Warm,
huddled
close to the
hearth.
Hiding,
from the
cold
bite of
Winter;
snow's on the
horizon.


Wind,
sighing,
out in the
bitter chill,
of a cold
Winters night,
all decked in
frost.



Snowflakes,
softly falling,
to brush the
frost-hard
ground, soft
as a kiss,
feather-light;
mark of
departed
love.


Silence,
a weight
of silent
sound;
moths
wings,
fluttering
in the
dark.
Such a
weight
of
silent
sound,
outside
in the
dark.


I curl here,
crouched
beside the
crackling
hearth;
outside the
wind is
blowing,
whistling
through
the trees,
barren
branches
clacking
in the
wintry
breeze.


And I sleep.

I love the way the thrush is
singing, down by the cold-water,
swift-water, streaming; its babbling
the thrush mistook, for laughing in
the madding way, that streams take on,
when lost in glee, in Summers gladding,
madding sway.

The rain hides my
streaming tears,
as they fall to mix
with the water of
the clouds, to
linger, and then
disperse, to be lost
in the rain,
in the sleepless
city.

lying here listening, I think of many
things, as I listen to the soft sound of
the singing sands in the cool nights
autumn breeze.

I think of many things, in the time before
dawn, of loves lost and loves found, and
loves never to be had. I think of life and death,
and the whirring of cicadas, short lives filled
with sound, and wonder as to the mysteries of
the universe, and whether rain will come today.

Confused and lost in the morning chill, I wander
back to myself again, home from exile in the day dream lands; and I smile at the rising dawn,
illuminating the snow all around me, and my breath
frosts in the frozen air, as I gaze out at a frozen lake,
and wonder what will be.

My mind is empty. I struggle eternally with myself,
to find the words to write, to find some meaning in
this life. I scream soundlessly and beat against the door
that holds everything, so close and yet forever far. I try
to speak with wisdom and with certitude, to gently show
those erring the way, back into the sunlight, back, away from
the shadows, away from the death that comes to the living,
waiting, weighing, cold and heavy within your breast, a silent
stone of poison lead, content to wait, to drag, to drown, to pull
them down to final death, an empty pit in which no pain resides,
and to which no pain can be brought. It is left at the door, forgotten
and discarded, left to join the vast wastes of hate and anger, joy and
sorrow, love and melancholy, the trappings of life. I plead and hope
that someone, somewhere heeds my words, and I hope that they do
not read on and come to the bitter times when darkness covered me,
and I wrote of darkness, and sorrow, pain and melancholy.
I am so tired.

I screamed and blood filled my mouth. The blood of innocents and friends, of family, foes, allies,...the blood of children, of souls innocent and pure sent screaming back to the cold oblivion from whence they came, and I....I in Hell, flung broken, down into perdition to burn and drown and scream my repentance to the uncaring eyes of the Ancient Fallen. I burn. Ah the burning! My eyes melt, my skin boils, blackens, chars, burns, melts into a pool of blood and fat and gore. I drown in the blood of those  I have killed, slaughtered, those I have sent piece by piece, down into the cold black, or the fiery, freezing pain of damnation. I burn with the agony of my sins, and God watches, eyes full of holy wrath, and the angels singing in terrible voices of the pain and suffering and grief I have caused, and of that which I have still to endure, eternity in the blistering freezing pain of my uncounted sins, atrocities for which God weeps in grief and Holy Rage. I scream. I scream!

I SCREAM!!! AND GOD PUNISH ME FOR MY UNCOUNTED SINS THAT I MAY REPENT AND YET STILL BE ****** FOREVER AND FOR ALL OF ETERNITY!!!!

She stands there by the open window,
its mornings gray that lights her face.
her curls are long and fair and golden,
dulled by the light of the cold winters
morning; truthful in its stark demean.
Her face is pale and fair and lovely;
dark shadows circle her eyes, and her
eyes are gray, cold as the dawn, as they
watch the procession of men down the
road; in black are they robed, and their
cowls are dark. Her figure is lovely, or
was lovely, once; angles there are, and her lines
are hard and stark and sharp. Tall she stands
in the wasteful light, her pride a mantle, to
hold back the tide. Dressed in a sheet of
shimmering gray, almost she would blend into
the grey dawning morn, were it not for her hair,
though lackluster and shorn; longer it was in
summers fair past, till she cut it with shears and
shivers and hate. The cowled procession slows
to a stop, before a man and a pit and a naked tree.
He speaks in a voice of resonance and power; not
a tear is shed in that makeshift bower, not a tear,
not a whisper, not a head bowed in grief, for the
man they had carried. They spared him no pity; he
had shown none in life. The woman watches from
the empty tower, no tears shed there in her ancient
bower. Cold she stands in the cold morning grey,
robed in power and pride, and great beauty, past.
She watches as they lower her dead lord inside, no
coffin, he; too many had he broken. She watches
in silence, in pain, and in pride, foolish though it be
in the grey mornings light. Dirt over him. Dirt under.
A paupers grave, in a field, in winter. No honor in death;
he had had none in life. Last shovelful thrown; the ground
is smoothed over. The priest and his men leave the grey field
empty, save a tree in the center, stark in death.
she watches, and remembers, and falls in her folly, in her cold,
prideful folly, to join him in death, who had murdered her love.
To join him, though he it was who had murdered her love, and her joy and her dreams, and her young, laughing beauty. Fallen she, through prideful
folly.

