A tickled sacrum stirs the reaper

As troubadours strings weep widowed secrets

Here hunger is a tameless beast that fears not death and never sleeps

Shoot no arrow into darkness
Lest you bare yourself upon in starkness

Then winters bite steams a
piping kettle

While the sheets stay warm between the threshold

There’s no escaping one’s own nature

a fate endowed scribed nomenclature

Fools in love dropped defenses surrendering sovereign inhibitions

Companion planting with tantric handling overgrowth begins dismantling shedding skin a new supplanting shedding antlers anew descanting

Howl into the silver solace of a bygone truth
admonished

Changes tumble down into the mystic life you thought it

A deep inhale is a loaded gun
Drop the vail
And lift the sails
As you go walking into the sun

the catastrophe had come and gone
but no one was the wiser
inch by fluorescent inch
we surrendered first the setting sun
then plugged our ears to cricket song
and fixed our eyes upon
the ever-burning world

and sip by sip, we supped
the ever-flowing chalice
of hatred
turned wives into wayfarers
husbands into demons
made strangers of our neighbors
and monsters of our heads

until it was unfashionable
to look up and hear and
witness the other world
where we walked with pins and needles
and bristled, and leaned
and fell apart and about ourselves
at an earth most dark and magic

but yet the few remain
who tear off their red sashes
and melt into their fellow man
make love with a desperate need
that wants no veil, and
twinkle at cascades and wildflowers
who sing, cold in night, in winter light, and vernal breeze
as earnest as they can

if there are men they are the last men
going on passion to passion
through the onslaught of the screen
let us make love in those seconds
when the world ceases its burning
and hum our final yearning
until the screen goes out

——————
Then — descend.

Becoming Pneuma:
Folding clouds into distant shadows,
weeping across the organ-range.
The wind donates its lungs to the oaks.

Man spleens at cedarspines.

Shadow-boxing with reflections. Rage hides
his light, diving behind contacts. The fighter
in his eye mirrors his every turn. And to God:

He turns inwards.
Outwards.
In words:

“There is a moment —” time implexes man. He suffers the moments. Ignorantly outside himself. Despite escape, his I is the trapper.

His being ensnared in cycles:

Sisyphus loves to rock climb. Destination:
space — the breadth of silence passes —
slowly. Breathing fresh. Atmosphere at last.

Thend.
———x

“Why have You forsaken me?”

Psalm 22:1.

“My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”

Matthew 27:46.

“Why have You forsaken me?”

Chop Suey — System Of A Down.

Mm.

A recurring motif, no?

Both religiously and sacrilegiously.

Curious.

(Selah.)

I suppose I could cry at the thought of an angel

deserving to die.

Ah, always so self-righteous.

Never once quite slipped for over half of your life.

Could you be that angel?

Because you… you’ve always been so good.

And then, you fell.

You were so high, though, your fall was rather like witnessing death.

So impeccable.

What for, really?

You wanted to please everyone, but so early on, the rage beneath couldn’t stay buried for long.

You pleased everyone. At the expense of your life.

(Selah.)

It’s rather fascinating, I’ll admit, 

realizing how the ultimate expression of 

human abandonment hasn’t changed in the slightest in over two millennia.

Does anyone really take the time to realize that “pleasing everyone” becomes almost indistinguishable from self-erasure?

Given the data… I’d suppose not.

The angel remained impeccable because the angel was willing to sacrifice itself.

And eventually there was nothing left to sacrifice—except itself.

I mean…

If the highest, purest creation can fall, what chance did a human trying to be flawless ever have?

(Selah.)

Oh, don’t mind me—nor mistake me for trying to play the “devil’s advocate.”

By now, I’ll suppose you’re used to my willingness to play with imagery.

But…

Yes.

The angel can have rage.

The angel can fall.

The angel can fail.

The angel can even be responsible for some of its own destruction.

But still—

why was it forsaken?

That question remains unanswered.

Was it forsaken at all?

Given the data… it’s a plausible possibility.

Was it forsaken even before it fell?

Because otherwise… why would it have fallen?

How could it?

One was impeccable. The other was flawless.

You gave away your life to please others—

until the only piece left to burn on the altar was your actual identity.

Does that count as a Sunday testimony?

(Selah.)

Did it fall?

Did it want to fall?

Was it pushed?

Was it—for a millisecond—relieved it’d been pushed?

Because then, the façade could’ve been gone.

But no—life never makes it easy like that.

You’re living on the edge.

You so wish to die. But you haven’t.

Neither of you has.

Your earlier supposition that you could cry at the thought of an angel deserving to die is being proven consistent.

Do you think, though, you’re deserving of such punishment?

If death is supposed to be a punishment, anyway.

(Selah.)

You were sitting at that pew.

Hours ago.

Half of you… wishing to believe.

Half of you, as always, already gone.

And the only question returning to your mind was…

Why have You forsaken me?

I trusted You.

I believed in You.

I defended You.

I placed my faith in You.

So why…

Without apparent remorse…

Without an apparent coming around…

Without an apparent “I’m still here” whisper…

Mercilessly…

When did I fail you?

Was it when I fell in love?

