Oh modern slave! Whoever holds the leash
Your powers ache to lengthen so passionately;
By looks we’ve emerged from our hushed crèche,
To a world your gods bore cacophonously.
Where justice is wrought by the toss of a dime,
And new law’s gluttony hides the old’s entrails;
The balance now serves to punish ‘fore crime,
And Liberty’s strength cannot wield the scale.
Try it! Flatten the summit and fix to it the star
Which guides those that part with this task of toil;
Try on the bejeweled drapery of He, from afar,
Who endeavored to fashion you: soul from soil.
Too bewitched by that drink which dims the pain,
To smell the retch of the sore you have opened again.

What shadows eclipse my careful judgment?
With what violence does the Earth resist my weight?
Stand, must I, despite the rebellious
nature of the tremor underneath my gait

Oh to borrow Atlas' strength for my burden
For Hercules to sharpen and connect the twine
Powering my muscle to match the uncertain
force and ferocity and finish of time

Oh in banishment from the garden we forever fall
And collapse into chasms beneath the soil
Excavated too resignedly by the hands
of men unwilling to share our toil

But mine is the young spirit daily forged
With Death's lasting measure tarnished and torn!
My yoke and the blood loosed beneath it
Invigorate my being; reborn, Reborn!

the onyx residence above me matches what’s below
the tumult seems synchronous
thrusting this realm from end to end
My wooden steed is in disrepair
and war-weary in defeat
seeking quieter refuge amongst the forsaken
life drips from me and erupts about me
oh how I grasp for the sanctuary of it
but the bodies only burgeon and
grow in formidable posture
Presiding above my eyes
They sway and dance and swallow me whole

the croons and cries
tempt me again
under a blackening sky
i tread not lightly but thoroughly
at once sanctifying this raw Earth
and destroying it
i encroach in this place
my soul knows it but my eyes do not
the shredding of those teeth
my pace encourages while my being is wrought
not in terror but loyalty

i haven't found you
yet i am close

Beside your window
Beside the water
Beneath those dark stars
Beneath the martyrs

I think of purpose
I think of power
In poignant remorse
Piquantly sour

In your yard it seems to rise
The ephemeral cadence of surprise
When he appears with baffled eyes
The life before him another prize

Atop the glowing grass you lay
Under the melody of the play
Of a loose guitar and drummer’s way
With the tunes and tones of a summer’s day

Yet I am here
Yet I am away
A piece of you
Unwelcome, afraid

Now apart
Now a fiend
My once sweet life
Under siege

The lights that glimmer and dance for you
They warm the past and present too
Nothing’s decrepit, nothing askew
And the only color unplayed is blue

Crystal collides and inhibitions calm
In glee and grandeur you carry on
What lasts awhile, but not too long
Is preserved in yet another song

Dare I advance
Dare I say,
“May I join you,
May I stay?”

But I have dared enough today
Dared to leave and dared to return
I have dared my whole life away
Far too fractured to finally learn

Must you, God, cast me aside?
I have listened, I have tried!
Anguish forced me from this place
Return me, Father, in somber grace!

What good are these ears if I cannot hear you!
What save this mouth from uselessness?
My flesh and fingers seek to be near you
As I reach in this black night for blessedness!

Despite my quite audacious plea
Lakeside, I now need memory
To fool my mind and body as one
Into knowing I am still your son

Yet here I left you so here I must be
Only just beside your pictures of me
Only just beside our family name
Only just beside my battered grave.

I shade myself beneath this mighty oak
Poised in a dignity of God’s holy measure
And true does the stream extend beside it
Flowing ever fully into forever

Travel to oblivion
And leech life from it
The throb of your arm
Bloodies the jar
Of some vainly collected cosmos
Irreverent in the face of your mandates
Or your pleas
Or your jurisdictions
Apparently the fool you are
Hasn’t met the fool you’ve been
Those calloused knees
Can’t help but crawl to heaven’s gate;
Two feet from it
And you collapse again
In some self-righteous descent
Back to Earth
Where Mother Epicuria
Spits in your face
And offers a novel treasure
“Oh my Savior my God
Spare me from this pain I abhor”
And in the same breath you beg
To be amorphous once more