Tattered wire of rusted iron

I find myself felled and forgotten

To the dusty road ahead,

Iron is afoot.

I lay the track nail by nail.

But I am no John Henry.

When you carry the heaviest bones,

And the weight overwhelms,

There comes a final time,

To bury those bones in boxes.

Perhaps a ribbon or some rope,

To tie them tight,

And bury them in the forgotten.

The decay brings them back to the Earth.

Lost to time,

Dead to all,

Living only in dreams.

I see you each night,

And it is so sweet,

But it is a nightmare I can't keep.

And so the bones in boxes I bury.

Time after time,

Ride or die.

I ask myself why,

Do I tread,

When I know is the water is rising,

"Death is the end,

But the ride is life."

The voice said.

My head is still above water.

I send a look to those perched above.

And find myself under.

A place of great wonder.

Blissfully unaware of the clouds above and the swells below.

I muster the call.

And then I saw the fall.

"Never again," I said,

Walking forward.

They all look for the highest fountain,

And have never reached the top.

It's only the drippings they catch in their hands.

They always remain parched.

They built their own fountain,

But then found it in pieces.

And after leaving the cursed grounds,

The skeleton remains of the building decompose,

As ivy and thorns begin to grow.

The clock strikes three,

The dark ones have come to be.

Sitting alone, listening to those that sleep,

The monsters find me as I dream,

And introduce themselves.

As I lay awake in bed,

I pray this hour fades.

Stepping down into the ground,

The Witching Hour is unbound.

Hear the roaring liminal hum, the ringing of the chanting ones.

My nose clutches the sweet smoke of burning oak.

Churning through the leaves of the wood,

Seeing in my minds eye what I believe to be ecstasy,

And everything I never expect to see.

It was Magick.

The Gallup of the Fiery Steed cracks the ground.

I knew the call.

I will not fade till the grave.

My Axe cut deep,

As I felled timber for you.

The gaze of the Dark One consumes my soul.

A mistake or an honor?

I won't know until the toll is paid.

And the pain in its eyes ceases to exist.

The trail behind is the trail ahead,

So I was told.

But to me, that's the definition of insanity.

A continuous loop.

Realizing this, a third trail appeared.

One foot in front of the other. Walk.

Stepping forward, I could hear the words,

"Move to the unknown."

And life was afoot.

I could hear a faint whistle,

In the cracked ruins of the Sepulcher.

The life before whispered,

"Have you done it?"

Walking near to the bones, I stopped,

And felt ashen.

The crickets silenced,

And a chill fell upon me.

All went still, and in the moment, I said,

"I don't know what I am doing."

"Looking back, you will,"

The voice sounded.

After the big loss,

I need to go all in.

Mumbling to myself, the fall only hurts when landing.

I gain footing and trip, and find myself,

With bloodied hands and knees.

But I stood up again. Can you?

I am haunted by the wailing from the Under

Up or down the ghosts keep telling tales for the unspoken.

The Under is the haven,

The harbor for the dead and broken.

I wonder,

What could be plundered from the damned.

Good tidings

Good raptures

The good is always present,

Even in the pain of what is happening

Good like rime on the masthead,

Always fleeting always returning.

Traveling never ceases.

I yearn to anchor,

Putting a foot on good, stable ground.

The fat cats keep rolling uphill,

Do they know they carry too much weight?

Or the gravity of the other side.

Pockets packed tight and you'll forget how to walk.

When there is only self thought.

Blood on my knuckles.

I washed off.

It's time to walk off.

Shattered plywood scattered on the floor.

I took it and paid a person to build more.

I made a mosaic with the pieces.

I have found my cathedral.

It is me.

Behind the wooden scaffolding,

Lies a great monument for all to see.

Striking a match, I burn it to the ground.

After days, I found the entrance.

It was an old hollow,

At the base of an ancient sequoia.

It had lived for centuries,

Starting to grow when Columbus landed,

Around the time the printing press started,

Napoleon,

When tea was thrown from a ship in the Boston harbor.

I was still growing when South and North fought.

During the 1911 earthquake,

I was shaken.

Leaves dropped when Martin Luther King was shot and killed on a hotel balcony.

And years later,

Appeared a photograph

Of a car driving through my hollowed base.

The flash was brighter than I thought.

Sitting in my car, I found myself in a different place.

The air was suddenly clean and cold.

In the red woods of the north, I thought I found my way.

Many years later, I came clean.

Don't know what that means.

Always striving for completeness,

And never reaching it in the end.

The perfect system.

Seeing the short, my wisdom fell on the long end.

I see yesterday on the cliff below,

But I can't see the summit.