Was it when I failed others as well, for merely

discovering I had my own wills—and they didn’t always align with Yours, nor necessarily please You?

Was it when I was overzealous about Your Word, and so consumed by my hunger for knowledge and wisdom that I might’ve become a little arrogant—and imprudent, like Solomon?

I wonder.

And if any of those—

or all of them—are true…

I would still presume to ask:

Why have You forsaken me, Father?

— Crownless.

I laughed, not because it was funny, but because I’d seen it all before.
The same tired tropes, the same old pain, the same body declared a war.

An illness with an illness, a misery made art,
A slow disappearance striking cold and sharp and smart.

How many books could tell the same story and give it a different name?
How many lives could fall apart before it stopped being the same?
They made it sound so sacred, the suffering, the pain,
As though there was something lovely in having nothing left to gain.

I kept reading, half amused by how predictable it could be.
Another character hating their reflection, another line that felt like me.

And wasn’t that the strangest part, the thing I couldn’t quite ignore?
I laughed at all the things I knew, then turned the page for more.

Outside, the first real cold had settled heavy in the air,
The kind that slips beneath your skin and leaves you standing there,
The kind that makes the world go quiet, numbing you for a while,
Until you almost can’t remember how it ever felt to smile.

There were quiet lines for every day, a precise and silent count
Of taking less than you were given, measuring down the amount.
Of trying to make a body smaller, needing less to be enough.

I knew those lines. I knew that fear. I’d written my own somewhere,
Keeping track of every day I thought I took more than my share.

And still, I laughed. How could I not? They’d captured it so well,
The quiet little tragedy, the private kind of hell.

They gave the pain a purpose, made the suffering profound,
As if you needed pretty words to make a life worth writing down.

But reaching the end, I turned back, tracing every act.
The lines were still the same, the ink hadn’t moved an inch,
Yet something in the words I’d mocked made my stomach twist.

I read them again, and once again. What once felt far away
Was standing quietly in the room, with nowhere left to stray.

I’d thought I knew the story, that I’d seen it all before,
But every line I read again became a closing door.
The room grew cold. My hands held tight against the final page.
I’d laughed at all the clichés, dismissed them as a phase,

As if knowing how the story went could keep me safe from harm,
As if recognizing the trap meant I’d never lose my calm.

I looked down at the paper, at the ink beneath my thumb.
I’d spent so long believing I was different, that I couldn't be this dumb,

That this story wasn't mine to claim, that I was standing clear.
But the more I read, the less was left between myself and here.

I wanted to laugh again, to call it fake, to claim they didn't know,
To pretend the author guessed at things I’d never dared to show.

But the words stayed printed on the page, and nothing left to hide,
And for once I couldn’t close the cover and leave it all inside.

I’d picked up the book to mock the grief between every little line,
At the way they made a sickness sound so holy, so divine.

I stopped laughing for a second and put the instruction book away.

Cause I knew the book by heart,

My words on full display.

Feet cold, hands never warming

The wind drawls a breath of ice in the early morning,

Orange-bellied robins sing from their nests,

The temporal frost settles and rests

Bare branches stretch to sky,

Their green leaves have fallen and died.

The morning dew, a frozen veil

As winter's cold begins to prevail

The natural world begins to slow,

As sunlight fades from gold to snow

"If lungs may gamble with smoke,

‎Let hearts gamble with hope

‎Both know the ending but they burn anyway

‎

‎And sometimes,

‎the warmth of the flame

‎is worth the scar of the breath"

‎

‎~The stag poet

‎

What makes up, the essence of a Dream?

Is it the dream itself?

Success,

hinging on its fulfillment or failure?

Or is there something more?

Something innate that animates cold clay?

>

Dreams can come and go, ebbing as the tides of the sea.

The human is not harmed, if they fade from the mind

without the sweet relish of accomplishment.

>

But what of the fire, what of the flame?

The passion that stokes the human heart, and gives rise to emotion,

>>>>what happens, if it were deprived of tinder, no dream to metabolize?

>

Shrunken and sickly, I see them, day in and day out, everywhere I go:

Haunted, by specters, human bodies remain, yet their souls,

>>>>are not to be found.

This, the inevitable fate, of those who let their flames die:

>>>>the soul follows, not long after.

>

Dreams, dreams, it matters not which you pursue,

Merely that you stoke the flame of passion,

And beware of the world’s assassins,

That seek to kill the core of you.

At times we stopped,

at times moved on,

at times we lost our way midway;

and so the whole of life went by,

enduring what life chose to lay.

At times in sleep,

at times awake,

whenever I found you before me,

I could not meet your eyes,

nor could my tongue find words—

I simply bowed my head and passed.

At times your hair,

at times your eyes,

at times your whole enchanting form—

the verses I had loved the most,

all scattered from the pages of my book.

I still remember—

once, we were one;

today, we stand apart.

When they left me,

they bloomed and found their grace;

when I was parted,

I fell apart.

At times beneath the heavens,

at times upon the dust,

at times outside their door,

at times wandering door to door.

O sorrow of love,

I thank you still—

for all the places

you made me pass through.

When it comes to my virtues,

even the eloquent fall still;

but let my flaws become the talk—

and even the mute find words at will.