Amidst

Eyes scanning
Room replete
With family
Friends and
Acquaintances
Yet realizing
Amidst it all
You're still alone

Rise and Fall

Each sunrise begins the day
Holding all the possibility
Of a rebirth and a beginning
Hope and positivity brimming
Each sunset ends the day
With a reliving of each moment
The wrongs and rights and decisions
Agonizing minute deliberations
Seconds and minutes and hours
Between mornings fire and
The brilliant glow of evening
Filled with attempts at life

Song

It's a painful song
Stuck on repeat
Unable to turn it off
So it plays over and
Over and over again
It's lyrics touching you
With hurt and sadness
You'd do anything to
Turn it off to make
It stop and change
The song to a new one
But you can't find a way
You can't bring yourself
To make it stop
So it plays and it plays
And you listen and
Hurt

Libertas enim omnia

Today

Hastily encroaching on Summer's ebullient warmth
Dimness and darkening days length growing
Soon to leave Autumn behind and nature's last gasp
Lengthening to near perpetuity of Winter's cold
Deep and strong it's stranglehold

The Manner of Things

In everything there is a beginning
A sublime moment of collision
In everything there is an end
An unknown dissolution of the past

Bonne chance.

Life

Mortality
We think our grip is solid
Like a vise tightened on a board
Until reality reminds us
Of how tenuous life can be
More the finger hold of a climber
Trying desperately to clutch
The last vestige of safety
With increasingly weakening
Fingertips and muscles
We may rise and move up the mountain
Or tumble tumultuously down
Mortality

Isolation

Isolation is our strength
Isolation is our weakness
Balancing act for survival
Becomes heavily necessary

Synaptic Response

Synapses firing rapidly
Sparking every cylinder
Desperately creating
Power and strength
Ability to survive
And one day even
To thrive again

Moth

An unextinguishable flame
A tattered winged moth
Drawn
Flitting
Flying
Inescapable

Light

Though shining brightly in the night sky
Rocky edifice seemingly a beacon
Then the truth becomes known to all
It's illumination is not its own but comes
From another celestial body, another brighter
Giving its light to the day sky and by proxy
To the night.

Fight tactically,
Think strategically.

Untenable

No Surrender

Play through the pain
Without even a thought
Keep moving, keep fighting
Through the physical
And the mental as well
Pay no attention to the voice
Nagging at you to give up
To surrender yourself
Just keep playing through
All the pain being thrown
Legs and heart and mind
Battling, scrapping, digging

Kismet

Kismet
Unseen
Unknown
Unrevealed
Until
Unbeknownst
Unveiled
When
Show me the way

Isolated

An island sits high
Rocky edifice forbids
Water no solace

Until

I need a break
Weight just dragging
Me down, spiraling
All the mountains
Granite sitting densely
On my shoulders
Atoms colliding
Tight and heavy
I've been trying
To push up and
Divide the load
But it's all mine
Mine to bear
Mine to keep
Myself moving
Until
I get a break

The Rain

Palpable, the intensity of new anxiety
A monsoon rain inundating everything
Drenching through clothes and skin
Leaving me to huddle and search
Struggling to find warmth and comfort
Racing to know the future of this
This decision and what it could bring
Is it another mistake, extending the list
Or am I once again running towards
The life I deserve and am working for
As the saying goes, only time will tell

Ghost

Can a ghost decide to float away to another place?
To vanish into wisps of nothing, unworthy of where
It has been haunting and no longer sustained
Or is it forever tethered to those other souls until
They become aware and release it or embrace it
Trying desperately but in vain to influence them
Make them aware of its existence, breath of cold air
A chair scraping along the hardwood floor
With all the anxiety of nails on a chalkboard
All ignored and chalked up to imagination
To the wandering mind of boredom and loneliness

Hauberk

I don't dare remove
Even a single piece
Of this armor thick
Girded about myself
Created to protect
To close off as much
Of me as possible
Steel plate and mail
Linked and overlapping
All inside my mind
But as real as if
Built by a smith

Coaster

It's all a coaster ride
Slowly churning up
That first big hill and
Then down, exciting
Fast and adrenaline
Rushing through you
Until more ups, downs
And the eventual end
Knowing all that is left
Is to climb out of the car
And hope you can ride again

Immutable

Mountain looming large before me
Seemingly immutable and forbidding
But peer closer and see the reality
Wind and time erode it down
Rushing rivulets of water channeling
Taking away miniscule grains
Until one day a surmountable edifice

Snowstorm

Clean and blanketing everything
Visibility reduced in an instant
Fresh and white, signifying
All those possibilities and potential
Fresh start and new beginnings
But only until it melts away
Gone into water and mud
Remnants of the detritus
Of things fallen and lost

Warehouse

I used to revel in the quiet moments
The silence and solitude wrapping about me
Like an old comfortable blanket, soft and warm
But now they seem vast and lonely
An abyss of open space and time
As if I'm standing in the middle of a gigantic warehouse
Walls on any side unseen, voice echoing
Darkness closing in like a silent thief