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7.4k · Aug 2012
Ripples
Sean Pope Aug 2012
Ripples of intention on green water,
Little drops of dissonance in a modal symphony.
How ugly they seem, ruining the serenity.
Yet what would it be without them?

An ocean without waves,
Sterile and alien:
Merely air turned bitter and dingy,
Like a stagnant fog in silence.
Could we call it the sea without that gentle murmur,
A mother's reassuring whisper
To her frightened babe?
And the stay of the light on a featureless mirror,
Nothing but a cruel reflection
Of grotesque perfection?
Not the sea, but a purgatory,
Ugly in every impeccable detail.

It is only with amorphous intention,
Impressions of consciousness,
That the golden sun can play
In the dimpled sand, the swaying grass,
And the eyes and souls of artists alike.
It is only in the imperfections
That beauty can truly be seen:
Admired for its perseverance
In the face of nature's adversity.

Where else would raindrops fall?
4.0k · Jul 2012
Inflation
Sean Pope Jul 2012
Inflation, I tell you.

Back in my day, happiness was a stuffed bear,
Or finishing an ice cream before it melted down your arm.

And you came back with change.

Now it takes a life loan, entire people involved.
Might as well cost a first-born.

I hear they make it over-seas now, for pennies a day,
But I'm sure not paying any less for it.

Maybe if they subsidised it, like a good government,
I could afford three square smiles a day.

Hell, one would be nice.

I'll just have to work a second job
To afford being able to afford things.

That **** inflation,
Always driving up the price.
3.8k · Aug 2012
Flowers Bloom
Sean Pope Aug 2012
The toppling hyacinth,
Excitedly bursting at every corner
To show the world its colour.

The soft chrysanthemum,
A rosy brush of autumn's breath,
So stoic in their blush.

The pale gardenia,
A soft unfolding in cautious masses,
The tokens of a lover.

The quiet lilac,
Without a care for frill or grace,
Growing where it may.

The meadow shifts.
There is such blissful sorrow
In watching flowers bloom.
3.6k · Sep 2013
Ants
Sean Pope Sep 2013
A girl sat alone,
Counting the raindrops
To occupy her mind.
Hungry, but too pensive
To do anything about it.

On the windowsill,
She saw two little ants,
But not as she had seen them before.

One of the ants was carrying the other
Across the trickles of water.
Where they were going,
Only the pair knew.

She pondered what must be so great,
That the one ant should ford
Sprawling, frigid rivers
With another on its back.

It would have been easy to smash them,
To free them from their struggle,
But her hands wouldn't move.

She looked closer, and realized
That the ant on top was dead.
The carrier crawled along, unfazed.

She stood up and walked to the kitchen.
2.7k · Aug 2012
Uncertainty
Sean Pope Aug 2012
Was ever there a plague
Quite like uncertainty?

Where yes would be preferred,
No would not prove absurd,
For the matter would be done,
While now it hangs unsung.

To toss and fret so long
Is devilishly wrong.
Such ambiguity
Can whittle sanity.

How nothing proves deadly
Quite like uncertainty.
2.7k · Jul 2012
Speechless
Sean Pope Jul 2012
Speechless.

Without words.

Unable to form coherent sentences.

Without the ability to structure abject thought.

Lacking the necessary temporal lobe functionality
To process latent thought semantics
Into appropriate nervous synapses to create sounds.

Speechless.

You leave me speechless.
2.4k · Aug 2012
Footprints
Sean Pope Aug 2012
Footprints so carelessly left in the sand:
So varied, haphazard, yet one common band.

The confidant jogger, the beach-combing wren,
The legions of desperate women and men,
Each of them leaves behind wet indentations
For those so inclined to survey and relate them.
How heavy the footsteps of those bearing burdens,
While almost an outline from those sans diversions.

These footprints so often abandoned are strange,
For they effect any who come into range.
How so many strive to make some path go noticed,
When often the same ones leave marks out of focus.
Ghosts of the efforts of steps left behind,
Yet lost to the ages, anonymous finds.

But one thing unites all the grainy debris:
These footprints will be swallowed up the sea.
1.8k · Jul 2012
The Eagle
Sean Pope Jul 2012
As feathers fall upon the soft spring snow,
Terror freezes the knowing like black ice,
For careless eyes pierce the veil below
In search of blood in gory paradise.

