pictures of a day

 quiet here, the peace of lonely solitude, reflection

remembering a tilt of head, a slightest voiced inflection

the moments and the glances as the shudder clicked the day

and relentlessly they ticked and spent and now they're gone away

and though the images left here are sweet as honey's taste

the distance and the miles will no doubt wear until they fade

and winds will blow and draw it down like pebbles turn to dust

leaving little more than detritus of longing turned to rust

who am I to weep, it is this loneliness I love.  

the deepest pang that fuels the muse, the drive to rise above

the biting pain that draws from me the words so bittersweet

the stories and the epic tales of love, so rare and fleet

it is the desert that I love, naked and so bare

though I drink the sweet oasis these feet will not stay there

in time and of their own they a' wanderin' will go

to wondrous desolation, under the lonely starlight glow

and drifting through the sage in skin so tender and so frail

and gazing to horizon though I know 'tis no avail

for when I find these feet have walked to yonder, jagged rise

there'll be no rest, but a new, compelling path where I'll abide..

searching

Changed I am and changed I'll be,

The constant drone of travesty.

The telling tales of cauldrons three,

The best of us, the best of me

Is lost in time's wicked embrace,

Is kept in memory's leathern case.

Is tucked away from morning sun

Is left with things now left undone.

For once I stood in open places.

Longed to bask in sunlit spaces.

This world it seems, cared not to taste it,

Crushed it, burned it, beat and chased it.

Left it here a broken tome,

A well lit room without a home,

A silent, gazing, epitaph,

A parody at which they laugh.

But I will walk this broken road.

This endless, tragic, richest lode

Where silently beneath the soil

Awaiting sweat and endless toil

Somewhere a gem is waiting there.

Is sitting, silent, quiet there.

Is longing for my hands to touch

To grasp and feel the timeless rush.

And there unearth the sacred flask,

Nectar which the gods do ask,

That fills the soul in ways unknown

And satiates the dead, alone.

And brings to it the breath of life,

The exhalation of sublime,

The bold sensation of alive,

Antagonist, but without strife.

So I will sit and look about

At all the scenes that move around,

At things that catch and hold my eye,

And pray my search in peace will lie. 

And pray, though fate may prove it so

That this is not the only road,

That this is not the fate decreed

That on this lonely, broken screed,

My feet are destined there to tread,

And wander, awestruck, breath but dead,

And gaze with longing deep and wide

Upon the scenes before my eyes.

Partaking none, but loving still,

The satiated, the fulfilled.