Last Choice (+10)

You can listen with hope,

  or listen in pain

 

But listen you shall,

  as my words will explain…

 

“You were left in the shadows,

  neither empty nor full

 

“With a decision impending,

  a test of your will

 

“Your choice will define,

  what you praise or deny

 

“Will you now come together,

  in the truth or a lie

 

“Do you carry on blindly,

  or reach for beyond

 

“What your comfort will dictate,

  as your courage responds

 

“One path ends in darkness,

  one reaches for light

 

“Your tracks through the umbra,

   that fear leaves in blight

 

“It’s down to that moment,

  last chance to define

 

“Will your search end enlightened

   —or in twilight behind”

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2016)

 

 

No Ink From Within

 

You tell me…

 “the structure gives strength to my writing”

 

I tell you…

“it’s nothing but crutches in waiting”

You tell me…

  “the order brings a beginning and end”

 

I tell you…

  “the sequence does feign and pretend”

 

You tell me…

  “the form—the most important of things”

 

I tell you…

  “the truth rides on Seraphim’s wings”

 

You show me…

  the prison you’ve build with your pen

 

I show you…

  a cartridge empty—no ink from within

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2016)

 

 

Silence Unclaimed

 

Dropping its bomb,

  always missing the mark

 

 Your echo implodes,

  a sound hollow and dark

 

Answers unquestioned,

  all bombast enflamed

 

Drifting abandoned

  —in silence unclaimed

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2016)

 

 

Flashpoint

 

Thoughts ignite,

  and words burn

 

As everything considered

  —turns to ash

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2016)

 

 

To Love No More

 

I lifted you into my heart

But one arm was missing

As single wing and one handed

I carried you inside

All the while, you pointing at

My lost absent limb…

You told me you’d love me

If I could find that one misplaced part

The part that would then

Make me whole

I looked into tomorrow

And searched through the past

But my arm had reached out

For something beyond my ability to see

I could still feel the numbing sensation

Of pain

Where the arm had previously

Been attached

The vibration of loss

Now prosthetic for all that was severed

You pitied my deformity as I hid

My eyes

As best I could with only one hand

Telling me the fault was mine

For always reaching beyond what I

Could know or see…

And with your final stroke of malice

You left me further disabled

Climbing back outside a wish I knew

Was never to be mine…

When you left you found the old world

Different than the one you thought you knew

A desert of frozen stone with a black sky now

Surrounded the stillness of your abandoned love…

As you hesitated to turn around and

Reenter my world

The one that just a moment ago you had

Admonished and left for good

A lone arm reached out and closed the door

Behind you

Leaving you abandoned in a sea of loneliness

And despair

  —to love no more

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2016)

Dedicated To Lisa Wynn in the next AOP

 

 

Coloring In The Spaces

 

Trying to understand

  why you marked up your body

  —I stared at the ink

 

The memory of your open promise

  still inside of me

   —unfulfilled

 

Retracing that promised memory

  with new symbols

   —stained forever

 

You colored in the empty spaces

  I was unable

   —or unwilling to see

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2016)

 

 

The Key

 

Poets…

  spiritual escape artists

   —in a shackled and imprisoned world

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2016)

 

 

Forever Carried Away

 

With prose…

I saw only with my eyes,

as the words left my hand 

 

With poetry…

my eyes were abandoned,

leaving only my heart 

 

But in the distance played a lyric,

freeing what my words

could never unchain 

 

And hearing its melody,

my heart forever carried away

  —in song 

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2016)

 

 

To Light The Spoken Air

 

Thoughts inflame as feelings stir

Words simmer yet to boil

Unspoken sparks drift through the night

A pyre still to burn

 

Delphian in its natural form

The smoke a treacherous friend

Words rekindle—lies cremate

The Oracle on fire

 

As heat restores the human soul

All prodigals return

New hope to melt the frozen dawn

And free the poet’s hand

 

With letters stacked and dried of doubt

Their Muse cries out your name

As dark she waits for your next breath

  —to light the spoken air

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2016)

    ‘Inspired by Roberto Rodriguez’

 

 

A Singular Refrain

 

Questions are often bigger

 than their answers

 

With horizons wide and spacious,

 timelines unrestrained

 

Questions often lead

 to other questions

 

With answers left to wallow

 —in a singular refrain

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: May, 2019)

 

 

 

Living Inside

 

Those who are truly great

 belong to all of us

 

Living inside our memories

 —shaping what’s left of our dreams

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: May, 2019)