All roads lead here, the Conduit says.
You cannot count the infinite paths.
To fathom every touch is madness.
But, brick by brick, time after time..

This place has written its own history.

How can it be so, in such a small plot,
To spin the tales of so many?

To be the grand hall of tears and joy,
misery and folly, hope and fear?

Who would we be without it?
How are we so bound to a singularity?

We must marvel at the commonness of it all.
We must marvel and be thankful.
We must marvel but not dwell.

All places, in all worlds are the shapers of creation.

The white sea was vast. In total contradiction,
to all reason, it seemed to dwarf the blue sky below.
Currents of clouds bubbled and spewed, while others tore away in violent serenity.
It was an ocean of heaven's dreams.
The travelers set upon the white, leaving small earth behind.
As they ascended into the clouded sea,
all thoughts of land had escaped them.
Slowly, the pepples and grains which had become markers of memories and time, faded away into some distant place.
The white sea was more than a physical place, it too was like a drug.
It stole away all reason, it lies like a brilliant poison in the body, hidden and lethal.
It was ecstacy and it was death,
but above all else it was beautiful.

As the writer wore away page after page,
a swelling of maddening frustration grew.
The parchment soaked in the dark ink,
and pockets of hell seeped through each word.
There is desperate power in written verse;
They know this, yet the pen rages onward.
The writer pays this debt in full,
in flesh and blood, as one does.
Stories must be told, the price is high,
but silence cost ever more.

Another year passes.
An arbitrary collective delusion.
Another year of promises.
Words write themselves some days.
Others, require a show of force.
This spectrum grows day by day.
Business and pleasure.
Business brings consistency.
Pleasure brings creativity.
Drown in expectations or,
Suffer in idle waters.
I seek balance.
I see it on the horizon.

I am all the magic I have ever needed.
I am this thinking, valid creature.
And while not every verse beckons
Itself to be the grestest.
It does desire to be sang.

Magic is poetry, it is the nature of the craft.
Words are cantations whick evoke emotion.
By my bedside, is my own spellbook.
I write whatever I wish to be and it is so.

That truth is as real as you believe it to be.
I bleed my own words, I suffer in their truth.
I become ecstatic, and at peace.
That is my serenity, my sleight of hand.
My magic, my fortune.

She fell without warning,
Time taking as it must, as it should.
And despite how the living grieve,
All exist to be taken, to move on

The histeria began,
Sister falls into a panic, foresight disguised as a dream.
Reality blends into inevitability.
The then was now.
Brothers stare silent, too young, too afraid,
And unable to escape their crippling fear,
That Death had come.

Her eyes, flickered as a fading flame,
Dying at the wicker's last breathe.
Her hands shook violent, as empty words poured through her head.
A son, me, the eldest, emboldened within this moment to take control.
She was leaving this world.
That much I knew.

But there exist that Dark Magic.
That abilities of the ******,
Aquired through years of suffering.
Not one's own, but the tears of life,
Gained from tormented innocents.

And such a power, in such a moment,
Was ultimately released.
Simple as a touch.
Death decays into Life.
She breathes, a mother returns.

Yet, I am burdened.
Weighed down by,
The scorn of my own corruption
Infused light.

In ritualistic insanity, the amnesiac begins to wail.
He hears the symphonic tune of damnation.
A wicked chord struck on a lyre of bones.
As tears flow, the pain sharpens, his fingers split, adding thick crimson curdles to death's hymn.
The weight is bore, lightless eyes follow the ache of mortal fatigue.
This sad creature screams his terror, as he remember his ode.
Played from his own marrow, from his own calcified soul.

I walk alleys and avenues of broken roads.
Black tops eroded from years of punishing
Rainfall, passerbys and time.

After a hard rain, shallow mirrors open up,
Revealing an unyielding world on its head.

It seems, as I walk amidst the distinguished,
Cracks, chips and pebbles that this moment,
Both real and a memory is everlasting.

Overcast, both dismal and hopeful, I read
Between the skylines of the upsidedown.

I breath in this parallel, I write it all down,
A collection of neverhaves.

A creation that is mine for the making, or
For the taking, should I wish.

