in memorandum

As if the air has weight beyond its allotted place

Pushing down, crushing, seeping in like bile compressed into the soul's space

And I remember each tear, remember each silent torment

I remember the invisible crush of the words unsaid yet left to foment

I felt your eyes, your accusing eyes

Placing that letter, scarlet, around my neck

Judging and quietly moving in the dark to punish 

And draw out malicious vengeance

For the crime of sight.

Sight that lays bare the ugly taking

Lays bare the greed and sickly sweet wakings

I saw you and you hated me for it.

I threw myself to karma, to truth.  I walked on

Though the thorns and daggered blades of your morass pulled at me I trudged on

To find myself, eventually, stepping out in that far place

The same man, but changed.  Missing parts, others bulging and strange

But always the strength is defined by the absence, yes?

The cup cannot take in more without spilling, yes?

And, in that bit spilt, though it is well spent,

Some piece is too melded in to the offall to be kept

And I must look with longing and see that bit of me bereft.

Thus I sit, long after your hooks have torn free

Long after your darts and arrows no longer reach me

Though you, no doubt, still feebly cast them about

Unaware of their pitiful reach, their impotency.

Yet....sitting here and remembering,

I feel them just the same, 

Though the part of me they tore has long since succumbed to entropy.

moments

 A soft, chill embrace, the midnight wind 

Touching, whispering a comprehensible sensation that leaves the skin flushed and tingling.

And the yip of coyotes calling to one another in a frantic cacophony,

The distant splash of waterfowl, the bovine lowing, bringing a life into the cold night.

Stars beyond counting wink down as if to co-conspire on the cold dirt road.

It culminates, it amalgamates itself into this,

A moment.  

Fleeting, quickly passing into the fading ether of the past,

Yet imprinted now.

Edges fuzzy in recall, the details vaguely lost, yet the moment remains.

Long after the path is spent and days have changed, it will remain.  

Indelible on the canvas of the soul,

As much a feeling as an image, perhaps more so.  

And this moment, this hazy snapshot in time,

It is to be cherished, to be coveted.  

Long it will offer respite.

When the whirlwind of the people and places that tear at us all leave the soul tattered and trembling,

Deep into the quiet vaults of the soul one looks and draws it out.

Tattered from wear, from the frequent caress of gentle memory

It, the moment, will bring warmth against the cold.

Will bring peace against the raging chaos.

And in time, if we are wise,

We will see.  

Life is not beautiful because it is punctuated by these moments.

Life is beautiful because it is lived in these moments.  

Guard the moments.  Seek them out.  Live them in memory over and again.

For when the curtain closes, those moments will be all we really ever had.

Rememberance

 So now we raise our glasses 

To the fallen, to the gone

Who look down in silent vigil 

At we, who must move on

I will never cease remembrance

I will raise a glass to you

I will thunder out our voices

Reviving memories anew

That I may we earn my place among you

That I may we pay the debt I owe

That I may rise to meet the ones

Who set themselves to be my foe

And when the tally has been counted

And on my shield I am laid down

I'll raise a glass there with you

In Valhalla's halls renowned

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.

 

the breaking hold

Like a drifting breeze you passed out of my day.
Remaining still, I have the pictures, the scent, the stirring of the air in passing
yet I cannot hold on to you.
As if passing on a street and the scent of lavender wafts,
disturbing some long lost memory and
turning, I look for it, just out of the grasp of the countenance.
For the briefest moment the tendrils of some pleasant thing gently
and quietly waft across face, enough to feel but not enough to see.
And there I stand, mildly puzzled as I feel that sensation drifting away.
Then I turn, walking on my way. 
Content, but carrying a silent sadness and longing
that I feel but do not comprehend,
knowing some deep and wonderful thing was there and has gone,
and I, the broken, able only to brush against the quietest awareness before it slips away from me.
a single, confused tear falls as I walk along
longing to hold on to it
knowing it will fade, will it or no.

The Deepening

There is a wind

That takes me on

You will not know me,

Thereupon

The lovely curves of beauty deep

Are lost upon the frigid steep.

I am not there, the one you see

The one you love

 You long to be

I am not there

The crimson stain

The constipated, foul refrain.

The place I stand is far away

Far off from where your fancies play

Far off from here, your tepid ways

A distant score, a wretched place.

And there the darkness dwells so deep

You cannot know, you cannot keep

You cannot help but fall, so steep

Infiltrates all your peace’ed sleep

But wake’d mind cannot contrive

The cold and feckless

Fratricide

The call to empty, silent place

Where there the emptiness embrace…