What worries the weapon more than peace?
That sheath that seeks to still its story.
When kings grow old and tire of schemes
And children dream no more of glory.

What becomes the warrior
When heroes live only in song?
When there is no one left to conquer
And every battle has been won.

When the wind no longer speaks of steel
And mountains have forgot our name.
When all that's left are memories
Of the fallen, Of the shame.

Worry not though for the blade.
Spare no thought toward the sword,

For peace shall fall to slumber.

War will wake once more.

We are old friends,
This void and I.
Our paths would cross
From time to time.
Pupils both of the abyss.
Kicking rocks into the chasm,
Skimming stones across the mist.
Like all old friends we parted
Started ways that are our own,
Though we pick the path we tread
We do not own the road.
You took the turn to summer,
I chose the way of snow.

Those who walk in winter know
Warmth lives within the cold.

I do not write of sunsets,
Those farewells of weary days.

I will not speak again of forests
Or golden sunlit glades.

I have said my piece on oceans.
Brokered peace among the flame.

I have walked many an idyllic garden
To find each flower's scent the same.

At times the grass appears the greener,
A feature of how light strikes the blade.

The sabre seems as great a teacher
In the sunshine as the shade.

So I shall write again no more of sunsets
Those farewells of weary days.

I lay down arms against the evening.

To the dreaming

I cast my gaze.

The Sun was late today,
Claims she was stuck in traffic,
Surrounded by clouds that
Would not give way.
She apologises nonetheless,
For any inconvenience caused
The delays and/or distress.

I suspect she simply overslept.
Based on the smell of ethanol,
Cigarettes upon the breath.
Half popped packs of paracetamol
Left discarded on the desk.
The good mornings softly spoken
That shows the will is bent,
Not broken.
Ignoring token take out coffee
Cups of renewable confessions.

It's quite the sight to see,
The one that's always early
Arriving this time dishevelled,
Disoriented, unsettled.
She stumbles through yawns
Stretching out the groans of dawn.
Still she manages a smile.
So the world begins to brighten
At least for a little while.

There are few absolutes.
Even less that speak as true,
To the golden hues of bygone ages
Or savage whirlpools of our youth.
We were born and we shall die
Shackled to these certainties
Eternal pirouettes of life.
Yet in the doubt we are alive,
A parable of the possible,
The probable or the just might.
Existence in the absence
Between two points of light.
In the uncertain we survive,
A ripple in the darkness,
A dream within the night.

We woke one morn
To the song of storms
And the iron grip of fever.
Torn between the call of war
Fleeting dreams of Patagonia.
The afterglow of horror shows
Shadows left upon the mountain.
Nightmares rise from water falls
Sanguine spectres in the fountain.
Preachers drink long, far, and deep
While prophets speak of profits reaped
And treasures yet to be found.
Among andean condor calls
Those who seek live weak to greed
Forever bound enthralled.

It's a slippery *****,
I hope you know.
Said the Solipsist
To The Fly.

Who was itself
A somewhat suspicious
Deliciously conspicuous,
Most likely maleficent,
Manifestation of a mind.

A specimen meant just to define,
A shade that shall not live,
A shadow that shall not fly.
Designed to be a metaphor,
To make its point and then to die.

Invested only to be digested
By imagination and an eye.
Where within it lingers lonely,
Solely stoic for a while,
For a time.
A casualty of entropy
Out of place,
Left behind.
Or maybe out in front,
Depending on your point of view,
However long thought takes to stew.

The Fly nodded sagely,
Behaved as if it knew.
Nonchalant with confidence,
The epitome of cool.
Giving all the right impressions
These digressions were understood.
As it landed ever closer
To sit upon the madman's shoulder
To show this silly, pseudo ******
How little he really knew.

That being said,
If all that is lives only in your head.
Could I trouble you for some of that stew?

Under a sullen, unloving sky,
Caught off guard by the searching rain,
She flees to shieldlike canopies.
A pilgrim on the path of shadow
Ever tethered to the flame.
Enslaved to the way of fire
Sycophant of the eternal blaze.
Condemned to spend the end of days
Wandering wastelands of the Sun,
Forever exiled from the shade.

In the darkness she would remain,
If only she would have her way.
Cocooned in shells of memory
Fogs of war,
Ill explained.
Though the forest chatter
Never quite sounds the same,
The pitter patter
Pauses,
Secrets encoded in the rain.
Her frail wings lay broken
Breath comes barely when spoken,
Offspring away upon the wind.
Though they took no time to notice
The darkness roars forth and shows us

We have our own fires to attend.

From the depths of chaos we departed
Chartered passage to unknown shores,
Past forests and deserts of solitude
To the walls of an ancient war.

Though those walls would crumble,
Rumble, as if of thunders roar.
The silence served would deafen,
Beckon all toward fate's door.

