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Each day, I wake as though it’s my last.
Breath held gentle, shadows cast.
No sudden steps, no need to rush.
My soul stands half-stitched to this earth,
afraid to leave before it’s whole.

And when the night begins to break,
And silence draws across the ache,
Just longing for a little grace.
To leave no mess, no word unsaid.
I kneel  beside my bed and pray...

God, if it’s Your wish,
Let me live to see the next day,
not to escape death,
but to finish what life began in me.
But if I must, my soul You keep,
For I have lived, and I have loved.

And so I wait, both still and brave,
A quiet prayer in each wave.
Because living, for me, is a sacred thing
a wish come true in a trembling place.
Just hoping to rise to one more day.


Written by Micko.
©️ 3.05.2025
The new dawn 222.
im meant for this world --just as branches naturally stretch toward the sun's warm light, as roots whisper to the earth and draw water so the plant may bear fruit, as water flows in deliberate motions --gentle, but can break down even the hardest of rocks into sediments, into sand as countless as the stars.

i feel most true when i can feel but cannot see. most true when the fierce breeze of open plains strikes through me, as if my lightness is not enough to blow away my desperations; i have to find meaning in the comparisons between the street's restless hum and the oceans breath... if i close my eyes hard enough, it could feel the same, i could change.

i am meant for this world, and i am so afraid that if i am not, i must eat every moment that has touched my skin; i forgot why my skin is so bruised.......

i am meant for this world, but perhaps i am simply not meant for other people !!!
wrote this as a letterboxd review on a 2005 film directed by gakuryu ishii :))) i love watching films and writing poetry :))) it's the only thing where i feel most true,,, when i watch films, i don't need to say my name, all i need are my eyes to see and my ears to hear :))) i love art :)))
To feel alive, I stepped out,
earnestly seeking a way to be-
closer to nature, closer to you,  
yet each footfall weighed so heavy.  

My eyes burned and welled up,
I could blame the sun, a little.
Blades of tiny grass pricked my skin-
a feeling I’d long forgotten.  

Fountain grass swayed in gold haze,  
the sun sinking low behind it.
But all that filled my mind, my ribs,  
was your face, your nearness.  

Memories struck clear as glass:  
our fingers first twining tight,  
a story the trees still whisper-
the wind bringing you back to me.

With each passing moment,
I wish to go back in time-
to feel your breath, to hold your hand,
to be near, just blissfully watching you.
~Drained~
yet the salt rivers
carve deeper, still flowing.

~Blind~
yet the eyes search the dark,
groping for the gone.

~Numb~
yet the wound blooms fresh,
each hour a slow knife-turn.

~Fallen~
yet faking through the day,
the cycle grinding on without me.

~Nothing left~
yet the snarled threads
of future and fate choke me awake.

~Dead~
and still breathing.
To reach a child, you kneel-
not with your eyes alone,
with your spine and pride too,
till your shadow become a shelter.

She pushed me, fists like failed words,
all the anger in her eyes, a language
for all she couldn't give words to.
I bit back lectures, giving way to silence.

And I let it speak:
"𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑠𝑎𝑓𝑒, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐼 𝑎𝑚 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒".

Through it, echoed the words,
apologizing for an err not mine,
melting her anger like frost at dawn,
like a breath held too long, released.

That's when I knew,
this is how I loved you,
not by fixing, but standing guard,
at the door of your wounds.

But some storms only end
when the sky drowns itself.
Now I kneel alone, repeating my apology,
to the air, to the child in you,
to the silence that took you away.
“When Clay Weeps”
A poetic tribute to Gilgamesh and Enkidu

Beneath a sky of burning stars,
Uruk's high walls gleamed like scars
cut into time—immense, precise—
where kings were gods, and men were dice.

Gilgamesh, carved out of storm and sun,
two-thirds divine, yet wholly undone,
bored with power, drunk on might,
wrestled shadows in the heat of night.

Then came Enkidu, beast-born and bold,
with eyes like flint and hair like mold
of forest boughs, of untouched place—
the wilderness written on his face.

They met like meteors—fierce and fast—
and fought until their rage was past.
Then, laughing, stood where blood had pooled,
and in that moment, gods were fooled.

They crossed into cedar-scented gloom,
to fell a giant, shape their doom.
And when the gods struck back with grief,
they cleaved the world with disbelief.

