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Rob Rutledge Apr 2023
Tell me then how to face this day,
As the coward that would avert his gaze?
Untold days spent lost and slaved to sand,
Hand in hand with the chains of time.
Or should we grasp it as would a man?
By throat and pain and circumstance,
Each rage at our command.

For promised lands are paved with pride.
The consequence of shifting tides
Once known and a matter of course.
But these seas lay uncharted
Horizon bleak and endarkened
By the shadow of a brewing storm.
Rob Rutledge Nov 2022
When this mortal frame does falter,
If there be left a body still to burn
Cast my ash from the cliffs of Dover
For on the winds I shall return.
Though my soul may be lost to water,
Bones bleached and turned to dust
My heart will soar across the forests
Climbing mountains in the dusk.
Then as the daylight rises
And darkness gives way to light
I will cast these eyes, one last time,
Across the shores of life.
Rob Rutledge Jun 2022
The words were never ours,
Sentiments and sentences
Sediment from fallen stars.
Spoken once upon the start
Before concepts were a concept
When all was nothing,
All was dark.
Before dark was a thing,
Or no thing,
Before meaning had meaning,
Or a universe to dream.

Suddenly.

Like an almighty sneeze,
Came space and time and similes,
Metaphors, mistakes, and mystery
Supernovas, hangovers, hyperbole
All within the blink of an eye.
(Yet to be created)
The words were solid, stoic, patient
Content to spend eternity waiting
Forever fated to play the patron
Of a thousand dying worlds.
Until such time you called its name,
Until the first time it was heard.
Rob Rutledge Jun 2022
These halls seem somewhat hollow
A certain sense of sorrow
Now graces ancient stone.
Replacing familiar faces
With defaced family paintings
And cold ancestral bones.
Thrones thrown upon a pyre.
Fate becomes the folly
Tomorrow the unknown,
The brows of time are furrowed
Past spent, lost, or borrowed
Flowers forever bloom alone.
Rats, the last lords of ruin
Rule cruel shadows from the walls.
Twilight sighs at daylight's rise
All seems dark till darkness falls.
Rob Rutledge May 2022
So another morning creeps,
Light leans around mountains.
Peeks surrounded by pastel clouds,
Sky becomes the canvas
To frame and then enchant us
Forever from our reach.
Allowed but a moment's peace
Far cry from warring reefs,
Seas of ire, oceans of grief.
The shore seems so sure
Till it breaks beneath our feet.
Rob Rutledge Aug 2021
A world slowly woke from slumber
Stumbled through a sense of Deja Vu.
Free from sheets of sleep and dreams,
Borrowed stitches pay the seams
Of patchwork quilted promises,
Forgotten threads of make believe.
Rob Rutledge Mar 2021
In the shadows of stone mountains
Down a fragile ancient road,
Past streams and dreams of glory
Lay a leader bathed in gold.
Haunted by the battlefields of his youth
The forgotten weight of halos old.
A poltergeist of progress
Found downed outside the zone.

Cast off by players unknown
Pretenders covet the Apex throne,
Where Aculites fight like demons
Exorcising respawn beacons
Necromancers in the Thunderdome.
While Tom seems indisposed,
Locked up and throwing rocks
Mocked by the gulag and the snow.
Though we really should have known
The esteemed leader was on his own,
His chute just would not open
Slowmotion to the sound of Chopin,
Commander falls just like a Stone.
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