it has fouled.

    We scramble low, within this mud
    Of treachery and hate;
    In tears and sweat, in our own blood,
    against the teeth of fate.

    We do it all to save those gems,
    To pluck them from the mire;
    For each is priceless, past compare,
    And only cleansed by fire.

  • August 25, 2015 /  Writing

    A man’s a thing of reason,
    Of logic, sense and thought;
    He knows what he must do,
    he knows what he must not.

    A lucky man, long-sheltered
    From Urth’s capricious whim;
    He hails my verse’s wisdom
    Because it speaks of him.

    The rest of us have knelt
    To pain’s instructive hand,
    And learned that naught but chance
    Winnows beast from man.

    In red we are all sculpted
    The same beneath the skin;
    muscle, bone, and blood,
    an animal’s within.

    If yours is safely buried,
    ’tis little cause for pride;
    no wound’s yet cut you deep
    to loose it from inside.

  • August 22, 2015 /  Writing

    I am a map of decisions,
    of choices carved in blood.
    A record of priorities
    and mistakes
    and badges of valiant stupidity.
    The last echoes of dead men’s voices
    Shout muted lines
    when there’s someone to hear.
    You, especially
    wrote yourself a second life
    On me,
    in red.

  • May 15, 2015 /  Writing

    Sunset slinks in slowly,
    a slanting of the light;
    subtle shadows lengthen,
    as day succumbs to night.

    Dark stole a march upon me,
    its weary, witless foe;
    This crumbling heart and body
    were conquered long ago.

    I am not what I was,
    nor will I be again;
    formidable opponent,
    most generous of friends.

    Like shadows are at best
    Poor veil cast by the real,
    The virtues I possess
    are rust of former steel.

    But when I am with you,
    I dare to feel remade-
    As if new beauties rise
    when elder glories fade.

    I feel I am becoming,
    though what, I could not say;
    Only be beside me
    through the dying of the day.

  • March 19, 2015 /  Writing

    I woke anew this morning
    To a blue, indifferent sky;
    I cursed the callousness that let
    Such cheerful clouds drift by.

    The sun yet spun above me
    On an axis fixed and fast;
    Hours slipped as always
    From the present to the past.

    Yesterday changed nothing,
    And tomorrow will not, too;
    Though life should still its paces
    Now it walks no more in you.

    Many graves I visit,
    And many friends I’ve lost;
    Why should one more death
    Come with such a cost?

    I don’t know how to mourn you,
    but not from wrath or pride;
    I somehow never dreamed of
    A world in which you died.

    What a terrible fucking poem, it sounds as if it were written by a sixteen-year-old – no grace, no elegance, no – *the page devolves into angry scribbles*

  • December 5, 2014 /  Writing

    A legless, lowered slither,
    A worm’s a creeping thing;
    in fetid dirt it burrows
    Safe from higher stings.

    Shame and ego pass
    Unheralded, unknown;
    So animal and earthy,
    it makes of shit a throne.

    ‘Tis only man who walks
    Two-foot with measured stride;
    To be “upright” is honor,
    to “stand so tall” is pride.

    O happy worm! You fathom
    Naught of what you lack;
    Six feet underground
    Both day and night are black.

    Yet had you glimpsed the sun
    But once, its end you’d mourn;
    So might the legless man
    Wish he had not been born.

  • July 17, 2014 /  Writing

    You look at me no longer,
    You glance but you see through;
    I have become a window
    To a vista old to you.

    You reach for me no longer,
    though you allow my touch;
    To ask that I am asked for
    is to ask too much.

    You speak to me no longer,
    But in fragments here and there;
    A ‘yes’ or ‘no’ that answers
    But dies in heavy air.

    You seek me out no longer,
    and I am but a toy;
    Dusty on my shelf,
    A beauty, not a joy.

  • April 2, 2014 /  Writing

    Pain is an isolation
    That sunders man from man;
    A deft and deep incision
    That severs all it can.

    The steel of its slim scalpel
    So delicate is turned;
    Before you scent the fire
    Your bridges have all burned.

    With stroke precise and sparing,
    It cuts the good away;
    it purges green and growing
    to fertilize decay.

    Thus man succumbs to monster,
    Selfish beast of pride;
    The cruelest sting is knowing
    it but freed what was inside.

  • April 4, 2013 /  Writing

    We met by chance or whimsy
    At a parting of the way;
    Matched in grace and gifts,
    We chose twixt night and day.

    An inkling of the dawn
    Sparked hope within my eye;
    All that lay before you
    Was blackness sere and dry.

    Was it my soul or wisdom,
    Or heart, or other good,
    That let me see the sunlight
    In the dark where we both stood?

    A criminal, mire-spattered,
    clad in a past of sin:
    how could I lay my choice
    at the feet of good within?

    No, we stood alike in merit,
    Had walked the selfsame road;
    But mere luck to me vouchsafed
    Less permanent a load.

    For those whose fate is settled,
    day still means bitter lives;
    Why should they not choose night,
    and gamble with their knives?

    Brother, I salute you
    In memory of a man
    Whose qualities I honor
    and fate I understand.