As our feet grow ever weary
From eerie path trod cobbled floor
And souls succumb to violence,
Tyrants of terror but nothing more.

Our shoulders bear the burden
Of verdant lands long lost to time.
The sun-scorched pastures rotten,
Forgotten laws and untold crime.

The serf shall not suffer the baron,
Talons shall pierce their skin no more.
Enwrought by the breath of dragons,
Falcons are born to soar.

Carry no fear in your heart
Nor on your shoulders, shame
For the end is nothing more
Than the start by another name.

It is strange how we yearn
For what we have never known.
Nostalgic for a time long past
Before our seeds were sown.
Homesick for a feeling lost,
For a land so green and sure.
For a shore we have never seen,
For waters that have never graced
Nor lapped our weary feet.
For a space we thought was ours
For the darkness that hangs in waiting
Between the gaps among the stars.
For the peace we have never found
For the war we have always sought
For the feelings we seldom caught,
For the love of all unbound.

Carry no fear in your heart
Nor on your shoulders, shame
For the end is nothing more
Than the start by another name.

The rains were late this year
Land sparse,
Vast
Plains barren and parched.
Starved with an awful thirst.
Mouthfuls of sand,
Handfuls of dirt.
Months of hardship
Sow seasons of hurt.
As worship converts to clouds
The Sun bows out,
Proud but yet usurped.
Vulture circles bold and undeterred.
Gaze beholden to a crack torn earth.

I will never believe in your God
But I will always have faith in You.
I care not for what you preach.
I care only for what you do.

He thought he may have caught
Among the snares and creeping vines,
A whisper of a thought
From the leaves and air entwined.
On the savage jungle floor,
The corpse of those that came before,
Testament to an ancient war
Lay bloodied and forlorn.
A trap that's set a hundred times or more.

The words were always just!
The words were just in his mind,
A caricature of conscience
What he wished for he would find.
Yet in the echoes of the moon,
He stood before the snare
And knew it to be bare.
Why then does the forest sing this mournful tune?


A girl knelt shy by shaded riverside
Asking the shadows what they knew.
They told tales of light once spoken by the moon,
A prophecy come true of a girl named Blue
Whose eyes would tame the wild.

Don't worry mum.
I'm worse than you think
But no way near as bad as you fear.

Dear good friend,
Perhaps acquaintance.
To the masses we pass on a daily basis,
The worn out souls and weary faces
Painted in towers of glass.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Distinguished guests.
To those indisposed
By inexorable quests.
To the ones that were left
To search for what was right
Till there was nothing left
But memories of light

Blindfolds applied at night.

To the torn shoes,
Blistered feet.
The poverty we choose to greet.
It is pain, vain,
Somewhat plain to mention
That conversation's become outdated.
Sedated, restrained and correlated
To the denizens of a distant past.

We pass the world in silence.
Ignoring blatant acts of violence

Then claim that it is art.

Our body was well worn,
Born, bled then ill informed.
Skin shed
Torn
Dust to adorn a once pristene floor.
Bred to provide countless lives, more.
Martyr to a form it shall never see.
The water flows but cannot know
The extent of its captivity.

The sea is swept in mystery
She confides in me no more.
No whispers in the shells
Or echoes from the shore.
You do not argue with the wind,
You can not bargain with the sky.
Standing back to back with mountains
We watch and weep while angels die.
For the face of life is fleeting,
Tweeting, tapping at your door,
Ravens that won't relent,
Yet ones you can't ignore.

But I'm boring you I'm sure.
I was talking about the ocean
And how we speak no more.
It's not that we don't get on
We still have much to say.
Words are made of water
Written in the waves.
Now the tide is out,
The sea seems
Far away.

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 float on unkown oceans
In boats more made for land.
The sails have ceased to function,
And our boots are laced with sand.
The rudder is unresponsive,
The first mate seems quiet too.
The ship has started leaking,
Weakend wood and stale stew.

The course was never charted,
This was known among the crew.
A passage for the faint of heart,
The bard and the jester too.
These denizens of darkness
Embark with the morning dew.
Depart with mist horizons
To find the start of something new.

For months we sailed
Through winter times,
On waters cold yet still serene.
The memories of warmer climes
Seem like nothing but a dream.
Cannons fire, deckhands scream,
Ship splintered by the sea.
Driftwood caught in ocean's sway
Swept up then cast away.

Earth has lost an angel,
Heaven has gained one hell of a man.

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.

I am folly, I am fury.
I am ruin and I am rage.
I am every time that you have faltered,
Every time you were afraid.
I am pestilence and I am plague.
I am every roar of faded glory,
I am every cry of shame.
I am war, I am worship,
I am hunter and I am boar.
I am every lash of slavers whip,
Every chain cast to the floor.