1

…Let us begin again. My self is lost -
 The path unclear. Immortal tongue leadeth 
 Unto my damnation, yet still, a cost
 To a thing of sound. As distance groweth 
 The voice becomes weaker. Day breaks as stone 
 Shaped unto its close, sculpted unto night. 
 The surface crawls with dark and primal tones
 Cold valleys basking in discarded light
 We seek for sleep and rest but not so long
 Only enough to keep us well and kind
 While the night invades the world like a song
 I find there is no rest for my weak mind
 Insomnia makes us stagnant water,
 Film forms on our surface; sleepless martyr.

2

The world itself is an insomniac;
 Endlessly turning through the void and stars,
 A stone as such, no moss will it attract,
 The Earth, alas, has gathered many scars.
 Winter season sets well this theory. 
 The summer becomes gruesome in its end, 
 Life awakens to its mortality,
 The bounty at its most vibrant is rent.
 The world must end in a great reckoning
 So that life can come forth again renewed
 Exchanged for those that death is beckoning
 Yet, there is still violence to the grand feud
 The great scythe of autumnal fury sings
 A sweet dirge, culling the land of all things

3

I have seen once a depiction of this 
 So acute as to birth a spark of joy
 A sour spectacle wrought with thin mist
 A kernel of truth lay within its ploy,
 There is no sadness found in the action, 
 Rather sadness is hidden in the form 
 Achieving consequential dysfunction 
 And yet still resolved to pursue this “norm”
 One steps forward, the others fall in line
 Words are spoken, deeds confirmed, tears are shed
 A body tumbles down into the Rhine
 The priest awaits the next to ash their head
 A queue of souls shuffled off a cliffs edge,
 All for the sake of a misguided pledge.

4

This was, of course, well after these events 
 In this tale of my form and its ending, 
 I should simply note that life has no sense,
 No place, no future without conceding,
 Life is not a guarantee or blessing,
 More a vessel we’ve stowed our thoughts upon,
 Waters and captains outside are pressing,
 As we attempt to make queen from pawn,
 All things have this guilty persona, 
 As if its essence was an artifact
 Stolen; a deity’s lost corona,
 A boon we care for to remain intact,
 And ensure it stays in our possession
 Yet the gods have not lost their obsession.

5

A time comes for that life to be retrieved,
 The gods are met by dual opposition. 
 One the face of outrage, the guilt perceived,
 A desperate defense to acquisition.
 More common is the face of shamed consent
 Its retrieval a burden changing hands
 Lives in which moral purpose they invent 
 Seeking sins, salvation and other strands
 They find comfort in a future promise
 Yet they make no commitments to the plan
 The life beyond is their one true solace
 And have no regard for their fellow man.
 They face death absolved by a confession, 
 Praise the lord, a life of indiscretion.

6

The Valkyrie is upon the city
 A soft white death encroaching the horizon,
 Trees make themselves meek, a ploy for pity,
 Some shed their bark as succumbed to poison
 So much paper unto the ground, naked
 In the wind as life reclaims what is owned. 
 Animals will burrow beneath the dead
 And lie through spring, with life that sleep has loaned
 It is all an endeavor to delay 
 Even at the most essential level 
 One finds reaction. Atoms are at play
 Evading capture through endless revel.
 A simple nightmare thus avoided now
 While others find more fitting shapes somehow. 

7

None involved know of the end or after,
 Only that an adversary is near, 
 Save for the human being; the master 
 Of the forbidden secret and their fear 
 Keepers of the profane knowledge of death,
 A power we must obtain and harness,
 But one we yet take with a bated breath
 For it can also become our weakness. 
 Reading this now you know that time is past 
 And thus, the human became a lesson,
 Unto themselves and at that so very fast,
 And the death yet still on us will press in.
 Stop now and disembark from humanity
 Breathe deep. Imagine now life sans mortality…

8

Verily it is the knowing frailty 
 Of the human body that drives our heart; 
 An enemy to whom we’ve sworn fealty 
 To defend or risk being torn apart.
 Purpose in life is often a derivative
 Of one’s desire to perpetuate 
 Their own existence, which seems primitive,
 Yet a person’s apex is not this state
 To exploit economic resources
 To sustain the cost of simple living 
 To find purpose in the children we source, 
 To indulge companions most fulfilling. 
 To establish a luster to one’s ‘name’
 To each end we find results are the same 

9

When the time comes, we must forfeit our life 
 Unto death we bestow less than is due 
 Like we’ve out maneuvered the fatal knife, 
 Surrendering only what is unused
 As if our life is now in our children, 
 In our friends, our namesake, our investments
 The major portion of that life bidden
 So that we can still live on in essence
 This all seems good and even romantic, 
 Until life expectancy is brought up
 An epic of sacrifice made frantic
 With all of the hurdles we have thought up.
 A quarter of our life is indentured
 Leaving us precious little time ventured.