There are no what ifs,
In the sea of the could haves.

For what should,
Certainly would.

Leaving only,
What is, to be.

The Autumn baronies have fallen.
A culture of flames, brilliant and bold,
Against cold indifference of time.

What is a King, with a broken crown.
Vermilion leaves sail across pools of crimson.
Cobblestone stained, forsaken name.

Death divine, dancing kindred spirits,
Haunting the halls of Royal ruin.
Longer still, grows the silence.

Two crooked razorbills fluttered past
The old oak tree on Bell's Grave.

They buzzed and crooned, in perfect pitch
For the necromancer's song.

Not to be outdone by the deathsinger's,
The skies opened up in torrential hymns.

As the Earth drowned in sinful peace,
A young man began to dance his fortune.

Feathered fellows, pouring rain, innocence.
A tune long forgotten in this worn grove.

Yet still, it was good, it was grand.
The honesty of death was pure.

Mania is like a wave,
High tide, and I'm drowning.
I take on water, feel it fill my lungs.
As the pressure builds, I fade into white.

I'm riding the wave, a ******* tsunami.
But no, that's not quite right,
I'm a part of the wave, this rage,
This powerful force of insanity.

And there lies the shore, closing in.
If I was of right mind, surely,
I would at least hope to cry pardon.
But I'm not, I see the imminent crash,
Only laughing, maniacally.

With thunderous approval the shoreline
Falls, within the vast ocean beneath me.

When the waves pick up,
When they come crashing down,
They ring with power, but mostly pain.

So I'm left in this basin of contamination.
The sewage of mind eats away the euphoria,
Leaving cancerous tumors of depression.
Now growing rampant, and lingering.

The tide in time recedes, the world grieves.
Sometimes there is healing, though often
There is only suffering and the waiting.
Knowing for any better or for worse,
The tug of war between the shores
Of mania and depression, goes on.

Through silky darkness, with
Whispers of twilight tearing at
The fringes of a forsaken veil.
I kneeled before the crown,
With tainted adoration.

For once, I fought between the bleed.
Betraying the rot of time against flesh.
Drawn to a broken throne of dead gold.
Eyes awoken to the fabric of her majesty.

A curved sword, a jagged dagger,
Quick to slip, slit and seep.
Armed assassin, of her corrupted right hand.
The pleasure, mine for the taking.

Dearest Queen, sing of death most damning,
I'll abide, leaving none standing.
Drift onwards, lightless legions,
Abandon hope and all your reason.

I am of different mind.
Strong convictions about
The guilty, the right and the wrong.

And with the Devil on my back,
I scream this strange song.

Sins of the father, falter farther.
His downfall will be my ascension.

Through the manacles of manipulation,
He offers cries of peace, of mending.

A piece of a puzzle, which drew me life,
But the business ends there,
I'll not be intertwined in such affairs.

I'll ******* the old man, in mind and spirit.
The blinding goal of this obsession,
But these fruits of labor utter no confession.

And true, such an unwavering soul,
Is dark, toxic and hell.
Though, with black magic, it is for me to sell.

So it happens, that the devil is me,
Then I'll sit with that in evil glee.

Good, bad, or ugly.
I am left only with myself.

Writers are quite dangerous.
She came to the bar, to watch,
And listen, to hear stories.

Carefully, I tread. For fear,
That my own diction, would become
Trapped in her world of fiction.

Though, of course we swapped pieces.
And still, only selected to paint,
A vision of my own creation.

Small freedoms, but they matter most.
As I'm a prisoner to demon's I host.
Be wary poets, of power most foul.

Ensnaring half spectres of being,
In a prose, a thought or a feeling.
Reality is as real as you write it.

Symptomatic time bomb.
Deluded delusions of ethereal projections,
A dissociated self of severe sorrow.
Louder now, the crooning calls,
The malevolent mayhem of voices.
Sleepless nights, onset insomnia.
A refuge from reality is lacking.
Dreams sent packing.
Nightmares walk.
People talk.
And time offers no relief.
Crawling inside, fear growing.
Fiendish thoughts, lethal insanity.
Scribe away, transference of pain.
Words trapped between pages,
A book of demons, all of them screaming.
Bound by a spine of mental failing.
Fold the latch, turn the key.
Bury this *******'s tale.
Rinse and repeat,
With each rising defeat.
And pray the delay of further tells,
These fortunes of the lost amd the broken.