The spiral into the abyss is something that these calloused hands cannot climb.

I float between The Have and The Have Not.

Anchor down, I hold my will to be.

I am.

Standing in the old ring,

I remember the last fight.

I lost but won in the loss.

I could hear the corner scream,

"Fight!"

The rings came off, but I know they will be back on.

Swollen face and bloody knuckles,

I put on my collared shirt,

Walked out of the ring,

But left with you.

The time I was ready,

I felt too normal.

It was a fable,

About a bird with a broken wing.

Flying hurts all the time,

And I am not ready to rest and heal.

As the Moon grows larger in the sky we start to fly.

Lights trailing behind show the dying glow fading in a glass jar.

I float between fragments of the Earth, breathing fleeting pockets of air.

Following the luminescence of the moon, I hope to reach my destination soon.

On the ninth bluff I think I found a reason.

You never know what someone is thinking until the sounding of despair in their eyes.

The angst is all I can hear.

From the high growth of wild weeds and grass,

I stand at the edge of the bluff where the sea waters crash.

I ponder you and I.

In space there are pockets of life.

Between these worlds an eternal abyss.

Black holes pull all to destruction but cannot reach the infinite.

A star collapses igniting self-aware existence.

The reflection in the mirror shows the prospect of being,

But the question remains,

"Is there space for continued growth?"

My mask is held up with tacks,

It hurts each time I put it on.

Like the pictures from the past on the corkboard from a time long gone.

Now my Polaroids stay black.

Masking the moments of the past,

I remember the photos,

Hoping they develop,

As I have not.

I've grown tired of the tacks on this mask,

Perhaps I'll fade to black.

After all has been ripped to pieces,

Once more we make it whole.

So I was told,

Listening to someone in a lab coat trying to diagnose me.

Pieces fall away and decay and can't be brought back.

What's left is the new design, a fresh start with less to worry on.

It was a choice I had.

Rocking in a padded room or walking on side walks.

I fake every day the whole day through.

Ghost ashes fly across the sky.

Illuminating the above like fire flies,

Showing all that has burned.

A flaming sky with clouds of dust and decay.

Charred remains still smolder along the horizon.

I began to rethink my actions,

Of what I had created.

As a child I remember my Grandfather's stories about an owl,

Who would appear at first snow.

Years later a bitter winter came,

And I awoke to a barn owl's glare in the window.

Perched and motionless, staring with its midnight eyes.

I saw myself through the owl's eyes.

In passing time I would sit by the window,

Waiting for the owl,

Giving me the feeling it was a sign,

He was telling me all was fine.

The tired old rhythm,

An endless loop of lethargic success,

Scattered between failures.

Lying in my bed, wanting nothing but the symphony of departure to begin.

I gain momentum and progress without ever noticing.

Standing, I know there is nothing but me and the curtain's glow,

As my soul fades below.

They are drawn, but I am tired.

The old Fault,

A crack in my inner earth.

The core is split with what was said.

Kneeling with white cloth upon my knees, I feel the folded steel.

My molten entrails spill out.

Honor returned,

The fault lines are mended.

Clock ticking.

Dagger dropping.

The arms of time move with this staggering soul.

Shuffling down the road dripping.

Ghastly remnants transcend epochs.

Pointed shank threshing, ripping.

Metal entered flesh,

I felt the pain of your silence.

And I took stock of the grain to reap.

An ancient lake now sits dried up.

Empty.

Walking through red sand waiting.

Wanting all to fall.

The Sun bakes and bleaches.

The white lake an eye in the crimson sand.

All is death around.

The water that once was is now gone.

Standing on shaking legs, a scream was let out,

"I shall not fall."

That evergreen theater,

Sound is true, and stage ne'er withers.

I was there lost and found, but I saw you.

A show that eases the senses and excites the mind.

The sands break through the hourglass,

And the red curtains part.

The screen lights and I am living a story that I see.

Our exploits sent off to the world,

And as the sand drops through the hourglass of time,

I try to hide behind the curtain.

Cloak and dagger, waiting for time.

Any one thing cannot be,

Without having Nothing in between.

The Void is empty without Presence.

The horizon line is far.

Perhaps it's not the end of the journey.

It is the moment in between.

Enjoy the push and pull,

Of Nothing being filled and emptied.

Our Sun has reached a fold in space,

A galactic doldrum.

Taking the paper and folding it,

I wrapped the note.

The Sun drifted along the fold,

Finding a new home in a different galaxy.

Gone, orbiting in space alone,

I bent the memories of time.

It was my fault.

A high ridge looks over the village,

Hiding it from unknowing travelers.

