The Hunting Lodge

Peaked roof and rolling gusts

Bathed in the powder

Of winter’s kiss

Frost-bitten feet and starved bodies

Trudging through the shadowed steps

Ice refracts shades of color

Red, blue and green

As the boiled skulls of those departed

Fill the air with azure haze

The walls filled with crimson screams

Drip scarlet from skin flung in excess

Illuminated by the gentle fire’s whispers.

Ash clings to vacant seats

And ceilings cave to grief

The blood smeared faces of lovers lost

Trapped within their halls.

Laughter breaks the silent scene

Its shattered, limp remains

And speaks to dreams of evergreen

Somewhere far away.

Not An Artist

I wish I could paint you a picture

With the crushed dyes of nature’s spectrum

Berries, leaves and grain

Splashes of life

Encircled and directed

By winds measured and meted. 

I’d hope to cast in color

The thought’s complexion

Captured between sheets of canvas

Stretched across our minds

Interconnection and bisection 

Of ideas of beauty and style

Reflected in mirrors and refraction of fears

And hopes we’ve put aside.

Yet, I have only the darkened, shadowed script

Of graphite and pen

To sketch these fickle words

That slope and bend

To the folly of my heart.

Empathephant

You’re my little elephant,

But neither can remember

How we know each other so well.

Nights pass into day

As recollections of conversations blur

Into indistinct smilies and laughter.

Joy has never come so naturally,

Yet there it is

Thriving in a forest of lines and verse.

Stumbling over words that were craft

Simple things weave into rhythms

And songs of elevated thought

Fall short of the emotions

Worthlessly conjured to describe

The majesty therein.

Forgive my weak utterances

My stony fingers and lead tongue

Unfit to even murmur of your grace.

Release found in speech unrestrained

By judgements passed in blind acceptance

Of ancient script and rhyme

Fined by numbers unrestricted

By words unfit for consumption

The height of presumption

And arrogance defined. 

Weather the weather

And whether you’d like it or not

Remember November 

And betray not the mortal thoughts

That pose in recompense of time

Frozen in stone coffins

Shaped like the dead we’ve left behind

Nailed shut

With the gag orders of sewn lips

And manacled fingers

Bled past color

To fill the ink pots of reconstruction

Of lines drifting and dividing

Nations and notions

Mountains and oceans

Apart. 

Definition

They spoke of you in lines and curves

Assigned irrational numbers

Indicative of unquantifiable data

Based on blurred vision

Driven by neither heart nor mind.

And failed to weigh the words

And the actions that made up

Much of who you were,

At least to me…

Hope

Hope is fickle bastard

Born of miscommunication

Well intended gestures

And assertions shrouded in respect

Eluding the surgical precision

By which I remove, displace

And catalog my emotions.

Filed away and compartmentalized

In ways they’ll never hurt

Without consent,

I bar them mentally in neat stacks,

Needles and hay alike.

But hope is a spark,

Easily snuffed if conditions favor,

Or a roaring fire in consummation

Of walls and fortresses of steel.

So give me hope

In silence and absence of hate,

But tremble not

When I am ablaze.

Muddled Conception

Drugs are coursing through my veins

Uppers, downers and in between

Curving perception

Casting precaution to the sky.

Illusions dance before senses ensnared

By gentle shadows shaped

Within a cast of pure existence

Experienced as a moment in space

Preserved and observed

In mute recollection.

Yet, they quickly pass without consent

To leave desolate

Once impassioned pleas.

My tongue is the friction of my thoughts

Sliding against the lips that contain the words

Perched precariously still

It is silent betrayal of motion tangling devotion

To a higher form of worship, in pen

Ink slowly staining fingertips that tilt

With the whims of Calliope

And caress the senseless heart

With promises born of regrets

Unwilling to be forgiven or forgotten.

Haunt me with your token words

Traced in the fluid of broken sounds

Drenched in the precious scent

That lingers from your touch

And fills my mind with your taste.

Shake me from this deepened slumber

Show me why I live

Why I breathe

And why the words familiar

Are alien to my tongue

Whenever you’re around.

Words

Fold into poetry

Like origami shapes

Filled with ink

Bursting

Into patterns unreal

Echoing the withheld

Withdrawn proposals

Silent

Sketching of outsiders

Struggling to manifest

The inner workings

Deranged

Arrangements of futility

Arguing in favor

Of disparaging hopefulness

Forgotten.

Incarnations of Glory

Blood and soul pass

Intertwining like hands clasped

In intercession and supplication

Of unworthy and impassioned whims

Colliding and concurring

Contorting and conjuring

Captivated cessation of guilt.

Confessions lined with feigned

Indifference to consequence

Catalogued as simple inconveniences

To minds more set on progression

Than obsession with fading breathes

Reach out to ears deafened

By the whispering of the circumstantial.

Listen, they cry

In voices softened by harsh screams

Heard only by those powerless

To provide necessities of body

Blood and soul drifting

In winds set by dreams once held

Now slipping into the void

Left by words unsaid

As tokens spent in faithfulness

For passage denied.