Clear skies are often coldest,
Tempests' temper seems subdued.
Sunlight skims the tiles of rooftops,
Stops.
Savours,
Admires the view.

The sky was never blue.
Obsidian haze and gunmetal days
Light the life we choose.
Blackened,
Slightly bruised.
Broken yet not dismayed.
Too long we have been walking,
Proud in our shroud of the grey.

My brother, my teacher,
My foe and my friend.
Our ghosts shall speak
Once more at the end.

We wage wars with words,
Whetstone sharpened wit.
Wounds win rounds of applause.
A pause,
While metaphors are mustered,
Rusted dictionaries dusted,
Cobwebs shed from unread shelves.
Pikes of pronunciation
Pick apart
Portraits of ourselves.
While poetry parries,
Prose pivots,
Prepares and rallies,
Stares down violet valley below.
The violence of lavender
Shines like silver in the snow.
A scent sentenced to silence,
Flowers on death row.

We were poets,
Once,
Hearts etched upon our sleeve
The lords of our intent,
Words bloomed for all to see.
Each branch of thought considered,
Chiseled,
Whittled to express.
Carving the forest in our likeness
We paved the landscape with our breath.
Woods would sway in idle days
Sunkissed glades lay bathed in gold.
Nights waylaid by dancing maids
Cheap ale and tales of old.
Fires burn, flames unfold.
Though
Embers remember
Tender clutch of the cold.
We tend to forget the bargained,
The sold.
Up rivers and creeks,
Paddles, disowned by the meek,
Cast away to distant shores.  
Glades decay,
Fade to grey.

We become poets once more.

We greet life with idle sighs,
Slowly satisfied by sightful eyes.
Glancing at wrists handcuffed to time.
Bound to age rusting, cast iron cage
Displayed by fine wrought bars of rage.
Captivited by captivity,
Tied to lies scrawled bold on fading page.
Decieved by beliefs and words that saved.

Yet don't dismay.
Pay no toll for the hole
You carve within your soul.
That debt is paid in full,
Through sweat and toil
Blood set ripe to boil,
Shed countless lives ago.