None of them knew what was to come.

And walked absent. Light in foot.

One day the ridge cracked and buried the village.

No one knew about it.

I awoke, shaking and sweating on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Knowing it was only descent from here on.

Ride over,

Lakes and mountains.

Ride polar,

Land of ice and snow.

Till deserts and sand and say

"I always knew." She said

"What's that?" I questioned

"Forever." She said.

The oldest absolute, no end.

In the middle of a frozen lake, nothing.

But with the sound of the ice breaking, the separating has begun.

It has all been opposite as polar as it could be.

An oath is as solid as stone.

A broken oath can't be put back together.

Call the Mason to cement.

As the axe man continued felling all around.

The wounds that time cannot mend,

Are treated with simple ingenuity

And we sit and drink our coffee saying to one another I'm fine.

First light in the city,

Here for the day with my brown bag.

It is the calm before the Storm.

It is utopia and abyss.

Walking to the cathedral, I sat on a bench.

Thinking about how an entire world can fit inside a brown bag.

Breaking the seal I put the cap on the bench.

Up-ending the brown bag,

I drown the yesterdays and the tomorrows.

Bliss.

But I cry.

The seasons ride 'round the planet,

To give and take for all each half the year.

Flooding with light, the other drowning in darkness.

The old and the new mind as balanced as the orbit around the Sun.

Ride the cycle for your life.

Years will come and go as the blossoms fall and bloom.

The seasons will always be.

High alone, low alone.

Sitting on the steps watching it all go.

I take a drag and knew it would all fade.

I find a spot to wait and listen.

To be alone is not a fear.

It is the interlude.

I sit waiting for it all to start, but I know it has already begun.

Talking to myself, I say,

"The mystery of life is a foot. Catch up."

Through the shine,

I saw the distant and the pure

Belly up and guts out the end was fine.

But the story is unsure.

Shine on me. As we float beyond.

To the gates,

And to the Hall of Greats,

Chin up.

Shoulders back and walk forward into the light.

The Flame comes around once in a while,

To burn away the brush, and reveal the ancient creation beneath.

As Nero, I stand holding a fiddle with no strings,

Playing as it all burns down

The highest tower remains, a single flame at its steeple.

And as embers fall I play a symphony for all that have come and gone.

Underneath the ice I've become lost.

I tried to find the hole I fell through but found nothing and drowned.

I awoke upon the ice, the snow had covered most of me.

And the walrus spoke and said, "You are not lost. You are the compass."

Each morning on the stoop,

There lies a single feather.

My grandfather would pick each up,

And mutter, "flying home."

Then he would unscrew the light bulbs and crush them in the sink.

Screaming about the CIA.

Eventually he had enough feathers to build wings.

But like Icarus, he flew too high.

Burning down like Nero's violin.

Those who run first ride free.

But most fall. It is an avalanche of pride and envy to push the pack behind.

Those without control are not free.

Constrained by the limits of habit.

But controlled chaos finds the abyss and wanders yonder.

Stepping through a doorway that they might step out of.

I know there is someone beyond the glass.

Watching as I type away words I've forgotten.

For tomorrow, I say I'm sorry I'm not what I said I would be.

The ceilings of our homes are glass.

Rainy days bring sweet privacy.

Alone, I draw the curtains.

As everyone around me shatters.

A false construction,

Of lies and pretense,

You piled at the altar,

Show me nothing but time wasted.

There lies bitterness for your hoaxes and excuses.

You stood in the water with arms crossed, and said,

"I want action, not words."

At that moment, I knew the ship was sinking.

Find my life's work written in the gutter of an old battered tome

Many people have tried to find the grave.

It's in the streets in tatters and opus gone.

The fire in those words dampened by molded pages that once held tight.

I saw you lurching in the light.

Of the fire in the night.

Ripping the words from the bind. Looking for an ember.

For the gutter once held fire,

That once burned bright.

The path is too clear.

Might be drifters in the sand.

I feel the absolute near.

I walk the old road rather than the path that they said.

A crack sounded from afar.

The ruined car near me began to shatter.

Flakes of hot metal pelt my skin.

And in the moment of uncertainty it was death or continuing down the road.

I walked the road.

The millennium tree fell today.

Felled by a boy with an axe, without thoughts of time.

The days fell away, all became night and shade

The tree was gone, but the roots remained.

Perhaps one day, it will sprout again.

Until then, an open landscape.

Taking the light from the mind,

Is not just.

He sat in the dark awake but unwanting

Locked inside himself.

All they see is a shell of what once was.

But if only they excavated they would find more.