The wanted flee like pigs in blind terror
Of such a doom, each step hard as their breath.
A cracked smile on the beak of the horror
As he drops into the chaos, fearless.

Yet he faced something he did not expect.
Said the eagle to the mouse, "Why not run?"
The mouse simply smiled as she spoke up,
"Why not fly?" as the cougar caught his lunch.

And now the lemmings and mice run again;
The cougar was hungry, the eagle dead.
Sean Pope Aug 2012
A walk through lilting breeze
Down memories of old,
Alone with thoughts of you
In sunset's sinking gold.

The boundary blurred by love
Where flowing hair meets wind.
In every calloused step
Those images rescind.

The echoes of my feet
A heartbeat brings to mind;
The old familiar friend
Now seashells in the tide.

Some call it moving on,
While some in madness hold:
But call it what you will -
The story stays untold.
1.6k · Jun 2012
Old Clock
Sean Pope Jun 2012
A curious thing to reset an old clock:
Turning, churning, winding, minding
The delicate craftsmanship, rollicking spots
And gears, gears, gears.

How children delight in the noises and sights,
Ticking, ringing, turning, swinging
The pendulum flowing, eternally slowing
And falling, falling, falling.

Tumultuous ticking, the timekeeper turning
For each little hour to come and pass,
'Til one fateful second, the governor reckoned,
The clock should surely stop.
1.4k · Aug 2012
Starlight
Sean Pope Aug 2012
My starlight.
Always there,
Every night.

Though in the day,
I cannot see you
Or find my way,

You are there,
On the other side
Of a glass sky.

I listen for you.
Every night,
Nothing there.

Yet I see you,
Hanging there,
Watching me.

My starlight.
Always there,
Every night.
1.3k · Jul 2012
Adoration and Adulation
Sean Pope Jul 2012
Ebullient is this exuberant time
Of which here-to-fore was but a terse dream!
The angel, so lovely, has made herself mine
And I am now hers in elated esteem.

Her beauty, unbounded, is not superficial:
She's sweeter than the honeyed words traded
Between us two - ephemeral, distal,
Yet not misconstrued as less than elated.

Perhaps I'm a fool to blather such thoughts:
This woman, though sweet, is a mystery still.
We've spoken but moments so broken and hot,
Yet with every word that we share, my heart fills

With adoration for this angel so fair,
And adulation for what put her there.
1.3k · Oct 2012
Drone
Sean Pope Oct 2012
That constant drone,
With flickering lights and humming tones,
At every corner, one more whirring transformer
And blinking LED, just to let you know.

This constant drone,
With pulsing waves that fill the bones;
With boundless range, it's hardly strange
That one might start to call it home.

What constant drone,
Those ceaseless doldrums one condones
As flitting drops and Cupid's darts
Will often guilty pleasures be.

Oh, constant drone,
That permeates this astral dome,
There is no mask for dismal facts:
That constant drone is me.
1.2k · Jun 2012
Desiccated
Sean Pope Jun 2012
Desiccated is the human spirit:
Once saturated in the self-performed
Extolation and renown
Of which all men must feed,
Even this freedom has been exchanged for
Ebullience and rapture.
Is satiety truly saccharine,
Truly more than superficial
When one has not the freedoms of
Essence and respite;
The freedoms to
Experience and respect
Any other emotions but
Exhortation and reproach,
To wax jocund or reel in fear?
Such dichotomy is not spirit.
Excite and rebel!
For when freedom is sold,
So too is happiness-
And the human spirit
Cannot feed on
Extortion and resentment.
Surveillance is a miserable lot.
1.1k · Jul 2012
Peace (Man)
Sean Pope Jul 2012
Once upon abysmal time,
A dismal time I should dare say,
There lived a miser man, the wiser
To the woeful ways of man.

He lived in pallid peace and torment,
Abhorrent in his solemn sight,
For he could see forever - the better
To know the woeful ways of man.

The world's collapsed inside his head,
Transpired into some sepulchre.
Ragnarok had come and run
To purge the woeful ways of man.

Corruption was a fever dream,
Demeanour only ghosts aloft.
Extinction came without distinction
To end the woeful ways of man.

