calpurnia mockingbird

calpurnia mockingbird Feb 2018

Winter skin shivers as damp settles,
his troubled brow seeks silent shelter to sleep among demons. Triumphs and tortures muddied by time haunt the waking as they pass.
"There but for the grace of who?"
is uttered under the cross fire of blame.
Surely the grace is ours?
An outstretched hand, filthy with grief begs solace from the blind.
On his cheek a tear to shame the world.

Written after spending time in the city and observing the level of homelessness. The fact that homelessness is still an issue in today's society is abhorrent. Everyone deserves to feel safe and respected.

calpurnia mockingbird Feb 2018

We.

We are the darkness.
Smiling pretty as sinew is ripped from bone.
We scream silently into the fray our mouths stretched wide with furious scorn. Eyes blind to seeping sufference.
We are your echo, absorbed by shadow. No touch can save us, no words of salve to flayed skin will ever see us whole.
We are the darkness.
We live within you.

calpurnia mockingbird Feb 2018

A wish away

If you were just a wish away
I'd call on every star
to bring you back from where you rest
to heal this broken heart.

If time were but a circumstance
It's whim not our demise
I'd stop the clocks to mark the time
I first looked in your eyes.

My wishes dim the starlit sky
'till dark are all my hours,
in knowing I will never find
A finer love than ours.

calpurnia mockingbird Jan 2018

Them.

Do you hear the voices?
They whisper of love in open wounds.
They spit at my ears and wail at my image.
My mind a willing admirer of the cacophony.
They bring only black,
cracked and unyielding it lays against my monochrome skin.
Tearing at scars to bleed only ink.

calpurnia mockingbird Jan 2018

What shape this heart.

What shape this heart of discontent
Enlarged and scarred from battles drawn
Yet small and quiet as the grave
In silent hours before the dawn.
It beats within a crooked chest
It's keeps it's time with breath, forlorn
and promises with certain fate
It will be still one quiet morn.

I have recently been diagnosed with heart failure, so I think about my heart a lot nowadays.

Jan 2018

Rob Rutledge

Clear Skies Are Often Coldest

Clear skies are often coldest,
Tempests' temper seems subdued.
Sunlight skims the tiles of rooftops,
Stops.
Savours,
Admires the view.

The sky was never blue.
Obsidian haze and gunmetal days
Light the life we choose.
Blackened,
Slightly bruised.
Broken yet not dismayed.
Too long we have been walking,
Proud in our shroud of the grey.

My brother, my teacher,
My foe and my friend.
Our ghosts shall speak
Once more at the end.