Oh Satan's
vexing, gypsy moth.
Icarus
of the lamp.
Torched, foul, smoldering ember.
Aye, the jokes on you.

Good riddance
netherworld gadfly,
dust covered
moon splashed wings,
who flitted too close the sun.
I shall miss the not.

What of thy
onlooking brother?
Is he not
the bright one,
bathing in incandescent
blissful ignorance?

Though he be
but Nature's Dastard,
he'll bask the morrow,
whilst thy apparition flies
to hell, whence ye came.


*While enjoying a beautiful Summer night, I was attacked by a squadron of moths and millers.  The zealous, daring, but stupid one, flew too close to a lamp and got fried. The other, pious, yet too afraid worshiped from afar. By the way, one's just as stupid as the other one. The lamp is not the moon cretins.

I
Winter's fog swirling,
settling gently on the peak.
Should I,
or should I not charge the beast?
Oh, but to climb,
that serpentine road
through this thick mystical Merlinesque brume.

II
I abandon all reasoning
and don my armor
to do battle with the slithering Wyvern,
"The Pinnacle".
My silver Steed awaits me.
And in almost Ninja attire,
helmet placed,
cleats clicked and locked into pedals,
I am one with my ride.

III
Mist now's upon me.
Mist and bone cold.
I trek upward to the proving ground.
Drifting,
as always,  into a trance,
a meditation,
ignoring pain as a pugilist.
Shut up legs, I say.
Shut up and give me one more day.
Prompt me not  
that I am the aged Warrior,
for with every cadence I am reminded
of my fleeting days.

IV
I crawl upon the spine of the dragon,
out of my saddle and with the fullness of might,
break loose from the fetters of the mundane,
habitual world below these clouds.

V
Mist to rain,
rain to ice.
Diamond hard shards of sleet
bounce off my helmet,
peppering this snaking path towards heaven.
Crystalline obstacles
  to navigate on my surly descent.

VI
I have owned this battle before you know?
Many times past.
But like a moment,
it can't be possessed.
Still this right of passage I must pursue
over and over and over
til I am no more
and my steed has been pawned.

VII
So quiet now
high above the clouds,
so alone,
so away from the world.
What solace.
Oh, to die here.
To fall and lay, looking up at these leafless trees,
on this gray Winter's day.
And to witness my last peacefilled thought.

VIII
But not today.
No, not today
for I am near the precipice.
I step up the pace and route the enemy
and laugh in deaths face.
One more stroke, and I gut the beast.
One more turn and I am exultant.
Oh Rapture,
Oh Felicity.

He's a streamlined man,
now on the road to return.
The spirit farmer,
taking breakfast in the fields,
found his sister soul
and his woman of the world.
He was running blind
with no aerial boundaries.
To communicate
he would watch his life go by
because it was there,
the taproot, the naked stalk.
Free swinging soul, with
silent anticipations.
A Phoenix fire
torched, is once again spring buds.
And ready or not,
the Gospel, the Oracle.

Early in Spring
before Mountain Laurel bloom,
when the greyness of Winter
won't give up Her gloom.
I too can't let go
of our broken tune,
for now I will sing it alone,
now I will sing it alone.

Clouds swirl and open,
niveous rays of light stream down.
Like God's omnipotent vision
upon this unfamiliar ground.
And where on earth
is love lost or found,
or was it ever here at all,
was it ever here at all?

Sitting by the singing stream
that use to laugh, that made me dream.
Now I have the veins of a stone,
and can't unsow the seeds we have sown.

Dusk falls upon me
with no promise of dawn.
Peace fills a fern field with the suckling of a fawn.
But the love that I could touch
is now dead and is gone,
and I have no tears left to cry,
I have no tears left to cry.

When we are ashes,
it will be too late to learn.
We can't possess earth.

Let us tell you of our adventure, they said.
Of war and all its horrors we've seen.
Dying dough boys screamed and moaned as they bled.

And the flash of mortar fire would glean,
displaying his numbers on our surface,
and the terracotta blood and drab green.

We are just a playbill for Satan's circus,
with no part lest our roll is through,
or did not perish in his wicked furnace.

And now, retired, no more to do.
But handed down to next of kin
til now I tell this story to you.

We are not just made of tin,
so many tales lay deep within.

Charley Bob is a "walker".

He walks the roads and avenues where I live.
He doesn't appear to have a job, he just walks.....every day.
He use to walk with his zipper down
and with flacid ***** in hand proudly display himself to all who drove by,
but that embarrassed many
and they made him put his security blanket away.
Now he just grabs his crotch like the gangstas downtown.
Sorry Charley.
Every town has a "walker",
some have several.
You've seen them.
They walk the streets, lost in their own little worlds.
They look the same as they did 20 years ago.
There's the lady with nary a tooth in her head,
her ankle length skirt and her Pentecostal hairdo (PHD).
They say for 50 bucks she'll let you know why she has no teeth.
She's a "working girl walker", but she is still a "walker".
Once I was walking downtown,
and as I passed her she angrily mumbled something to me, all lips and gums,
"Muver Phucker", she said.
I don't even know her,
but she was as angry with me as if we were the best of friends.
Some "walkers" talk to themselves,
some answer themselves,
some stop and turn and scream out profundities to no-one,
or someone,
it's a matter of perspective.
It's like some shrink somewhere
gave them a prescription for their mental disorder,
walk 20 miles and see me in the morning.
Charley Bob is the best though.
I swear you can see him at 10am,
and by 5 he is still
slowly
making his way
back
from where
he went to.
I wonder what makes him turn and go home.

Charley Bob is a "walker".