Think,
if the depth
and breadth
of the boundless
sea, were combined
with the serenity
of a flower, and
the stillness of
a clear pool,
forgotten
in a timeless
vale, if all
these qualities
were instilled
in a mortal man,
would he not
be an expression
of the Spirit
of God?

I look back at all I have written, all I have seen.
I think it was a good life, I think it has been well spent.
Kindness and joy, mixed and intermingled with sorrow and regret.
I like to think that I have seen both sides of the spectrum, if not to the extremes,
men burned and broken, for listening to their dreams. I have seen joy and heard laughter,
witnessed the happy innocence of a child with both joy and sadness, for the knowing that it will be taken from them. Ah, for life is a cruel experience, and though joy is in it, and laughter, and peace, and innocence too for a while, for a year, for a day, this all is mingled and mixed, interwoven seamlessly with sadness, regret. With the melancholy of a still winters morning, on a cold winters day. For one cannot be without the other. Or how else could life be? Could the joy of a raindrop falling from a grey and cloudy sky to splash against ones face be truly appreciated, if one had not first to experience the long, hard years of bitter drought, and the women's wailing cries in time of famine? Or could the joy of innocence, total and pure, be recognized for what it was, if one had never lost it? This is the balance of life, yin and yang, universal and eternal, for if it was not, how could we exist at all?

Autumn,
Summers dying,
leaves falling;
fire in the trees,
Herald of Winter.

Rain,
falling softly,
from clouds
the soft sheen
of shimmering pearls,
grey in the dawns
fledgling light,
falls to bring the
breath of life to
the parched soil,
and cleanse the earth,
in its gentle caress,
as it flows on, down,
until at last it ceases;
the clouds break apart,
slowly drifting, away into
the great blue expanse
of the sky, and the sun
breaks through,
in all its shining
glory.

A girl I once saw,
and her eyes were
green as the grass
in springtime, and
her face was soft,
innocent,and fresh,
and yet her eyes were
cold and distant, and
in them were distance,
and an apathy to swall-
ow the world. She was
broken and harsh and
silent and alone.

And I loved her.

Love,
God;
fruit on
the vine
of innocence,
withered, in
the wake
of Spring.
My Life-
incessant
struggle
in the
great
task,
to bring
Spring
back
again.

Wandering.
Night fills the sky,
path lit by burning lamps,
few and far between.

Stumbling.
Jasmine in the air,
silence fled, returns in
abscence, of my footsteps,
upon the hard and cobbled
way.

Tears.
wind stirs the leaves,
And sighs a song of
soft farewell, flowing
through the grasp of folly,
fingers stretched to empty air,
And the shining stars above.

Gone.
Stars fade and pass away,
the moon falls in knowledge,
of the coming of the day.
Cool darkness fades.
And I left with nothing,
bitter memory, and the tattered
shreds of dream.

Human,
lost,
amidst
endless strife,
without,
and within,
mind
turbulent,
confused,
despairing..

Yet, there is still
light;
there is still
peace-
there is still
God.
I will not despair.
I will love,
I will laugh,
I will cry,
I will sorrow,
on; for I
will not
forego
the sweet, pure
joy of
life,
not without
a fight.

I will live,
and I will
be happy;
I will not
despair.
I promise...
I promise
you.
I will not
despair.

For there is
joy, and peace,
and love,
in life; and
there is eternity,
which is
everything,
embodiment
of all good,
all joy, all
love, all
innocence,
and purity,
within this
life, as well
as the next.
All I must do,
is find it.

Once, as I searched the leaning
shelves, browsing, as in casual
manner oft I used to do, but of
late let fall, left caught in the
dreamish dust of the wayside,
In the net of things forgotten,
after the like of the windward
spirit, I came across a faded
cover, full venerable, (worn
with youths withdrawal), but set
far back amidst its fellows,
hidden in the quenching shadows,
Of those great tomes of learned
Word, graph and ledger, prosaic
Illustration.

Intrigued so, I let the winsome
Curiosity have its way, and pried
apart the green and dusted sheath,
and looked inside, so as to make
certain whether or no, I should
know, or leave unknown. Leafing
through those tattered pages,
thin and yellowed, words faint,
beneath the grime of years and
care, it came to my mind in wonder
how many, as myself, must have
come, in ignorance perhaps, or
error to these pages once
pristine, and in reading become
caught, swept away in frenzied
passion, tearing, tearing, tearing
away, mad in the arms of
Felt and feeling feel and
knowledge, in the hope it will
Turn, transmuted in glorious
Ecstasy, into at last the long
Sought respite, peace at last,
Within the still transparent
Pool of Truth, Enlightenment.