10

In order to truly begin our life,
 To make any definition of it 
 One first obtains understanding through strife
 In a world of false floors and sharp summits
 Most survivors emerge indecisive 
 Panicked and wary of what lies ahead,
 The intimidation of life’s crisis
 Mingled amongst the frailty of its thread.
 All the more oppressive is the puzzle 
 Of what to do with the time that is left
 With our youth thus effectively muzzled
 And so much of our short time left bereft,
 To now higher purposes of comfort
 Perhaps in our twilight before slumber.

11

Daily function is thus divided once
 Two separate parts from this point on, 
 The goal divined earlier on both fronts. 
 The first of those is actions set upon
 As a response to one’s fear of their end, 
 Those subtle motions we make to convince
 Ourselves or others, “death we can transcend!” 
 Yet truly we seek others to evince. 
 With any fear it is best left to grow,
 Culture amongst the people whom support
 Rationalized in mob sanction they know
 The non-existence of death can contort,
 Fitting itself around the hearts and minds,
 Comforting as oil when water it finds.

12

The second is the avoidance of death, 
 These are actions of driven investment.
 Opportunities of one’s life made quest,
 The essence made to endure divestment,
 Exercise, effort, expressed elations,
 Through these act’s life is tamed yet at war
 Often displacing turmoil unto damnation
 One starts war renouncing what they fight for,
 Stamped upon the battlefield victory 
 Establishes his ideal elsewhere thus 
 Perpetuating life through history, 
 So long as the dead remain without fuss.
 Even the most glorious empire 
 Uses blood to mix their mortar; desires.

13

Yet still there remains a weapon unnamed 
 Many swords by which mortal knowledge was felled,
 Though countless lives it has and will have claimed, 
 By the legions of faith death has been quelled
 All serve one purpose in common; comfort.
 To console the people with ideas; bliss,
 Eternal life shrouded over deaths court
 “May faith give cause for deaths arrow to miss,”
 Grant us form; be it heaven, nirvana,
 Life renewed or whatever pleases you,
 As each religion is phenomena, 
 Yet when two faiths meet war always ensues, 
 Though all religions serve the same distinct function, 
 the diverse formulas birth compunction.

14

Each equates a conflicting solution
 Exposing the hand of deceit in others,
 Their presence thus defies absolution,
 The dim light of hope their darkness smothers.
 Truth is unquestioning servitude
 The answer is provided already,
 But it only makes sense without any feud
 Seeking places for the answers readied.
 Troubled still are those who find miracles,
 Strengthening their resolve, while others weaken
 Are these miracles born of manacles?
 Faiths shackles create phantasmic beacons,
 Or was faith first born of the fantastic,
 Regardless, these blades fuel acts too drastic.

15

Should a god demand you kill your first child
 Test one’s faith and answer without question
 Else risk the concept of god itself; riled
 It obliterates without concession 
 With no choice but to lose if not complied,
 All those they love, not just a single one 
 Certain in this that they are justified, 
 By faith in a god that won’t be undone.
 Thus, people are changed by obedience
 They grow as dogs chasing after their tail, 
 If they can keep focused upon themselves
 Their ignorance will lead them to prevail,
 Over the questions life often compels
 They don’t have to acknowledge what death is
 As long as they never look up from this.

16

I was no better than anyone else 
 When winter came, I bundled up and hid,
 Convinced myself it was warm, clothed in pelts,
 As if that helped. The cold has its own grid. 
 Every year was colder than the last, 
 Yet still I played along like I belonged.
 Work was yet left in me before I passed,
 Cusp of my existence yet far along. 
 When gravity and centrifugal force 
 Entwine an object approaches apex
 Something amazing is born at its source,
 Once understood is no longer complex
 Revealing childish glee in the event
 An opportunity for one to vent,

17

One can let go committed to nothing; 
 Relying on faith, so to speak; physics 
 Takes control and propels one out; thrusting, 
 The object launches straight as ballistics
 One only ensures not to deviate
 Or risk finding their way to injury
 This is the point I will strive to create, 
 I lost control in my trajectory
 Or within the apex control lost me,
 They say god is found beyond possessions,
 To explain the revelations you’ll see
 My job, the first loss in this procession
 A small part of a sequence encroaching,
 At the end of fall, winter approaching…

18

…Over the skyline, a searing red sun,
 Refuses to settle into its grave; 
 As a child who will not be overcome.
 The buildings below glow like the fires rage, 
 Suffering thus through the heated debate 
 Between the sun and the patient darkness, 
 My own eyes try their best to acclimate
 Expecting one of them to acquiesce
 And thus subdue the perpetual fires.
 I was leaving now and for the last time 
 My occupation, against my desires. 
 A notice to ensure reason and rhyme,
 And security to deliver it. 
 The elevator thinks I’m a “good fit.” 

