for some reason i always write the most in january. the words seem to flow out of me --- a tsunami, monsoon, typhoon --- of words I've been aching to bleed but never have the time nor patience to set free. words that have festered in the crevices of my mind for who knows how long. words that I've kept close to my heart, like a pendant, a talisman perhaps.

and it's not like I'm complaining. writing, after being away from it for so long, makes me feel like a soldier coming home to his wife. he bears the marks of war on his skin, in his mind, in the hollowness in his eyes. he is glad to be rid of the gunshots that riddle his sleep, glad to be back home in loving arms, but he cannot shake the feeling of being inches away from death, no.

writing again is coming home, but it's not the same. there is a rustiness in my fingers, in the muscles that make this thoughts into coherent strings of symbols. there is an absence i cannot shake off.

but God knows i will try.

Richard
Alfred
Edmund
Unearthed.

Reclaiming the city
River

Walking
Rising

Olde englande

Stirring

Reclaiming

Rising
Again

It is a field
of cubicles,
rectangle walls
that rise
chin high
on either side,
in a rainforest of
of random plants.

.
Wrapping the sky
      around shoulders of grief,
prepared shuffles of aimless motion
in time,
     a hood of moons
transpire to illuminate,
          conveying the dissolution
of reason and rhyme,
as logic takes a bullet and bites the dust
resplendent in a cloak
     of transparent darkness swirling,
          a veil drops
like the final curtain,
with the august play about to commence,
     the actors, forward,
          taking a bow of silence,
to an absent audience who do not care,
the arrival at platform zero,
     of nowhere,
          travelling to nothing on a vacant train,
an instant express to the heart
     of the void,
carrying hallucinations
          in a purse
                    of stars,
Promise rides a chariot of blessing,
yielding a gift
     sugar coated in
          images and
                    words.


© Pagan Paul (11/04/18)

Fire !

so it goes with anger

a ballerina

the forest

or my Catilina when she is jealous

for the moth

it is the gate to eternity

but for the wise moth

the secret to life

is to come back

with singed wings