In vain? Perhaps.

Us, the people, to me are as
stars, fallen to earth. Each a
small burning point of light,
one among billions, all so close,
and yet so far apart.

I walk and think of yesteryear,
as I wend these winding ways;
I loved the life, the youth of
Spring; yet I yearned for the
cold and the fleeting days.


My passion rose in the Summers
heat; a fire awoke within me. Yet
even as I reveled in that pagan
idyll, I pined for the cold and the
frost and silence.


I saw the sleeping trees of Autumn;
I gazed at the burning wood. But
even as my heart rejoiced in my
breast, I knew that it was not enough.


Now I walk in Winter-tide, and behold
the blackened trees. The crackle and snap
of dead leaves underfoot is like an
ever present symphony, in that pale winters
day. I pace under bough, under cloud,
under sky, and the wind loves me, and is
present at my side. Age lies on the sleeping
hills, and youth is far from me, as I wander
through the frosted halls, of that wondrous
Winter wood. And I looked out at the silent
land, frosted under weight of snow, and I
saw that it was good.

Upon the grassy, sunlit mound, wind blowing, leaves quaking,
sighing words of sun and rain, the trees speak in weathered tones,
of sun and moon and star and stone. Stalks waving, soil crumbling,
life wakes beneath the ground, and stirring moves to face the sun.
In the early days of spring.

My soul is like that
of an ant, of an
elephant, and
the summer storm,
my soul is like that of an
aeroplane, of the
starry skies and the
rushing tide;
my love is like that of the universe,
boundless, illimitable,
eternal in the womb of light,
I swim in the seas of nothingness,
and marvel at the beauty
of all.
My passion is like the air
before the storm, like the
lightning, like the thunder,
like the breath of life
that lingers, after the storm
has gone its way.
I swim in a sea of madness,
of love of hope, of
mad despair,
Mad! Mad!
For I know now
what I knew before, what
I've known forever,
'neath the wrap
of illusion, 'neath
the shroud of
pain and fear;
that love is all, and eternal,
and we are all
One,
in the starry dance.

Oh, I know that
love is all, and with us,
and we are One,
in the starry dance.

And so from life and the flower
of her youth, has she fallen to the
dust in death. She who laughed with
joy and who wept with her sorrow,
has passed beyond us. Her passion
unequaled, her vibrancy unmatched,
she burned as a flame to gather the lost
and the weary, and give them light and
love and laughter, and to bring them in from
the cold and the darkness. She who had nothing,
gave everything, even unto death. Food for the
hungry, rest for the weary, care for the sick, joy
for the sorrowful. She who loved, was loved in
return by all who saw the care in her eyes and the pain,
borne willingly, so that others might not suffer.
Her spirit strong unto the end, she dried the tears of
those who wept for her, and embraced their sorrow, so that
they might have peace and endure no suffering.
She was our light and our joy, the hearth to which we
came in our sorrow and our grief, to be held and comforted,
and to ease our saddened souls. She who would take our pain
and turn it into joy and light and laughter, now is cold and buried
in the stone. Now farewell to you we must cry and leave you to
your rest. Goodbye, my love. We will meet again in the far fields
of joy and laughter which lie beyond the veil of death. We must.
Farewell.

The winter snow falls,
in a gentle shifting mass,
flakes drifting, cold kisses
of passing frost, to blanket
the ground in ice and silence.

The wind is idle, the land
is calm, the frost content
to spread and grow, to
weight the ancient trees
with snow.

I sit here in the winter chill
breath frosting out into the
silence. I look out over those
sleeping trees, buried under
weight of snow, and I smiled,
and slept, and the world was
content.

Love, the fairest, purest joy.
To hear the laughter, high
and sweet, and to see her
running, swift and fleet, as
she flies for the joy,and for
love of the race. Long is her
laughter, fair is her face; her
form expression of poise and
grace, lovely, she, in the dying
light, as she stands there caught
between rest and flight. Lovely
still as night comes on, lovely as
darkness hides her form, lady fair
and pure and sweet, lady; I will
wait for the dawn.

Standing, I rise,
within, the
weight of
doubt, of
fear, of
the lack of
will to pursue
my dreams,
my goals,
my life, fall
from me...
and I am free
and alone
and together,
and happy, at
last...and all that
may be achieved
lies in my path,
waiting, and all
obstacles that
stand in my way,
are as dust
in the wind, in the
face of my will,
and the knowledge
shining within
me, that nothing
is impossible, if one
will only believe,
and have faith, in
destiny, and in
oneself.