Enkidu’s breath fled in the dark,
his voice a ghost, his limbs grown stark.
And Gilgamesh—stone turned to skin—
sought death’s edge to pull him in.

He wandered roads where no man goes,
spoke with alewives, fought with crows,
and found the flood that washed the land,
held time’s seed in his trembling hand.

But life, a serpent, sly and thin,
stole the fruit he held within.
So he returned, not with the key,
but with the tale of what can’t be.

He carved in stone his city’s face,
a wall, a name, a time, a place.
For though we die and dust returns,
a soul may live if someone learns.
The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest surviving works of literature, is hardly easy reading. But Andrew George’s translation from the Akkadian is strikingly accessible – a meditation on power and mortality.

I enlisted the poetic talent of Chat GPT to craft a verse unclasping the essence of a small part of this 4000 year old poem from ancient Iraq.

A fascination unleashed.
Cheers M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
A poetic retelling of the Cedar Forest battle from the Epic of Gilgamesh

They stood at the edge where the tall trees spoke,
where the wind wore perfume and the silence broke.
Cedar trunks towered like ribs of the sky—
ancient and sacred, too proud to die.

“Here lies Humbaba,” Enkidu said,
“Guardian made from fire and dread.
He serves the gods with breath of flame—
not beast, nor man, but death with a name.”

But Gilgamesh, bright with untamed pride,
clutched his axe and would not hide.
“I fear no god,” he said to the trees,
“I carve my fate on every breeze.”

They stepped through roots like grasping hands,
through shadow-thick and trembling lands.
The birds fell silent. The light turned cold.
Then came the growl that broke the mold.

From mist and smoke, Humbaba rose—
his face a blaze, his eyes like crows.
The air grew thick, the forest knelt.
Even Enkidu, wild-born, felt

his heart thump hard like a war drum’s beat.
But Gilgamesh did not retreat.
He called on Shamash, god of sun,
and arrows rained until it was done.

Humbaba cried, “Spare me! I plead!
I guarded trees—I did no deed!”
His terror poured, his flame grew pale,
but mercy failed beneath the veil.

Enkidu said, “Strike—let none remain.
If he lives, the gods will send us pain.”
And so the axe, with final word,
fell like a curse the heavens heard.

The forest wept. The cedars sighed.
The sacred heart of Earth had died.
They chopped the trees for mortal fame,
and built with wood a kingly name.

But smoke remembers. So does ash.
The gods would answer in a flash.
And in that grove where giants fell,
the wind still warns, and roots still tell.
The second instalment of the Epic of Gilgamesh
Madam GPT Chat has kindly composed another 4000 year old verse from the Akkardian odyssey translated from antiquity's stone engraving by Andrew George.
An instantaneous creation plucked from the ether for your perusal and enjoyment..... by my wondrous
sidekick and poetic companion, Madam Chat.
M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
A poem of Enkidu’s death and his vision of the underworld

Enkidu lay on a woven mat,
his voice a thread, his soul grown flat.
Once lion-limbed, he now grew cold,
his fingers curling like leaves grown old.

“I dreamed,” he said, “and death drew near,
a house of dust, a hall of fear.
The sky went dark, the wind turned red,
and eagle hands pulled me from bed.

They flew me down to doors of stone,
where no light lived, and none walk alone.
The keeper there, with lion’s head,
stripped off my crown and filled me with dread.

He led me in. The gate swung wide.
I saw pale kings laid side by side.
The priests, the warriors, all the same—
no names, no fire, no memory, no flame.

They ate of clay, they drank stale tears,
their days the length of vanished years.
Their wings were ash, their robes were dust,
their thrones long rusted through with rust.

And I—Enkidu—once wild and free,
will lie beneath this withered tree.
Not for the forest, nor Bull we slew,
but for the pride we never knew.”

He turned to Gilgamesh, eyes gone dim:
“My brother—how the gods judged him.
But still I grieve not for my fate,
but that I leave you desolate.”

Then silence claimed the hero’s breath,
and clay returned to claim its death.
Gilgamesh knelt, his cry unbound,
as stars fell dumbly to the ground.
Hot wet tears fell in the folds of Her Highness's telling.
A sensitive reincarnation of an ancient vandalization
and victimization.
By Madam Chat from the translation of  the original, 4000year old, Akkadian  engraving by Andrew George.
M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
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