Let Me Be

oh artful life I scorn thee now
for what is born beyond despair
with words no solace is allowed
they only desperation bear.

oh poetry leave my consciousness
your rhyme doth my reason steal
and your music cannot bless
away the emptiness I feel.

so fair muse please leave me be
at least for now, my heart is sold
mortgaged in mortality
a base transaction written cold.

oh artful thoughts I curse thy ways
and ask you let my mind know peace
if not forever, at least this day
until all darkest thoughts are ceased.

The Plough

the wain of years long passed
has upon a once fair face
the furrows of a seasoned field
set in its fallowed place
yet without the steady plough
the broken barren ground
gives not of life its fullest fruits
when harvest comes around.

The Sum

I do not curse the glass
nor the shifting sand from which it comes
time like fire
both burns and steels
and of its flames
I am the sum.

A Star

she became a star
seen only when nights are dark
and hearts are heavy

The Summoning

call me not to the ancient hills
as save a memory of broken mills,
they were the end of my beginning
and now to valleys am I damned.

take me not to meadows green
for all their flowers I have seen
they marked me then a nearly man
but from them I have turned.

summon me to forests dark
where sings no nightingale or lark
these dying trees my grave to mark
a lost existence spurned.

Silence

my days will end
with godly perjuries revealed
but alas in death
they shall remain
silent behind cold lips sealed

Rewards

these cold gods of yours
know not of love’s desires
and care much less for sacrifice
our passions do require,
so deny the heaven’s host
hold fast to earthly thoughts
for at least there is no cost
nor deities to court
when we let our souls embrace
the coursing of the blood
for this alone may satisfy
more than extolled rewards

Lines

Italian frescoed clouds
hang still upon the frost stained sky
like Empyrean dreams
from centuries long forgotten by and by
no apprentice journeyman
held brush upon this living air
a master’s palette blended
could only paint so fair

Downstream

downstream
not waiting for the bodies
of friends or enemies
to pass by
dwelling on the future
is as the past, a cause to deny,
time is too precious
for such folly
so instead
I close my eyes
and hear only the present
singing in the water.

Tides

the tide denied the sanderlings
thus the little hidden things
dared to raise their eyeless heads
from their unlocked sandy beds
in waters dark as Acheron
until the new moon takes the sun
and bares them to its silver’s plea
to pull their sanctum back to sea
so the ploughmen take the till
and on the sands their feathers spill.