The Man who never brought hell home
was wise beyond his years.
He suffered long
but lived it loud
imprisoned by his fears –
and those were thus:
that those before him
came and went
with nothing left but
pain and name
and more of same
who went and came
from seed in soil
to root and stem,
to fallen branches, time again:
a family tree to fuel the flames
on cold and lonely nights.

Embodied by the coat of arms he wore,
this Last to hold his name,
he swore,
– in vain, perhaps –
to stand at ease no more.

The Man who never brought hell home
encased himself in spite and spirits;
ghosts of generations gone,
encroaching deep within.
He sought for answers,
fought for reasons,
questioned why his bloodline grew
to fall and rise
and curse and ****
with secret lies
and stolen rights
and ties he could not sight.

The Man who never brought hell home
had died
the moment he arrived
– or so he thought –
he always said,
with eyes in search of something else . . .
perhaps that love that once he’d felt,
despite the years of crime he lead.
And what is left, again, but holes
to fill with buried woes
and broken war-like games
and shattered dreams
and darker still yet, nothing.
Nothing, as it always seems.

Not a sliver shall him by, it pass,
of hope,
of love,
of peace . . .
Not until the very last,
this Man who never brought hell home.

And so, this Man, with blind belief
declared his story would be brief,
atoning for the sins he cast
in other’s lives
in years that passed,
and spent his days in self destruction,
free from want, control, and need,
biding time with bated breath
like men, before, who longed for death,
entrained in mind and soul,
until one day,
the hell that never came,
came whole.

For every man,
and son of man that once there was,
who sharpened knives
and counted tools
and cleaned his guns,
and polished pride, his moral compass by his side,
who now lives to wake and wakes to die:
repelling faith, repelling truth, and cussing lies,
this Man has died.