I fell hard for a stranger,
Her words, the pauses between them,
The boldness in which she spoke,
And of course the confidence in her approach.

But, woe is me, captivated fool.
Palavar was a sweet heat exchange.
Fast passion in shared interest.
The flurry of tongues refreshed,
Impressed by the company of another.

I left with only a name,
No good at this game,
Of courtship.

Knowledge of Self, merely an assumption?
Better, or so I thought,
Failing hard, falling harder.

I burned brightly, burning through bridges,
Boundaries, and borders.

The path I walked was ashen,
In the wake of cinder,
The relics of the past.

Change, hubris aside, was shallow,
Was not the core of Flesh,
Just the Husk of Solitude.

I fell to the Rage, that desperate rage.
So eager and volatile.
Hidden in the shadows, in plain sight,
For the time I'd both welcomed and feared.
That explosion of otherness,
A disillusioned self.

Trauma lingers in a double edged blade,
Wounding the wielder and the wounded.
Neither in blood, thankfully so,
But battered pride, twist the ego.

Piercing Eyes of Goldenrod.
Both bold and brilliant.
The calming center in a hurrricane
Of blue and white feathers.
A gaze which levels any ego,
That should find itself too
Important, in either size or space.
(Do you believe in omens?)
Rebirth is on the horizon,
Or so the star seekers say.
Change, the end of old ways, days.
(But I'd not think it)
The Universe likes to share whispers,
Of things to come or happenings of maybe.
There is no intent ill or otherwise,
Just the honest grievances of time.
As this God of Death, sits high upon
Stilts which bathe in still waters,
I see horror. I see despair. I see death.
That vision, those eyes, golden and
Sinister, but humble all the same.
While the winds sing of new life,
I hear the sorrowful hymns of death.
(Balance.)
There are many ways of knowing.
Magic both black and white.
Magic old as time, as new as a moment.
And if I should see the dark days ahead,
Count that a blessing, to see anything at all.

I've written this story,
Thousands of times in my head.

But when it comes to pen and paper,
I run out of things to be said.

The bard, the mire, the sleuth
His lute, his fear, his truth.

Traveller through time,
His words chill the spine.

Oh, weaver of tales,
Hunter of lies.

Falter not to failure,
Or meet demise.

Songs will save thee,
Open all eyes to see.

Though the devil is in the details,
His chord, echoes on all that fails.

Consequence is the Heart of Belief.
Whether a Truth .
Whether a Falsehood.
Whether Virtuous.
Whether Vice.
Conviction alters Reality.

Human existence is a stream of consequence.
Flowing through ebbs of Right and Wrong.
Of Heavy currents of deceit, which overflow the banks.
And pools of Stillness, in stagnant paradigms.

This Race of Fact and Fiction rampages.
The Powerful and the Hungry.
The Weak and the Proud.
All caught in the Tides of Creed.
An Undertow which swallows all.
Indiscriminate in its Finality.

Dawn breaks,
Wind rages,
The crow caws thrice.

Marvel at the poet's sin,
Bardic Rule of Law,
Inspiration at Death's Maw.

Deep pockets of space-time,
Treasured energies and auras.
Always looking outward, never within.

Universe, overture of divine sadness.
Humanity, limerick of contained madness.
Bound infinitely in harmonic chaos.

Rivers run rampant.
Time tinkers tides.
Vengeful voids vie.
Worlds wither woefully.

And yet, endless and forever,
The iridescence of written word,
Bends all things against discord.

Alliteral allure.
Boundaries bottomless.
Controlled cantor.
Deities demonize,
Ethereal epiphanies.
Future forfeits,
Gravity's grandiose.
Humility heckles,
Indignant ideologies.
Jealousy's jungle,
Karated killers.
Lunacy's lovers,
Maddened martyrs.
Noise, never,
Only omens.
Purgatory persuasion,
Quintessential qualms.
Revenge, revenge.
Sultans suffer.
Tyrants terror.
Unilateral understanding.
Violent venom,
Worn wonderfully.
Xenogogue's xenial,
Youthful yearlings.
Zombie zealots.