19

We walked past the illusion of a sky
 Unscathed by our building, held in twilight, 
 No floor beneath us. I compose a sigh, 
 Even that feels ridiculous tonight. 
 No matter how put together you look 
 Everyone knows what’s really going on
 When a guard is holding you by the crook 
 Above your elbow, and beneath your arm. 
 With a load of personal trinkets held,
 I approached the elevator in haste,
 Reached for the button but my hand was felled;
 The guard pushed it instead with a sour face.
 A harmonic eruption poured from inside
 Some hidden panel where sound must reside.

20

This moment here is the hardest of all,
 Outside of it one shifts gears easily 
 Yet standing here at the end of the hall
 The brain panics and pinwheels anxiously. 
 Backed now against the corner and pleading 
 Your body shrugging off things that aren’t there
 Brain asks, “Why the hell did you stop moving?”
 You expel some giggles or toss your hair 
 You unfurl every one of your red flags
 While your mind tries hard not to wet itself
 Then the door opens an expanding crag 
 Saved from the corner, yet placed on the shelf
 You- I count the numbers on the way down, 
 Decent into ‘L’ adorned by a crown.

21

‘L’ for ‘lobby’ as much as for ‘Leaving’
 Or ‘Lay off victim’s first stop’ at this point, 
 A thirty-story controlled fall heaving 
 Pits in my stomach and warping my joints
 My skull drops hard against the [Absent] spine 
 And somehow stress is alleviated, 
 Like floating debris passing on the Rhine. 
 Timing the floors as they pass I’m sedated.
 At twenty-seven, eighteen and fourteen
 The door chimes, new companions hop on board
 A philanthropic elevator scene
 Filmed the day of my terminal award
 The door opens to a conversation
 Cut short by my physical persuasion

22

A great joke unheard, meetings undiscussed, 
 The weather unknown, for the sake of me
 This portly officer, and his disgust
 Our best bride/groom pose not quite as carefree 
 “Yes. I am now being escorted out”, 
 So they shuffle behind me to whisper
 Diverse theories of what it was about. 
 Until we stop and they can leave chipper.
 The doors open for me like tired eyes
 revealing the lobby in its splendor,
 And those still behind me rush out like flies
 Smelling some other sweeter cadaver.
 Marble pillars and cherry wood veneer
 A masquerade for concrete and careers.

23

At length we reach two large revolving doors
 And here the guard just stands and stares; no words; 
 He sends my arm and me across the floor, 
 Tumbling against the glass like blind birds
 [A breach unsettling though just as meek, 
 The world beneath and intimidating]
 As a snake eating its own tail, I seek
 The world beyond this glass berating
 I break free just in time to stumble out 
 A prisoner escaped from their jailor
 And my trinkets like water from a spout, 
 To be rid of that box and its failure
 Despite the implication of these events, 
 I was relieved and felt a true presence.

24

Rain began to fall, screaming from above
 Drops shattered on the resolve of my flesh, 
 The ground was soon covered in the death of
 Those desperate beads that through air did thresh
 Were it not autumn, they would dissipate,
 Back unto the atmosphere, made anew 
 Now, these tears converge in a sewer grate, 
 All the world could cry, still this would ensue.
 I looked up. Smoky giants bathing me, 
 Only a small patch, shy in their endeavor. 
 Dark curls unfurled bowling wind through the trees
 The sun bright against the folds of weather 
 A caress to calm and provide succor, 
 The clouds toiled slowly in their cloister.

25

The turmoil within, illuminated,
 Seemed bizarre and outrageous in the light,
 I could see that the storm now resented,
 This exposure and would put up a fight.
 Thus, was made at my back, as if expelled 
 A great wind that lifted the ends of my suit,
 Like blue flames stoked by the building itself. 
 My trinkets quaked beneath the raging brutes.
 Skittering about for warmth or purchase
 As I watched them in somber reflection.
 A life askew and adrift of purpose 
 In a concrete sea without direction, 
 Yet an eerie ignorance flushed through me, 
 The world as is cannot sensibly be.

26

Even those who passed would not acknowledge 
 My abandoned, now drowning, artifacts; 
 Snapshots, supplies, a degree for college,
 Ashamed of what they suggested, hot wax,
 Dropped on ice, petrifying on contact,
 My career amounted to a candle, 
 Or worse yet, a sad still life in abstract,
 These, the icons of a life dismantled.
 Thus, I vowed to never see them again,
 A Moment later, within these musings, 
 Grew horse hooves and bells that made my face drain,
 Sound stretching a dark chill over all things.
 I looked up, a cab where the horse belonged, 
 The demon that compelled my ears now gone.