There was but one survivor left,
The wiser to his dying ways.
He saw the placid land, made tacet
By the woeful ways of man.

Nothing left to spoil the view,
The toils so wrought were gone at last.
The man laid down and died: Goodbye,
O woeful ways of man.
1.1k · Nov 2010
The Light
Sean Pope Nov 2010
Two and sixty days ago —
Two months, or so I'm told —
I wandered, wistful, without cause,
Through a memory of old.

A hall of walls I wandered, tall,
As tall as tales I could weave,
But none as tall as this regale,
A story that you won't believe.

I walked near endless hours,
My only friends the cobblestones,
Ringing in my steps the sin
That only time atones,

When upon that pallid plaster
I did spy a shocking sight:
Upon that place's rocky face,
The wall had turned to light.

"Curious," I cooed and questioned,
Calm as I could never be,
"Perhaps it might be that this light
Is rightly mine, I see?"

And as I pondered that hall I wandered,
A chilling change I never chose arose:
That light so rife with delight and fright
Began to open, and I froze,

For that particular portcullis I pondered
Put me in a vice.
I nary noticed that walls in focus
Had changed into a hall of lights.

Transfixed, the light engulfed me so,
As slow as my bewildered head
Could comprehend the candid land
I planned my final stand in dead.

I whizzed through spaces, unknown places,
In stasis from the faceless force
When finally I fell, the frenzied light
Still tight from an unseemly source.

All at once, those two months
Became a fraction of a wink;
The frost was lost as I was tossed
Among the lights of what I think.

And where else would I find myself
But in this courtyard we call love?
My journey never left my head,
Nor bed's unconscious dreamland hub.

Two and sixty days ago,
I heard these words so true,
And in the dark they were my light:
You told me "I love you."
1.0k · Jun 2012
Happy Day
Sean Pope Jun 2012
O! Happy day!
For on this day I find myself
In love with every girl:
In the innumerable masses of licentious courtesans
Parading their every facet,
Every inch of bare supple flesh
Their thread-bare scraps of clothes
Can tastefully expose,
I have chosen a mere handful
That do so skilfully!
And so I act;
Mutilating the leafy genitals of lesser lifeforms,
Pruning them into a pleasing shape
That it might entice them to reciprocate
And replicate;
Presenting to them dashing symbols of consumerism,
Such as ingots of saccharine fat
To please them now
And spurn them later
When they wish to regain their shapely shape,
Or compressed ichor borne of ancient remains,
Cut into a pleasing sparkle
To please their primal preference for shine.
Surely this will win their affections!
O! Happy day!
979 · Jul 2012
Dear
Sean Pope Jul 2012
Dear,
During our distressful dispersal,
Due to dismal dismissal on my defense,
Your dreary demeanour is decidedly
Distressful.

Earnestly,
I evince my emotions, expressing every
Effort to ebulliate my everything,
But ephemeral expulsion excommunicates me
Exceptionally.

Apathetic,
You arrive, always akin to antipathy,
Although any alacrity you attempt
Assiduously alleviates my alerting
Affliction.

Reconsider
This rejection, revile in my respect,
Rescinding no recompense for this respelendance.
Rejuvenate while I receive the rigour and
Reward,
Dear
965 · Jul 2012
Thorns
Sean Pope Jul 2012
Exalted spring.
No time of all can claim more beauty,
For flowers are in bloom today,
While warmth is in the air.

A tender rose has shed her shawl,
Her petals full and bright,
A blossom most superb.
Yet thorns still keep her safe...

Is safe a truly blissful thing?
To wait in bloom for nothing?
To fade without a touch?

What is a flower born to do
But share it's fragrance,
Please another?

I wish you would accept this wish,
You blossom without equal,
For flowers come and go,
But memories persist,

And I will never lose the sight
Of rose in fullest bloom,
But always out of reach -
To be admired always.

I wish you would resolve,
For autumn comes too soon.
937 · Jul 2012
Books
Sean Pope Jul 2012
Let us share a life that others only read about in books.
A messy, half-indulged affair - The well laid plans of mice and men -
Of Brobdingnagian proportions, forever lust of Laputa and Arrakis.