Driving home,
Highway is a black blur,
Miles of nothingness,
And still it goes on.
The bridge comes,
Passing over a strange sea,
More accurately a lake.
A lake of unknown depths or means.
First thought, first piece of madness,
Swerve into the blue abyss.
Another episode of violent death.
A deception, a delusion,
Real as day, strong as night.
It comes again, all too soon.
Gas pumps fill the mind.
Fuel for fires deadly.
Let the ocean of petroleum,
Spill unneath uneasy boots.
Light flicks and boom.
But again, another episode.
Just another thought.
And the brilliance of this dark matter,
Is that in time, in change,
The light still blooms.
Peave of mind, peace of heart,
Perseveres manic highs and depressing lows.
Breathe. Enjoy. Live.
Just a thought.
Just an episode.
But it is never the end.

I feel like an incomplete puzzle,
Clumsy waltzing in a field of wood chippers.
I don't just fall to pieces, I shred.
I tear and bleed, most importantly I hurt.

****. I hurt.

I've never been full,
I've never seen the bigger picture.
Always out of reach, lacking perspective.

As my own world is ripped apart,
I further delve into gnashing teeth of hell.

But it's not just mine, this shared damnation,
Leaves us all to rot.

I've no clever line to sum it all up,
I've lost the words which sing of hope.

Amber elixir divine,
Reach this heart of mine.

Teach these words to rthyme
Find refuge in time.

A pen, a paper, a thought.
A medium once sought.

But in the twilight of age,
A digital master is sage.

Collector of words and woe,
Self forever more the foe.

All too soon, often or not,
Write away to stop the rot.

The wakeful crimson spiderwebs,
Creep slowly to the golden rim of irises.
Red gloom explodes into the rot of exhaustion.
Sights scream in twilight, baying for dark curtains,
To envelop them in a cocoon of nurturing rest.

Keep pushing on, the cracks began to cackle.
Thunderous youth begins to flicker with new age.
White hot spring of passion, curdles in purple toxicity.
To be a walking corpse, dancing the days ensemble,
But deep within the bones, finality screams 'enough.'

Sweet slumber, always on the edge of tomorrow.
Won't you whisper this dreadful soul a lullaby.
Soothe the aches of day & age, slay this disease,
Burn away time, and exist in ecstasy.

The Times
The Tines
The Ties that bind.

Fruitful flower of misery,
Open you buds to the cold touch
Of Death.

No green thumb, just green with envy.
Sitting so sunny, in a field of falsehoods.

One slip, a skip, and a broken promise.
Have you, too, forgot the deal.

We are all stuck in the mud, so stick.
Live together, die together, no solo act.

So stop holding out, keep the pact.
Enjoy these moments, they'll be your last.

Friends, foes, fiendish woes,
I kneel before the Universe.

The ability to adapt is the ability to survive.
Foolish me, attempting to try old catalyst.
The past is a faulty crucible.
The same tricks won't work twice.

In this foresight, the key is carved.
Inspired by the rites of yesterday,
But honed in forge of tomorrow.

The derelict, latency of change has arrived.
So have I, molded by will itself, to wield it.

Admire the mire
Mind the matter

But dont wallow in worry.
For perception is pain.

Duplication is devious.
Smiles are sinister.

Bring on the beginning.
Endure unto the end.

Darkest are the days.
Nightmarish as the nights.

Ghouls of old gestalt.
Rise to revenge.

Time is taken.
Lord of lies.

Spring decided to take this year off.
The winter was brutal, blanketing roads,
Living up the mayhem of snow and ice.

There was maybe one day, green grass,
Wind between a whisper and a scream.
Ending as quickly as it had began.

Freezing rain to Summer sun.
The heat beating, sending the cold packing.
And Spring nowhere to be found.

No April showers, or blooming flowers.
Just the ice and fire, no place inbetween.
Autumn, will be long overdue.

