An invisible column
Of faceless soldiers.
Marching silently,
As if a great spell has been cast upon them.
Stopping only to fire the occasional shot,
Strike down a man who has lived his life
Beholden to their pace,
Their rules,
Their demands.
Moving in perfect,
Endless,
Cold synchronization.
Each step a deafening tick,
At perfect intervals.
Men will try to flee the column,
They always have.
But there is no escape,
It finds us all,
Wipes us from this earth.
It can’t be harnessed,
It won’t be controlled,
It answers no master.
Faceless,
But with a million faces.
What a beautiful thing time is.

I can't help but view life through a window,
a portal of glass that distorts my view.
It magnifies heat and light,
bringing them to a heart-crushing intensity.
It keeps me blind,
unable to see beyond its perfect edges
and perfect lattice.
So straight and simple,
but encasing a million tiny imperfections.
Bubbles barely discernible to my heavy eyes.
I am trapped forever and always,
looking out at a world without me.

I stand in it's shadow,
the great dark rock.
It looms and towers,
indescribably imposing.
Yet I know I must ascend it,
conquer it for mine own sake.
I begin, first believing it was hopeless.
Tumbling and slipping as I wade through shale
a stone black as soot.
This entire entity stands darker than night,
challenging me.
I will conquer it,
I know that I must.
Eventually I reach a ledge,
I am nearly there.
It seems like decades since I began,
and it very well may have been.
I look back,
become entranced.
What a sight,
so ominous and stark,
I could not look away.
Towards the summit I continued,
unable to turn my head.
It was close though,
I knew it was.
Somehow,
I was awash with foreboding,
wholly unexpectant  of what was before me.
I succeeded however,
but the victory is not real,
not by any means.
In only a few days,
a minutia of time,
it will challenge me again.
A never ending ritual,
wrought by nature.

She writes,
“You are only as beautiful as the art you can inspire”
But what about the ones who have no artist?
The ones who are muse to no one.
Do they just sit there empty?
Devoid of all beauty,
No one to lift their spirits higher.
No, that’s not it at all.
There can still be beauty there,
Just as there is still beauty in the inky darkness.
Beauty is more than what can be recorded on some page destined to disintegrate.
Beauty is an idea,
A construct that we each devise within our own minds.
So is she lying to herself?
Is she deceiving herself in stating that her only beauty is in what is tangible?
You can’t quite reach out and grip darkness,
Or throw it on a canvas,
And shove it in someone’s face and say,
“This is what is beautiful.”
But it is beautiful.
We can only swear to it.

It's been about a year now,
maybe a little more,
since I decided to stick my neck out and let it go.
Since I decided to share what I had
with a society of strangers,
a group of anonymous friends.

It's been about a year now,
since I found acceptance in a place as one.
This community helped save me,
helped me heal,
and taught me to look towards a brighter dawn.

It's been about a year now,
since I started checking that little gray eye.
It slowly lifted my spirits,
And I believe with complete and utter honesty
that this communal acceptance saved my life.

A slightly bent knee
defines the position
of a curled hand.
Far from disfigured,
the glazed white eyes stare on.
They have seen centuries,
watched life evolve,
without ever viewing.
Fake,
he is all fake.
Wrought by hand.
Born at a time so long lost,
yet never ageing a day,
save for a few wind worn wrinkles.
Grooving the juvenile face.