Rob Rutledge

Rob Rutledge Nov 2014

Dusk

You will know them not from the smiles
And frowns etched upon stoic faces,
But from the virtue of their hearts
Found in all but the darkest of places.
More often then not they reside deep
Within a tepid grey.
Hunting in the twilight between the
Dusk and the day.
Everything in moderation
Yet nothing is in isolation
Moths to the flame we stray.
Bound to the light
Forever fighting to fly away

Rob Rutledge Oct 2014

Sweet Silence

How sweet the sound of silence tastes
Like honey dripped from the gates
Of serenity.
In the still we hear the walls of reality
Echoing louder than we could imagine.
In the fathoms of solitude the roar is
Forgotten.
A human diaspora from ourselves
If but for the fleetest of moments,
Trodden upon
By the boots of a thousand souls.

Rob Rutledge Oct 2014

Britain

This is Britain
A land of contradiction
United by a Kingdom
Divided by benediction.
There is friction
And there were rivers of blood.
Where lions and tigers and dragons
Would stop and drink, toast to the flood.
All the waters of the Atlantic
Couldn't wash these shores clean
A damming testament of conquest
Atlantis was a dream,
Built on wooden boats
Cast in irons with an empires hopes.
Though the sins of the father are great
The children walk with a sombre gait
Fields of roses
Both
White and Red
Blossom on the hallowed ground of the Dead.
Roman laws and Norman Lords
Drowned out a Celtic cry
A longship silhouetted
Against a bleak obsidian sky.
The hunted become haunted by the ghosts of yore.
Pagan druids scythe mistletoe
As Haleys comet they saw
Around circles of stone for now and Evermore

Rob Rutledge Oct 2014

Life is a Library

Life is a library, but
Too many of our pages are blank,
Our words transparent
Forced into dogeared corners.
Not spineless per se,
But visiting a chiropractor regularly.
Covering our selves in judgments
Worn with both shame and pride.
We tire of the climb and the thinning air
We bookmark the times we falter
And when we shield our eyes from the glare.
Our minds are marked by the epithets
Gifted unto us by others.
Some arrows fly true to the bone
Others are way off the mark.
And when our final pages have been read,
The book loaned out or discarded
All that remains of us is said
In a line on granite epitaph
The truth of the dead forever guarded.

Rob Rutledge Sep 2014

Gravity

There is a pressure on my shoulders,
Behind my eyes and in my bones.
A force beyond my control.
As helpless as a stone
Though in the wind I sway.
Does it hold us back?
Or
Keep us from flying away?

Rob Rutledge Sep 2014

One Word Poem

Pretentious.