The world falls apart at the fringes.
Reset. Bright light. Mind wipe.
Later, some time much later.
I have forgotten it all.
Only to remember.
A cycle of breaking amd mending.
A cycle of failing and reseting.
The rumble of worlds turn over,
More times than I'd know.
I feel the tremors, delusions or not.
But the heart of this problem.
The meat of it all.
Is this ****** door.
It's weathered, worn,
But resistant to time and change.
Beneath the creases of its ironwood,
Darkness screams forward.
Calling, crawling closer to me.
Later, some time later.
I remember, I open the door.
The Pandora's Box of mind.
My world crumbles, white blind,
Reset.

Signs say stress.
I say the End of the World.

A mental break
Or a fractured world.

The walls of my mind tremor
The world falls apart at the fringe.

Acute stress, prolonged stress.
Acute suffering, prolonged suffering.

Good lord, its the end.
Oh God, the end of times.

I see hints, hidden in plain sight.
This diseased world, is apocalypse bound.

Yet they'll say I'm not mentally sound.
But the world dangles on a string.

Speed is relative.
I have begun to lose myself.
Everyday seems slower, the faster I go.
I punch the gas pedal and feel nothing.
I'm not after a rush, but the null is so strong.

Lately, I have felt more alone than ever.
A circle of love, holds me in high regard.
And yet, they seem so far out on the fringe.
This real me, in this real world is hollow.
Beneath in dark shadows, deep in the core,
Is a detached, dissociated self, I pity him.

Nights have become restless.
I lay awake, tossing and turning,
Ever out of reach of a rejuvenating slumber.
Sleep is dreamless, which is hell.
Even nightmares offer some insight,
A certain clarity of clairvoyance.

Perhaps, as I strongly feel, change is coming.

The hand rose petals of ripe red.
A fast bloom of rotten revenge,
Stemmed only from gnarled thorns.
Sage runs strong into crimson.

Reaping, what is sewn or shown.
This paradoxical thought has flowered.
Was it first the pain or was it desire.
Trim the fray or overgrow in vain.

Suckle little roots, undying doom
Eternity's flora in the poet's stalk
Blood cursed words, ancient fret.
The seed of grudge is the heart's regret.

Forever and a time ago, I too, was lost.
All of my losing, has brought me here again.
Between a catalyst of change and horror.
I'm on the cusp, I feel it coming, soon.

Again, I fall within all worlds, all their pain.
This edge, this faltering belief of hope.
It tears into me relentlessly, pleased.
I await the words to free me, shackle breaking.

Though, time in its infinity, is running out.

Let's talk time.
My time, it cannot be bought.
My time cannot be leveraged.
You cannot assert yourself,
Imposing your time, money or effort,
With the expectation I owe you a thing.

I'll respect your time,
But you best respect mine.

Though that's never been the case,
Power has been your tool, to buy the time,
Of those you could not even give a second.

So all these years later, when I've mastered time.
When I've learned to control, bide and enjoy, time.
You cannot, waste time, my precious time,
Nor can you come back and expect my time.

I decided to make council,
With the restless thoughts
Who so loudly impose their
Selfish will, stealing all sanity.

Mind goes dark, rekindled.
A chorus of ill, surrounds the hold.
Farther, at the castles court,
The loudest voices quarrel

Those of past, present, and future.
Essence of good, bad and indifferent.
Hands drawn with wild cards.
But no full house or flush to play.

They've taken notice, grins gone wide.
For the anarchist win, this game of pride.
An outcast falls, over and out the wall.
To scream the song of wanting.

Eyes open, light returns, palavar done.
None the wiser, but the time has come.
It works slowly, in effort's guise.
Rework the master, or meet demise.

The rifts have opened once again,
Their darkness, thin and heavy.
Pouring malicious, defeating thoughts.
Self-doubt, hopelessness, it is agony.

It has been months, what seemed like eons,
Since such dark matters poisoned my mind.
Yet, a single word was all it took to open a wound.
"Trauma", the irony of a word as a trigger.
It ignites the sky of thought, in an absence of light.

The delirium begins, mania rises.
Shield and sword to the gravity of sadness.

I was to supposed to write of the Thunderstorm.
High winds. Pouring rain.
Uprooted trees. Burning wood.
A terribly terrific piece.
But, I let the words float on.
Drowning in a sea of unwritten dreams.

