Touch

I miss the embrace
That I may not
have truly felt.
Was it touch?
Or was it mirage,
sensation without substance.
Subsistence of the mind,
sustaining a lie
to sustain head
heart and soul
desire the touch
that the body acquires
so readily,
yet flees
from their grasp
they fall
and scatter,
thought, sound, words
but not touch.

Fall Breeze

Fall comes,
the hot days of seasons past
coming cool.
And I sit
on my porch
and feel the breeze,
the faint touch of wind
on a darkening night,
reminding me of
the heat of that which
passed,
the chill of what is
to come.
Prepare for the future,
they say,
and gather the fuel.
Forget the past,
they say,
and warm yourself
by the fire.
To them, I say this:
The same sun shines
o'er spring and fall.
And while its light
may dim sooner,
its heat may leave us,
I shall remain faithful
to its warm embrace.
Time may take her away
but shall yet return her again.

Sun

If fighting is sure to result in victory
you must fight.
But a fight you may lose
is far greater in magnitude.
If the dice may roll
for or against favor
you must fight
with zeal,
for chance always
lies subordinate
to effort.

Marble

I take up my tools again,
begin to chip away.
All creation is born from destruction,
careful blows exploiting
imperfection in form
to give sensation to meaning.
Resilient to effort, fleeting to time,
still I toil
to make a fraction of thoughts known.

Drawn Breath

Today is the day you discover
the fight never ended.
Surely some saw
the moment you stopped,
but you never truly did.
You simply moved
the field of battle
from the front lines,
bloodstained dirt,
to the streets of peacetime.
The fight never ends,
until your last breath is drawn,
despite already having lost.

The Devil Sits

The devil sits,
watching a plan unfold.
It is not his,
nor any he knows,
but it appeals,
his sense of humor tickled.
He ponders the subtlety
and appreciates
the delicate hand
which must have
been behind it all.
And he watches a chain
that none but he can follow.
Countless tragedies,
all building
to a crescendo,
and he finds himself
transfixed.
It spirals down
onto one individual,
every action sparking
a burn on his skin.
He falls, broken,
suffering,
and finds,
in this person,
a sense of pity,
not from his pain,
but that he was
merely an actor
unaware of the script.
He comes,
and allows this man,
confused,
to see what
beginnings
came to pass upon him.
The man departs,
a path left before him
unfinished,
and the devil finds
the chain unbroken,
himself another link.

Blurred Silence

Swept at the legs,
a torrent
of ice and water,
dirt and fire.
A landslide
that consumes wholly,
drowning me
in motion
to leave me buried
underneath it all
still
silent
alone

Springs

The fall comes after the rise
both its ending and start.
We see it happen,
time and again,
and again,
and again.
We see the heights
from which
we tumble down,
and each landing
makes us ache:
not from the pain,
but from desire.
Rising from the deeps,
we sate ourselves
on the feasts
of the longing
and let our lusts
for the sky
drift,
ashes in the wind.
And so it is only
in the fall
that we truly see
the spring.

Salvation

The sky opens,
a shaft of light
and I see
everything.
An epiphany
of life,
beauty
beyond words.
Have you ever seen
storm clouds
broken this way?
A light in the dark,
hope that there
is something
beyond the storm.
But it disguises.
It is not
salvation from the heavens,
but simply a reminder
that everything
must end
someday,
even the darkness.

Impossibilities

It is not
that I won't
but that I can't describe
the depths of my feeling.
It it impossible.
A million poets
could write
for a million years.
And they could do what I cannot.
They would put it
in words,
and describe perfectly
the how and why,
the reasons,
and each beat of my heart.
And yet still,
they would lack something,
as they would find only
a fraction
of you.

Gifts of Blood

Funny, how things build themselves.
Frailty only found in delicate touch
and strength given only where
pain should be
But still, these things exist
for a reason.
If not my pain, yours?
Are the gifts you give,
so unknowingly,
the gift of blood
taken from the generous
to feed the unworthy?

Whispers of the Blinded Heart

Love is blind?
Not so. Love makes us blind.
At times, to the object:
to glance over those little things
and find joy in what should
bring grievance.
To others:
to become incapable of seeing
just what others do
and who they are,
to forget the face,
the heart of companionship.
But worst of all,
to be made blind to the self:
That moment in which we forget
that we are becoming
all which we despise
and forgetting
not our heart
but what it means
to truly live with it.

Slow black moments

I have died many times before
and will do so many times still.
While each time it becomes no easier
slowly, I have gained a new friend,
Always there, but never otherwise,
during moments
of weakness.
Still, slowly,
I have sought
to leave it behind.
Yet still he appears,
In those black moments,
at my stoop:
A bottle in his hand
and a greeting in his throat.