HUMAN NATURE

I've often been told that my eyes speak volumes
and all the thoughts and emotions that wander, at times aimlessly,
through the dimly lit corridors of my spirit self
are written plainly within for those with the ability to translate them
from whatever ancient language is spoken by the soul.

I fear those sensitives, those empaths who are privy
to that which I, by no willing intention, telegraph.
I've a monstrous part of me that sleeps in the deepest recesses
of the den that is my heart,
a snarling, rabid beast,
epic in proportion,
that creeps forward from its iniquitous home
when my baser and more wrathful passions burn brightest,
and it is no small task to keep caged within me
this vengeful incarnation, this worshiper of malevolence.

at day's end, I lay upon the lonely stretch of my bed
sweat soaked, heaving, teeth clenched against the banshee like screams
that fill my chords to the brim,
and my eyes, o curtain less panes of tempered glass that they are,
are shut,
I dare not risk that by some mischance
a sensitive might look upon them.

no, to peer into my eyes,
in the nighttime hours when the struggle within me is at its fiercest,
is to lose that which has perpetuated humanity,
faith would be lost to the sensitive,
for no reader of the nature of man,
could hold onto hope once the malignant spawn that festers inside of me
was revealed to them,
and they would fall un-hesitantly into the bleak waters
of the river despair.

The Immortality of Intimates Reconciled

I think on intimates,
friends who are well remembered in study,
and wistful longings begin to nag at my spirit,
they displace the usual lines etched upon my face,
amounting it to a solemn landscape of woe
for the solitude we wear close to our hearts,
solitude that much resembles
cavaliers chain mail and suit of armor
in the way it weighs upon the form
and sinks us deep into the quagmire loneliness.

I think on the way my intimates and I,
on those ever rarer occasions of desperation
for that which is much needed but singularly found,
stretch out to one another
arms that tremble from the exhaustion
of carrying our individual hindrances
and touch fingers, in reconciling manner,
across the erstwhile distance of our parallel lives.

I think on the events that shaped us
and that which drives us even now,
the seeds of our aspirations which we have sown
and seek to make fruitful,
tending them in the way of gardeners as they begin to grow,
nurturing them as they begin to bloom.

in each tender bud,
I see the prospective for greatness
that lies with the realization of our goals
and I weep for the endless universe of possibilities
that was secured us by those willing
to trade blessed life for equality and freedom.
now, we can be as the empires and the conquerors,
the poets and the playwrights,
the sculptors and the painters,
the inventors and the explorers,
we can be as ill-forgotten as they,
a mighty root in our tree of known kindred
and not merely a withering branch.

but I wonder still if I have the right of it,
or if perhaps I seek nothing more than a method of explaining away
my demented longing for the immortality which comes of great feats
and lasts us through the ages,
kept alive by those descended of us,
by those who speak of us until time immemorial.

Dedicated firstly to my cousin and secondly to all those who have taken hold of places in my heart and refuse to let go.

What Needs Be Overcome

this courtship of ours is tenuous,
a frail reassertion, at best,
of my capability to feel emotions
I've long thought of as a realm from which I'd been exiled,
and time and distance,
ocean and earth,
the passage of a multitude of years,
and the ever widening yawn of wisdom,
drawn from growth and experience,
are not things we can effortlessly overcome,
all have a way of making hard of heart
even the most genuine of optimists.

mother earth, as obstacle,
raises mountain and rolling hill,
sister ocean, with bluest smile,
beckons one to sink to her deep,
mistress time, unalterable course plotted,
makes of us misanthropes, whose ill intents
are borne toward the roseate,
so done by the dawning of realization within us
of her resolution to never return us to what was,
the dawning that never shall we return to simpler days,
also, that withered woman wisdom,
who gains us patiently her teachings,
reminds us with merciless fondness,
that one can no more dwell in ignorance
of the ways of mortal mankind,
ignorant of our inconstancy and faithlessness,
than one can dwell in endless night,
for withered woman wisdom is as the lustrous sun
in the way she brings to us the light of truth
and in so doing, nourishes our souls.

so tempt not fate, sweetness mine,
for she, too, needs be overcome,
and fate, unlike time, is irresolute,
she does not stand firm, as most folk believe,
upon the widely held theory predestination.
no, sweetness, I implore you,
do not cast carelessly aside
this most improbable of chances we have been given
to at last rid ourselves of that malaise of the spirit
known well as heartache.