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JL Feb 2016
Man, wraps his thin coat tighter, squinting at fine newsprint, smoking a cigarette. Lust thick she says: "Yes, please **** me."
Without grace he paces ***** streets, avoiding eye contact planning what next vice will fill his belly. Without tradition he sits before his television eating. "I am in the mood I think to drink until I become an ape." Without shape he storms about always with a shout. Fueled by rage, jaw clenched, he sniffs at every *****, fists clenched war bent.

He sleeps. He is lowered down into the belly of stone into a world of his own creation. He dreams of loading the magazine of his pistol and craves the hook of his finger on the trigger. His dreams are gray, barely lit through the smog. He reels through the pornographic cinema of his heart until a passing train wakes him. "****."

Man, wrestles with his son, laughing at the end of a hard day. Beneath his nails, black soil, wanting not but for her.
She loves him because he could be no better. He treats his dog like his brother, no man above or below him. Peaceful, green hills and cloud in a shroud of birdsong. Leaning on the sickle like a mountainside he smiles, straight-backed, sun tanned. He watches a silver-chest buck forrage at the tree line the fawn nearby still sniffing at the doe. The man's kiss is like a flower and his voice like a lyre,
Forearms of stone and legs that rarely tire. At night they lie around the fire. He acts, he sings, and tells them again the stories of their ancestors, unforgotten. He says "There are heroes still if you look for them."

He dreams and sunlight fills his core. He stands upon a hill watching clouds roll. She kisses his brow, and the small warm arms of the boy wrap around his thigh.
  Feb 2016 JL
William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
    If this be error and upon me proved,
    I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
JL Feb 2016
I retreat into myself
Into the corridors of me
I lounge on the well worn flagstones
Gazing on the marble columns
Arranging tapestries and paintings in
A more perfect order
I stalk down old hallways and explore unnamed galleries with a
Single candle to push back the deep
Sometimes rooms are filled with old Furniture
Sometimes entirely empty
Once feeling brave I held onto
The threshold of such a room and
Stretching out I hold the candle aloft in the chasm. Nothingness, darkness complete the light puddles at my feet pitiful.
When I recall that yawning abyss the silence of
It persists.
In ballrooms I play Chopin's waltzs' for no one  in particular
Yet I take my bow and my place at the head of a table set for a score of kings
I lay on marble steps trying to guess the riddles that my echo whispers
I climb the  towers and the spires to dizzying heights and many weeks I was lost in the labyrinth of cellars of basements of tombs beneath
I have seen strange things lately: a chair upturned or
Bed unmade, quills still wet, and doors open and shut of their own volition in the inky black
I swear I have seen before
A tall figure in a hooded cloak dart
Into the shadows, and it did not seem
Altogether human

I read for years inside my library  
And have spoken at length to Shakespeare and Plato
I have seen Yggdrasil and the seven hells
And sped through time with
H.G Wells. Of death and moon, of birds and galaxies I am enamored.
Tea with Julius Ceaser, chess with Captain Hook.
Breakfast with The Buddah
Coffee with The Christ
Did you know that Captain Ahab takes His water with a squeeze of lime? No Ice. Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain know me by my first name, I have fenced with the Gods of Olympus and of Asgard and I remain undefeated. The divine crowd my hearth and many nights have been passed here in quiet conversation, with Confucius, with Archimedes, with Epictetus, Davinci, and the brothers Grimm
I have lived ten thousand lives and Will live another ten

-Without a single thought of you-

I wander
To my garden
Gently lit by paper lanterns
The path is smooth and heady
The amber blossoms
And weathered sculptures
Make my eyelids heavy
Monuments with fists clenched beat my
Ego ******
New flowers sprout from the ivy throat
Always things are grown but never overgrowing
I steal through the hedge maze that only I know
To the secret center where no plant grows
Pavilion and pond
Where no bird sings year long
In that quiet I endeavor
To look without fear
Into the pupil of forever
Some say writing is a good outlet
Some say writting is a good inlet
JL Feb 2016
We met beneath the mushroom
And drank dew drops from great-
grandfather's horn. Drunk we swoon
Lips of purple berry parted.

We lie on the warm belly of a hare
And it's heart like a kettle drum
Fills us to the brim with joy
Sunset and moonrise
**** we swim in a puddle
Laughing pale as newborn babes

I oft' recall the music of that laughter
When I am alone, but I am old now
And you have long since become stone
JL Feb 2016
Prince before gate
Without haste
Death is my laurel
Like stone I stand
Sword still in hand defiant
Ten billion eyes watch
Silent as I enter hell
Then laughter swells
When I spit out
Charon's Obol
JL Feb 2016
I drop my spear
To better hold the pen
The compass spins
Without rest
A sun born in my chest

I am mad or I am a young god
I wonder at the hands
At the eyes of blue
This temple
Is my favorite toy
Enthralled by sinew
Muscle twitches
Beneath tanned skin
Discharging nerves send
A chill up the spine

Brother and Son
I have stood in senate
And no man stood with me
I have spent mornings in bed
Watching light dance
On a naked back

My mind
Is like unto an ocean
Or a lone galaxy
Nameless ships
Lonely drift
Upon boundless waves
Dead planets and
Blue comets spin
Without aim
It likes to play
In disarray
Ancient in scope

Do you think you have plumbed its depths
When even I have never touched its borders?  
Without effort
It is a tangle of paradoxes
A cluster of non sequiturs
Yet somehow they web
I am mad or I am a young god
  Feb 2016 JL
J.R.R. Tolkien
All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.
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