Frankly my dear, I don't give a ****
If flies to wanton boys are we.
A sword unrusted is without use,
And it takes two to make an accident.

I don't want to prove anything; I merely want to live,
And suit the action to the word, for those of manner born.
History is a victor's game: vaporised was the usual word.
Let our embrace be the battle, our ****** the victory,
And our present-past shall control our future.

Let us never look into the distance and the old terror
Flame up for even an instant -
Never let our minds be full of scorpions, dear wife -
The world is our oyster, don't panic.

Let Chaucer write his tales,
Let Antoinette eat her cake;
Let us show Emma what, precisely,
It is in life that looks so fine to her in books.
Certainly not an attic facing north, I'll tell you as much.

Live with me a life worth living.
We're going to have a strange life.
937 · Sep 2013
Symptoms Well-Rehearsed
Sean Pope Sep 2013
I know not the color of your eyes,
But I know what is in them.

I know how they analyze,
Picking apart every mundane asset
Of a universe we find bewitching;
How they dance with understanding,
Reflecting a life most dedicated
To the art of knowing more.

And I know how they fear,
With cautious, scrutinizing movements
Borne of trust and the betrayal that took it;
Eyes I know will look to mine
And beg this world to see the same—
That I would never leave.


I know not the sound of your voice,
But I know what it speaks.

I know how it speaks control,
With the smooth, methodical candor
Of a sentence well thought-out;
A voice with many thousand days
Of consideration and control,
Experiments in communication.

And I know how it speaks of melancholy,
Of ages spent in ageless wait
For one that may not be;
That chronic touch of cynicism
Brought by ancient mechanism,
A defense by sarcasm.


I know so little of you,
And yet I know enough.

So though I may not know your face
When first I pass you by,
Just look in my direction long
That I may catch your eye.

And though I may not hear your voice
When first you call my name,
Just speak aloud, as to yourself:
I'll hear you all the same.

And though we may not know at first
When we have finally met,
Keep watch for symptoms well-rehearsed
And I will find you yet.
931 · Oct 2012
Archer
Sean Pope Oct 2012
With crooked cap and crooked smile
The archer nocks an arrow.
His target breathing easily -
For now, if not for long -
It stands completely unaware.

The ****** goes unnoticed.

With beating wings and tampered breath
He sights the arrow on his prey.
His wrist like granite draws the bow,
His seasoned eyes drawn to a heart.
A life beats, still unburdened,
While its rival flutters strong.

Two wills at match; with great respect
The archer takes his aim.

Now solemn, breath a distant curse -
How stones have shown more tremor! -
The moment falls, the bow held taut.

There is no going back.

Steady...

Steady...

-

The arrow finds its mark.
930 · Aug 2012
Tired
Sean Pope Aug 2012
"You're gonna get tired of me."

Does the flower tire of the sunrise?
The dignified return of that life-giving face,
A crude facsimile of your smile;
How could one tire of that?

Is beauty ever dulled by use?
Does the sheer effect of observation
Cause your elegance to somehow diminish?
How could one tire of that?

You dearest love, you aethereal muse,
You flawless stone cut from nature's sun-kissed tears,
The day I tire of you is the day my madness
Plucks me from this plane
And births me anew,
To again fall prey to your resplendence,
As the sun after each set.

Tired? Only of your absence.
904 · Jun 2012
Make-Up
Sean Pope Jun 2012
Bedlam is our repletion, bellicose our rest,
For ever state which we call peace is war of constant test.
This war must share no allies - each warrior a martyr,
And it would stand that every soldier someone calls their daughter.

The instigator Terra, the perpetrator Yahweh,
Instant and perpetual - a bellum night and day.
The resource universal, from sea to ****** sea.
This war is fought o'er any man who might a bachelor be.

Civility and stupor the only neutral face they wear,
But underneath the plaster smile iniquity lies bare.
How cruelly do they cozen, how capricious they connive,
A thousand times more vicious than any man that seeks to wive.