I was supposed to write of the Dancing Flame.
Rocking embers. Glowing rhythm.
Sweet cinder. Smoking desires.
A horrifyingly honest part.
But, I let the words smolder into ash.
Going down in an arsonist's dream.

But mania, oh mania.
Writing everything about nothing.
But me, oh me.
Writing nothing about anything.

I was supposed to write,
But didn't.

I woke up in the Mirror World,
Came down with flu, overslept,
Was late to work, I picked myself up,
And managed, as I often do.
But it was all a dream.

This one's a tad too close to home,
Though slightly askew.
Not the first time, won't be the last.
I skate just outside this reality,
Bending to its happenings.

The consequences, the consequences.
I wake up, slightly before my alarm,
I don't oversleep, but I'm sick, I feel it.
And I'll go to work and interact the same.
Carryout a reflected conversation,
Of a world that was just a dream.

All of this, while holding on to sanity.

Dear night mother,
The youngling flew the coop.
Off for wild adventures, he cannot be tamed.
His elder kin spoke of magic,
The intellectual splendor of spells
Gifted yes, but not quite so as her
The painted daughter of darkness,
She colours the world in twilight.
This brings us to dusk, mantle I wear proud.
Eldest of eld, nutured by you mother,
To grow strong, wicked and well.

Those glowing eyes,
The prestege of feathers
Mother owl, bless our endeavours.
Grow old, grow wise

Bless you, oh mother,
And the nocturne skies.

I walked out into the nothingness,
Lamp lit, with a little lively flame.
Darkness decided to swallow us.
I fueled the lantern, to feed the light.
But as it burned brighter, darkness grew hungrier.

There was an acceptance, to let it be.
I knew that this was the time of darkness.
Extinguishing my flame, I waited for dawn.
I waited and waited, for the midnight black,
To churn into that dark purple hue,
Kindling further into the volatile morning vibrancy.
Such a time never came, as I said
These were Dark Times.

The Land of Light could not, would not
Interlope here, and such a thing was fine.

Not long after I laid myself upon the Earth,
I began to grow roots, suckling the green.

Before you knew it, they borrowed farther,
Far from me, crawling faster away.

To be so toxic, yet making myself at home.
I needed some good, to prune the bad.

As I gaze at the storm clouds rolling,
I wait for the rain, but not before the tears.

There is a bitterness, rotten deep within.
To be so disconnected, it is painful.

So I lay, disgusted with my own ruin,
Wishing the woods would cure me.

What a dumb little lie, who do I kid.
I will decompose with pestilence.

How dare I come here, how dare I weep.
But here I'll stay, a graveyard of grief.

The biggest fear that I have as a writer,
Is that I will inevitable recycle old ideas.
Whether this is done consciously or not,
I fear of the complications it may bring.

Does it represent an evolution of past thoughts,
Or is it a compromise and the death of innovation.

Inspiration strikes invariably, but there is novelty.
Yet, this feeling looms, that I'm near the end.

I'd like to believe that I will forever spark creativity.
That as I have always done, new flames will blaze.

But there is too much doubt that a good thing,
Won't keep going for long, and its been long.

Admitting that feels good, and until that time comes,
If it comes at all, I'll have to trust the words in me.

Oh star child, oracle divine
Help me decipher these visions of mine

So vibrant and vivid
It seems I'm committed
To madness

Work your magic
Read the heavens
Or the skies
Do you see truth
Or is it demise.

I beg you dreamwalker,
Seer of wonder and youth.
Bend my lost and fevered mind.

Pour the painted words onto a canvas of self.
Let them overflow in a cringing nightmare.

Allow the darkness to be the backdrop of pain
Fill foreground with the light of life.

Feather the details of first love,
Between the fine grains of heartbreak.

May this portrait of vibrant existence,
Be all the suffering and joy it is meant to be.

In the valleys of mediocrity, complacency,
Cultivate brushstrokes of brilliance and wonder.  

The shades of blue sorrow, the reds of rage.
The green envies, the white serenity.

All of it, all together, the beauty of togetherness.
The good, the bad, and every bit of it you.