Underneath the earth, she starts
A budding, not yet known
A seed planted, unfinished, unloved
Roses grow best with bright sun and regular water
All of which she’s been denied
The fulcrum of a rose indeed passed her by
And headed towards the unhidden, the undamaged
Her companions illuminated
Their blooms mere reminders of her shriveled form
Until one day
One rare, unlikely day
The sun rose and landed on her
The rain fell just right
So she could finally taste it too
Her petals came alive, her thorns as well
She finally flourished
Her blooms came late
But her blossoms were just as sweet
Her companions began to wither
Their life cycle was complete
But still, she stood
Tall and bright in a sea of death
Flourishing amongst those she once envied
Her delay had made her strong
And every hardship, struggle, and stunt
Now culminated in creating her entire being
Indeed, the fulcrum of a rose did not pass her by
It came right on time
I still remember your easily smiling face, poetry spilling from your lips
Singing joyfully at the dead of night, not a care in the world.
Oh how I miss your face when it was alive,
When it was not hardened, frozen,
unfeeling.
Was it God’s love what drove yours away?
For what reason does the Sun rise; rousing this cold star?
Was it for this the bullets flew? Was England worth
Stealing your innocence away, carelessly, flippantly,
selfishly?
Our country is filthy with ignorance, the front clean and pure,
Snowy white feather mocking, girls giggling gallantly,
Surprise when I snarl, stumble back; shocked.
The Soldier's uniform staves off the dove,
its curse.
Desperately lingering in your gaze, I search in the abyss,
The most loving part of you asleep, or dead.
Nothing I can do can make it stir, still I reach for you,
Ragged, scarred skin, they’re only remnants of your service,
my dear.
The jolt of terror evoked not from your maimed face,
One side ripped, gouged of recognition, eye mangled,
But from the other, undamaged pupil unmoving,
Emotions missing, heart agape, your brain stone,
Empty.
The tray is undamaged
Doomsday haze
Coral and crystal shards
Ascend to the heavens
Or allow yourself to get burned
There's no end to knowledge
Under a bright blue sky
Resiliently attached
To reality and its metaphors
Castle of yearning
Beyond the nothingness
Sensibility and radiance
I was ecstatically delighted
Written: April 30, 2022
A real charmer when I was growing up
My skin's now all wrinkly and wear Depends
Walk with a cane
Wracked with pain
Why can't we all wind up totally undamaged
Craving is an arrow in the heart,
the poison of ignorance;
that spreads its toxins through desire, passion and illwill.
Bound with the bondage of craving,
our minds smitten with suffering
we are bound with the bondage of desire;
with no safety from this vicious cycle.
Beings going through the wandering-on,
headed for birth and death
While those who've abandoned craving,
free themselves and reach the ending of fermentations;
though in the world,
have gone beyond.
Craving is the cause by which breeds stress.
If its root remains undamaged and strong;
A tree,even if cut,
will grow back.
So too,if latent craving
is not rooted out,
suffering returns.
Encircled with craving,
people hop round and around
like a rabbit caught in a snare.
Tied with fetters and bonds
they go on to suffering,
again and again,for long.
For a person
forced on by his thinking,
fierce in his passion;
focused on beauty,
craving grows more.
He's the one
who tightens the bond.
But one who delights
in the stilling of thinking,
always mindful cultivating
a focus on the foul:
He's the one who will make an end,
the one who will cut desire's bond.
Can you be distracted by the critic
or the public acclaim
Can you see through the fire
and renew all that’s burned
Can you look past the signposts
and those messages fixed
Can your heart stay undamaged
as the world tempts your soul
Can you run through loud voices
with yours still unspoken
Can you make it to tomorrow
without leaving today
Can you give love to those hateful
with vengeance recalled
Can you carry your grandfather’s words
into the land of the unborn
Can you hang up your spear
inside the enemy camp
Can you live to see the beginning
and the end die at last
Can your voice remain pure
neither bartered nor loaned
Can you listen through the smoke
—for a melody unsung
(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2015)
Reparations still to come,
because damage was still inflicted.
Lessons have been learned
that it takes more than two to remove confliction.
But the blame is ours.
Neither yours,
nor mine.
And now,
I can find peace in the fact that I never made you choose.
Solemn in what dignity left I kept intact.
Serenity in the little I left undamaged.
And wholeness in the love of these things for so long as we both observe.
