fear

SINKING

this moment will
without you
slip away from me

drowning
as I feared, alone
in a raft made for two

oars afloat
beyond my cramping fingers

and nothing but my shadow-self
will be revived

POSTERIOR SUFFERANCE

This night carries me,
blinded,
in the back pocket
of dirty minds and
shabby dreams where I,
flat, and molded,
press against this folded denim,
warm and splayed with
arms outstretched,
longing,
for another day, but

what if I turn my head
to over-peek the top
of these fraying jeans instead,
grasping threads
to keep me still within its seams
– will the exhilaration
of watching where I’ve
just this moment been
allow me inspiration
– asleep –
– awake –
to boldly look,
clinging to the back end of
these thoughts that write me,
penned in ink:
a pre-determined book?

Perhaps I should just
– winded –
forward face,
ignoring the sour stench
of this unmoving,
walking,
waking race,
stalking through the darkness
in a covered veil
at quiet pace,
destabilising future steps,
accepting this acquired taste,
processing my obsessive needs
and bathing clean my crumpled face
in chafing tears that fear progression,
awash, alone,
in one more nightly session.

Devoid of light,
hear, ye, the theme:
this narrow, stunted, damned depression,
the fabric of a self made bed –
this
bottomless pit without expression
unstitching dreams of fortune
as I swelter, melting hope
again,
apathetic,
white of noise,
inside my broken head.

SOLDIER

The Man who never brought hell home
was wise beyond his years.
He suffered long
but lived it loud
imprisoned by his fears –
and those were thus:
that those before him
came and went
with nothing left but
pain and name
and more of same
who went and came
from seed in soil
to root and stem,
to fallen branches, time again:
a family tree to fuel the flames
on cold and lonely nights.

Embodied by the coat of arms he wore,
this Last to hold his name,
he swore,
– in vain, perhaps –
to stand at ease no more.

The Man who never brought hell home
encased himself in spite and spirits:
ghosts of generations gone,
encroaching deep within.
He sought for answers,
fought for reasons,
questioned why his bloodline grew
to fall and rise
and curse and kill
with secret lies
and stolen rights
and ties he could not sight.

The Man who never brought hell home
had died
the moment he arrived
– or so he thought –
he always said,
with eyes in search of something else . . .
perhaps that love that once he’d felt,
despite the years of crime he lead.
And what is left, again, but holes
to fill with buried woes and
broken war-like games and
shattered dreams
and darker still yet, nothing.
Nothing, as it always seems.

Not a sliver shall him by, it pass,
of hope,
of love,
of peace –
not until the very last,
this Man who never brought hell home.

And so, this Man, with blind belief
declared his story would be brief,
atoning for the sins he cast
in other’s lives
in years that passed,
and spent his days in self destruction,
free from want, control, and need,
biding time with bated breath
like men, before, who longed for death,
entrained in mind and soul,
until one day,
the hell that never came,
came whole.

For every man,
and son of man that once there was,
who sharpened knives
and counted tools
and cleaned his guns,
and polished pride, his moral compass
by his side,
who now lives to wake and wakes to die,
repelling faith, repelling truth, and
cussing lies –
this Man has died.