I am the King of my temporary world
From its windswept fields
to the rocky crags of uncommon cliffs
I survey
I ask for an eternal breath
for the calm and allure
of immortality

A blink of an eye of an unseen foe
Defines my ragged body whole
It sets my tack a plundered path
of unfound glory and unbound wrath

To see the sights of unseen heights
and touch the hopes of morrow
And breathe a breath of unknown nights
to steel oneself for sorrow

While death doth bring poetic end
to fragile lives expired
It quenches not the taste of hope
for things that might transpire

I bind my eyes to find a guise
to temper lies untold
I ask recuse from my fair muse
and let my dues unfold
My penance lost, a menace cost
how could I be so bold
For this, my dear, is this, I fear
a taken life I cannot hold

If I make this sacrifice to find a life above
this managed life,
a life that’s nice
and one that’s filled with love
If I leave familiar land to share again a wife
a land of possibility
a chance to live a fantasy
and rediscover forgotten life
If I do these things it brings a hope unmatched

These thoughts I have they scatter
The remnants of a thousand iterations
Of a thousand palpitations
I am convinced they no longer matter

They are ethereal
Without substance, they are the voluminous
gas of a mind less luminous
And increasingly immaterial

My hands burn with the attempts
To gather the shattered fragments
And piece together at least a better
Understanding of my torments

With stops and starts in all its parts
And skips aloof to life
It feigns a change to exclude pain
And drown out all its strife
Unknown to soul its widened hole
And frightened at its core
A battle long with foes quite strong
Unwilling for much more
My heart is beat, no small feat
And unexpected, true!
But willing fast to leave at last
Emboldened by a clue
You say you might give up the fight
Now quite a bitter pill
Shared with you this folly, too
To be a lover still

The tranquil beating of your heart belies a storm within
I sense unease of countless fees owed to fated whim
My presence here may prove too near when studied from afar
But foolish thoughts are much too fraught with motives too bizarre

Abandoned hope suggests a scope of motivations true
When filled with these hilarities and mocking senses too
We bow before the shambled door to beg for mercy please
Relent our souls of unclear goals and rise us from our knees

With untold needs your body pleads to lose its unknown strife
Too many times your spirit mines the vagaries of life
A story fraught with should and ought and dreams of other days
It tells us how you think right now and how your past replays

We sing a song that’s often long until the end of time
With words of whim designed to skim our lives with novel rhyme
But in the end we always spend too much on things gone by
Of which I find I do not mind as much as why we try

Your battered hope begins to cope and find a way to thrive
What’s in the past is gone at last, your heart begins a dive
You sanctify without a why those things that might not come
We learn our fuss is bound to us in ways that make us numb

So stand up tall in hallowed hall of future disbelief
It may be dark with no clear mark but find some calm relief
For when you pass through this morass you’ll come upon a day
Future’s past will pass at last without much more to say

I’m back to where I was before
Before I changed my mind
It’s tough this is, this awful chore
To leave my needs behind
And focus on the here and now
In black and white and gray
To choose a choice and wonder how
It all played out this way
I hem and haw and twitter to
The push and pull of fate
I want to ask so much of you
I fear it is too late
We’ve traveled far to get to here
Two roads that have no end
The fear I have now that we’re near
Is can they inward bend
I want much more from what we are
But can you give so much
While choices made have brought us far
Our paths seems out of touch
My faith renewed I lose my fear
And focus on your soul
I do this with your heart, my dear
To make my own quite whole

I stand aside an open door afraid to step inside
A vision of a long lost love implies a great divide
Between effort past and motive true, anguished through and through
Enfeebled by the memories of what I could not do

The smallest movement side to side or back or up or down
Changes what we see of us in ways we find profound
Reflections show reality twisted inside out
What seems so true when first observed ends up a silent shout

If you ask me again, I’ll tell you once more
I had nothing to do with killing that bore
It’s true that he hurt me, again and again
But vengeance is nothing I’d seek in the end

My anger is channeled through passionate art
I write poems of heartbreak, souls torn apart
Never have hands touched in anger his throat
Or schemed to throw him off the side of a boat

He stole what was mine from my very own hands
With brazen intention he plundered the lands
Of trust and friendship, those once sacred things
That have become a mockery, chopped of their wings

You meet her unsurprised
Look deep into her eyes
It’s this you might surmise
Her beauty mystifies

Announce you are her friend
And hope it will not end
Your heart it will not bend
Nor will it ever rend

But truth it might be hard
That you seem so on guard
It seems you once were marred
By someone much more scarred

Our past is such strong weight
On choices much too late
We want honest debate
But souls are bound by fate

We’ve journeyed far ’til now
And wondered ever how
Our lives might one day bow
To let us take our vow