It's just work.

If I have a late night,

The next night's not so great.

I find myself pacing the halls or in front of a mirror. Thinking.

I would beam myself out to a place no one will ever see.

To the stars and galaxies, that are not yet named.

Bury me deep and let me go.

Idle retreat is just a stance with no morale.

Hold your ground

Do not let us sunder.

Remember Thermopylae.

Let us meet the fallen.

Death forgotten retreats the adversary.

You simply think a death opus will win it all.

But that is the anthem of the fallen.

It was once a small star, then it was another moon.

Pretty soon it was a planetary eye.

Covering the sky.

I saw this in only a blink from you.

I dread the nightmare returns.

Becoming the beginning and end.

From the galaxy to a grain of sand.

To be soon forgotten.

A feeble hand beckons me.

I can't follow but I can't resist.

She asked what I drink.

I don't drink.

But she hands me a glass.

Reckonings pass.

I kiss her and down the glass.

"One more," I heard myself.

Say.

As I find success, I still feel hunger

Searching for the great under.

As I find you in barbed wire and undergrove.

Time we go above.

Emergence is no small feat.

Along the way the caves swallow up.

All the grey and the dreams.

Find me here with a tomahawk.

I'm hungry.

The open range.

Pure beauty, looming terror.

It's in fields of golden grain I fall.

When the dust settles and the Valkyries ascend,

I lie open, free for the birds.

I awake from the call of my mother.

Dreaming in the open waves of grain.

Dead yonder I couldn't quite see

Your glowing eyes looking at me

One day, you may see me

And I might see you.

But all I do is wander.

And all I see is yonder.

To the trees to the bottom of my feet,

Lett me walk and go.

“I tame thee, O walrus,”

I said, as we were floating on a piece of ice in the sea.

The power of word had taken the beast.

And sitting next to each other,

I wondered how long it took to build the Eiffel Tower.

Stick to the alleys you know.

You won't find me around,

Because too many

Struck out swinging out there.

I lost my fight,

But I stood back up.

Head down, hands up,

Tally them up.

The river took my oar,

Now I float where nature intends.

Broken oak and empty shoreline,

I lost my compass.

Destruction leads to a new life.

Survival is my God,

But God is dead.

A ghost moans mid-evening,

Never well.

I remember morning and night,

Asking for a spell.

The banshee wails,

loosening my grip on reality.

And I relapse,

To the rock and the stone,

Bestowed with a bullet,

Or drowned in the water like me.

Solitude creates a separate heart inside of you.

As a snake and a mouse in a hole,

Your new heart breaks each lonely day.

The old heart remembers forever.

As arrows pass and fall,

I wish nothing more than to get struck by all.

My body is corroded metal,

But Gold will never rust.

The days and nights panning for fool's gold shows me,

Trust is lived on a knife's edge,

And true trust travels the blade.

The arm corrodes the knife.

It turns to,

Dull, brittle,

Pitted mass,

And as the time has mulled over the edge,

Dulling the moment,

I find myself in harm's way,

Of the Golden touch of memory.

Old Town,

Quiet and golden.

I left as soon as I was old enough,

Barefoot, walking down the road.

When the road became to cracked and rough,

I chose to walk on the grass.

Through the tall grass step by step,

I walked, talking to the birds over head,

Telling them, "Perhaps,

I would return to my Town,

Sound of mind."

A misguided plan falling forward,

Day by day.

"Your compass is broken," she said,

As we continued to walk.

It was Winter, and the days were short.

Through the whiteout blizzard fog,

Appeared a warm yellow glow.

The bounty has been revealed,

And with a simple gesture of a hand on mine,

I hoped the plan was sealed and we would try.

There was no light in the window.

The curtains are drawn.

I sit and wonder with the knife,

"Do I still have the fight?"

The window now speckled with the blue-grey shimmer of dawn,

And with a whimper,

I made it through another night,

And maybe I might,

See the light in this Abyss.

All day, everyday,

A waterfall runs off a dust cliff

And I stand below trying,

to catch the ashes of what once was.

The mist turns the ash on my face to mud.

And I stay and pray,

That one day,

It will be like the first day.

Old creaks and ancient pangs.

An eye dropped a tear,

That was meant for decades ago.

Ten cold centuries turn to ten hot millennia.

Men have fallen simply from the burn of a gaze.

I floated like an anchor.

"The Grand Salmon has you in its sights."

The wild grass blows South and North.

An arrow seeps through stone arches,

And I march forward.

Time sits on a camel's hump.

The stone's throw of an owl's eye.

A kind gesture from a bear's claw.

Be kind to the flow.