The Fallen Old Log

He sits ready on the fallen old log
Awaiting a tale of high mystery
Found in the depths of a mind cloaked in fog,
A story reshaped all through history.
The man recalls about his long-lost love
Hiding under a different - fresh - name
Yet it never gets old. A soaring dove
Circles above, a gift of peace, a flame
Of new hope. A love reborn forever
And not aging. Unlike this sage, who speaks
Of what is lost, holds tight as a tether
When he must let go, must change what he seeks.

His love is a memory, gold indeed;
What is so precious is not what he needs.

Slack

Trap him with whispers
And beat him with taunts.
Ridicule that which
He flounces and flaunts.
Rattle his bones,
And watch him twitch,
Make him hear voices,
Those that bewitch

Both the meek naïve
And the steadfast wary.
Invoke those dreams
That recur, never vary
And instead pray upon him,
His outlandish ideals.
Test what he thinks,
Second-guess what he feels.

What's your reality?
What do you see?
From all of his doubt
He will never be free.
Hear our winds call
And speak to his fears
Until his resolve is broken
By a faint stream of tears.

Burn him inside out,
Words drenched in acid.
Now he is ravaged, far from
His past, tame and placid.
He's changing before us
Into something never seen.
Nothing to recognise, gone,
From the wreckage we cannot glean

A single memory. Down and out.
His body is slack.
But amongst this ruin
His voice still speaks back.
His voice fights back.

The Chase

I am no hunter

So why partake in the chase?

I drop my gun -

This is no hunt. This is no race.

Nor am I the hunted,

The weak. I am strong, running free

With no more constraint because

Nature is mine. To live is to see.

I am not waiting like prey 

Fearful of the bite,

But I am not ruthless by

Dancing and leaping amongst the fight.

A bullet cannot hit me anymore

Or at least leave a scar.

Time is a shield

That I have not used so far.

The hunting ground is small

But I have no role in this war;

For now I seek safety,

Seek to wander No Man's Land no more.

I hope the wounded seek it soon, too - 

All in good time.

I have watched these hunts, but it is time I turned

To find a land that I can call mine.

Season's Grievings

The chatter falls away
And with it the mistletoe dies.
The Christmas spirit diminishes,
The season's grievings survive.

To the New Year ahead we look
With every intention to forget this past,
But that which haunts me is that which takes me there,
Where every misgiving and every mistake will be my last.

Saying goodbye would be a dishonour
To everything which has given me what I need to know
And marked every change on the path I have taken;
If I said goodbye I would never again say hello.

An altered date fixes nothing at all
Except the number of which I write in my script.
Each negativity cannot be erased by one little digit,
Nor will it be changed by magic, through a flick of the wrist.

So many smiles twisted by all that strain,
Nights full of worry and days full of passion,
Every indecision alongside the insane -
What does it take for all that to happen?

The season's grievings survive
All a part of true living.
"New Year, new me." Lies.
My own spirit remains, and that's why I'm winning.

Casualty

A violet smoke manifests the room,

Arising from slumber as the dawn approaches.

The dreams are cloaked in haze

And extinguished as this smoke reproaches

 

All that lived the night before.

Reality awakens to hide away

The falsities of reverie, believed

To be true, never spoken beyond the light of day.

 

The fumes are fatal, as suffocating

As truth. The truth should never

Be a fight, but a casualty of happiness,

The proudest of any endeavour.

 

Wherever this fine art may be found,

The conjuring of dreams –

Let the truth be known to oneself;

The smoke is not as toxic as it seems.