Can you be distracted by the critic
or the public acclaim
Can you see through the fire
and renew all that’s burned
Can you look past the signposts
and those messages fixed
Can your heart stay undamaged
as the world tempts your soul
Can you run through loud voices
with yours still unspoken
Can you make it to tomorrow
without leaving today
Can you give love to those hateful
with vengeance recalled
Can you carry your grandfather’s words
into the land of the unborn
Can you hang up your spear
inside the enemy camp
Can you live to see the beginning
and the end die at last
Can your voice remain pure
neither bartered nor loaned
Can you listen through the
smoke
—for a melody unsung
(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2015)
Time is of the essence when playing
The field is wide open to the opportunist
Love is an engine fueled by lust
Many eggs remain unhatched, untouched
Undamaged by the trust you bring
There is no deposit no return on virgins
There is only one woman in the world
That one opportunity for you
Intimacy is a dream elixir
Exclusively designed with you in mind
I trust you will find her before time runs out
Before the opportunist takes her away
Makes her one of the many merry
Perverts the purity that once was yours alone
The one and only touched by no one
Hold me to your heart with a tight grip.
So tight to get away I'd need an ice pick.
But I promise not to use one.
I'll just melt into you with my love.
Those three words are so hard to say.
But I can prove that I feel that way.
I'll try to even out my hot and cold
Temperatures of my soul.
Thru and heal the broken pieces,
So that you can have the whole me.
Undamaged and unafraid.
I'll try to see that you will stay.
I'll learn to trust completely again.
Just have patience, I ask of you,
For once I know my love is true.
And I can prove it to you everyday.
I'll earn your heart, so gentle and kind.
She seduces me with her bedroom eyes
Her hand atop mine, between her thighs
I can't deny that she has the power
To lie with me every waking hour
I couldn't oppose her advances, she has a grip on me
With her soft angelic voice and undamaged anatomy
In a trance from her bedroom eyes
Drawn into her soul, a part of me dies
She braises my fingers across her smooth shaven lips
Assures me she’s aroused, the pleasure drips
Unwrapping her body of what sets me apart
From exposing her skin, God's work of art
A teardrop falls from her bedroom eyes
A happy tear to my surprise
She remains admirably brave, although, this is foreign
She has not been defiled by other men
Her narrow entrance puts me to shame
Intensifying my steady flame
God sent her to me, as an answer to my cries
I reside under the spell of her bedroom eyes
my soul
like to a ship in a black storm
is driven, I know not whither
acted to the souls of donkeys
in a Winter night of smoke
Viola Tree and Cedric Hardwicke
still undamaged the glass of revenge
Silent persistence peeling skin from bone
With undamaged precision
Easing an imperceptible knife into flesh
Exposing a fragile heart
Stripped with naked vulnerability
Surrendering willingly to anaesthetized hands
Craving achingly raw excision
Clouded with hope filled desperation
A lullaby of forged belief
Eyes fixated on the gentle thudding of beating
Echoing from fading warmth between palms
Subconsciously awaiting unavoidable regret
Intensely flaming pain searing through a bruised, empty cavity
Antagonistic fingers familiarly penetrating, ripping apart
A heart eager to love, drenched in gullibility
Opening bleeding wounds along already scarred edges
Leaving torn pieces distraughtly scattered
Bloodied feeling slowly draining
Wisps of past shadowed ghosts
Self-encouraged to plague again
Evaporating out of void eyes
Ravaging reflected destruction
Self condemned through the hands of a mere puppet
Shameful pain piecing brokenness back together
Cradling the fading beauty in shrouds of detestation
Dissipating into silence
Drowning in a symphony of tears
Don’t Walk
It is always on the other side
Head between the traffic
Where you catch the glimpses
Other side where pavement has the greener edges
Never step on
Or tread between the cracks
Not that the harsh air doesn’t push
Soft iron nail pressed with a thumb
Till the outer layer on a cardboard tack
Yields with its paper ripped
Dumb
The hollow surfaces eat from within
Naked satisfaction slithers away
To its masked grimace
Hidden inside the little red flash man
Don’t walk
Never step on the cracks
Or tread between
There is no such thing as mercy
Crossing is illusory
No other side this side as far away as it can be
Its touch a blank advert
A myths depravity
Calling from its chained
Erosion of blood
No memory
No memory of the skin thick nail
Driven into those gagging throats
But like passers-by
There it chokes
Now never seen on the other side
The other side
Where lives rescind their isolation
Without undamaged conscience
Head between the traffic
Never tread on the cracks
Or step between
Don’t walk
Feats of courage and the heroic death
For the cause country or the desert zones
Peeping voices low under old stony buildings
In wake of the retreating armies of the Rhone.
On the hill an impregnable fortress
On the ground a mound of hay and mud
The battering of bats against the windows
In ruins destroyed by the war of mammon.
Give us a change of seasons
A little pause of breath after the sunrise
Two and two along bundled hay stacks
An undamaged barn along the ground.
Looking across the high window there is
A landscape stretching across the fields
But the internal bonds of prison keep tying
The gaze inwards towards the shields
Facing the demigods of death and destruction
Muzzled up rifles wolf dogs punitive camps
In the verse a demolition a smouldering ash
To counteract the poisons of the times.
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