Category: Poetry

Beige is a color I’ve often studied.
Beige is just a white that once was bloodied.
Beige now suggests it was erstwhile muddied.
Beige is purity that knows it’s sullied.

Gray is a coloring I often choose.
Gray holds the answers while hiding the clues.
Gray always blends in when chaos ensues.
Gray’s unconcerned with a win or a lose.

Red is the color I’m scared by the most.
Red is the color of blood & of boast.
Red’s the color of heaven & hell’s host.
Red is the color of loving love’s ghost.

Blue is a color that longs to be free.
Blue is the color of souls on a spree.
Blue hues the vastness of sky & of sea.
Blue is the color I wish I could be.

Through all the lines of mortal men in fleshly conjugation.
All are born to learn the self within & without their Nation.

Through pale traditions & burned routine sentience is benighted.
Fenced in by habit & stoic lines men are made befrighted.

In static grooves of fretful worry they scheme & machinate.
They stare past the mirror’s pane & on difference ruminate.

Held in sway by sad regard that unlike means inferior.
Conquering horizons far to add to their interior.

Still, men fail to snuff the flames of individuality.
Bind your truth to your true north & lean into equality.

There is life in the deadliest places.
There is death in the liveliest scenes. 
Examples are so anywhere you go, 
living & dying comes free.

There is shade in the brightness of noontime. 
There are stars in the blackest midnight. Lucency knows it’s allegiance is owed 
to coming or going light.

There is poverty in the rich classes.
There is wealth in the humblest abode.
On family or friends your life you spend,
your profit’s not saved it’s sowed.

The complicated devices by which our lives we live.
Devoid of personality-all take & little give.

None look past the watch’s face to see its complications.
Only seeing hands of time-not gears in their rotations.

We’ve traded dials, debate & books in aid of convenience.
Need’s no more invention’s womb, it’s labor wanting lenience.

Useful gadgets are quite the boon, if we retain our skill.
If we’re ignorant of the plow, we’ve nothing for the mill.

We love progress & so we should; it piques the pace of course.
But moves us closer to the end & further from our source.

Light hits a wing & breaks into blue.
Mother Nature’s might can’t  bear this hue.
Beams ricochet off poppy’s petal.
Plays off robin’s eggs & Greek nettle.
Sun’s gold shatters on navy ocean.
Rainbow’s prism shows cobalt’s notion.
Sunrise paints a cerulean sky.
Azure is caged in a lapis dye.
The iris can see light’s blue unfurled…
but blue’s not part of the living world.

The thirsty heart feeds the hungry mind.
Psyche sweats cranking the pump in kind.
To each other’s survival inclined.
To codependent function resigned.

Both cleared out to be filled once again.
A circling race that neither will win.
The rhythm of sense & thought within.
Their composition a throbbing din.

The thinking brain jumps to conclusion.
The pumping heart skin’s flush infusion.
They fly in frenzied fast collusion.
The soul the fruit of their effusion.

Often harmonied in grief & love.
Laughter & blues; the hand in the glove.
Only wants & needs cause push & shove.
Hearts desiring what brains are above.

Steering bodies thru life with their oars.
No clear distinction-like seas & shores.
Hearts experience what thought explores.
Working together til death shades doors.

The devil inside has power o’er me because it knows my name; 
It badger’s me incessantly in a sport of wits & I’m game.

The devil inside is haughty blind & relishes my anguish.
He competes complete to drink my pain & in that lies his languish.

The devil inside gluts on my ruin; showing his thinnest hide.
So assured the gauntlet is his, while gorging hisself on my pride.

It’s here I strike & here I injure, catching the imp by surprise.
He rallies his wits & cuts me deep, these winning scars are my prize.

The devil inside exists in defeat his only strength my flaws…
Marks in my flesh by the devil himself back when he still had claws.

My recent yesterdays have been good. I soak my soul in pride; 
I believe the voice inside my head, to me, has often lied.

My pieces before me, many fold, proves false its diatribe.
The dreams I’ve foiled & knots I’ve coiled to this critic I ascribe.

The detractor perched inside my brain has often cast its shade.
It commentates each move I make & sows doubt o’er all I’ve made.

I cannot shut this cynic up but I can smother it’s flame.
Its embers always will be there but its fire my peace won’t claim.

A skeptic lives in all our minds; we decide how well it thrives.
By pumping blood in the kinder heart, the hope in us survives.

A future in love I’m e’er able to see.
Though the present has yet to gift me.
“Live your nows open so later can come”…
Wizened wishes that “I” becomes “We”.

I’ve predicted a day when love does reign.
Though it’s dawn is reluctant to deign.
Outlasting the night with morning in mind…
Is the moonlight that brightens my brain.

Sighting horizons to see through the veil.
Traveling there because here goes stale.
I follow the map laid out by my heart… 
My adventure encompassed in scale.

I come to a place where I’ve seen us meet.
I’ve surveyed these environs complete.
You are not here but I go on & on…
Was my vision of you a deceit?

Weary from searching & hope’s heavy weight,
 I must stop for relief from my freight. 
I’ve reached halfway in the effort for us.
 I’ll be here, it’s your turn & I’ll wait. 

In the sluice of my heart & the forge of my mind,
Throughout both organs my spirit does wind.

I explore halls in my head & my chambered heart.
Their walls embossed with both knowledge & art.

My wits the Greek chorus to my cardiac play. 
Waxing & waning in concert each day.

The mind & the heart, the other’s yin to one’s yang,
Coexist for life like a bell & it’s clang.

Grey matter & muscle a reciprocal whole…
Bad blood between them fermenting my soul.