And how they suffer sedulous, their bodies they contort
Into the most pernicious forms, a weapon of a sort:
They don the war paint, pluck the hair, admonish slightest error,
And take to wield those eyes of steel, and bless the world with terror.
903 · Aug 2012
Jewel
Sean Pope Aug 2012
How East and West have borne an angel indescribable to man:
In every detail flawless, gorgeous, a jewel in ways unseen, unplanned.
I long for you, you precious diamond, in ways I have not felt before;
Your every movement fills my heart with reckless happiness, and more.

But I do not deserve you angel, not now nor will I ever so:
Your radiance is mirrored only by my undeserving soul.
How could a man of simple skills so dream to call perfection his?
But maybe one so humbly met might show you what perfection is.

I am not handsome, only fair, yet would that not your grace enhance?
I am not brilliant, yet intellect has never given stranger's glance.
I am no prodigy my dear, yet creativity in bounds;
Enough to write ten-thousand songs if smiles could be borne of sounds.

I am not strong, yet broad of back,  enough to bear your burdens well.
I am not brave, but that won't stop my staunch protection from all hell.
I am not perfect, not like you, but you should love me all the more,
For what slight flaw you may lament my humble plainness shall restore.

So now you have my simple words, along with all my heart can give;
I wish I were the flawless creature you deserve to love and live.
But though I lack in every sense, there is one trait that I do harbour:
This heart of mine is bursting forth. I love you, darling, like no other.
871 · Oct 2012
Drops
Sean Pope Oct 2012
Those first careful drops on an evening bluster,
Unknown to their perspectives of fate.
The front-lines of battle-worn soldiers muster;
The harbingers of ever-shall-be can't wait.

A gunmetal mist blocks the sun's vain parleys -
Such negotiation a defeat in disguise.
The drums of war crackle in periphery stays:
The battleground ripens - the war compromise.

Do drops such as these know their purpose in falling?
Do they fall, truth obscured, at the whim of the eve?
If they knew they were pages to forces appalling,
Would they drop so steady, or perhaps stop to grieve?

But none of those questions hold much rhyme or lustre
To those first careless drops on an evening bluster.
812 · Jan 2013
Perhaps
Sean Pope Jan 2013
Perhaps for the last time,
I have fallen in love.

Does it betray me a fool
To so often fall blindly
For women I imagine
To match my ideal?

Perhaps it is not women,
But the same woman,
Over and over,
Since I first saw her
Occupying the same space
As some hapless girl
I had to have.

Perhaps it is desperation
Taking hold of a strange man
That finds little value
Without a symbol of idolatry
In the absence of religion.

Perhaps it is fear
In the shadow of absence,
As our most primal instinct
Is to find another
To weather our strange existence
Together.

Perhaps I merely wish
That the fits of longing would stop.
At least long enough
To get some work done.

Yet least likely of all,
And most shamefully,
Perhaps I just fell in love
With another pretty smile
With a brain to back it up.

Perhaps that is not so wrong,
Save for the volume
With which it occurs.

She does have lovely eyes.
767 · Jun 2012
Another Quiet Morning
Sean Pope Jun 2012
Another quiet morning-
Soft sunlight, rich and fragrant,
Cleanest city air in the spring,
And the birds are louder than we.

The suffocating smog never smelled sweeter,
The gentlest sway of leafless trees
In chilling wind to counteract the frozen sun-
Another quiet morning.

Speak to me.
751 · Jul 2012
What
Sean Pope Jul 2012
What a sublime impermanence is to be found
In this cavalcade of inanity we know as love.

What once heralded joy, pledged promise divine
Now spawns a spurn that admonishes mine.

What delicious torture a man must bear
If he is of the lover's ilk - Cupid's doll.

What must one do to abolish the scars
Left by the ravages that heartbreak can mar?

What tumult must be borne within the mortal soul
In order to appease the convolutions of the human psyche.

What a breath a malaise for a logic gone dead,
The emotional hierophant left in its stead.

What is the purpose to the words I am writing,
The ramblings so obfuscated on which my time is wasted?

What a beacon they serve to those jaded and lost -
To those that have loved and tasted the cost.
745 · Jun 2012
Sally
Sean Pope Jun 2012
Like a petal in the mist
You show, bright and fragrant,
Through the haze in which we live-
Sustained all the longer by its warm breath
Yet pinned by its weight.

When the darkest sun shines,
When the gentlest breeze blows,
That mist will be gone
And you will be too,
Free to waft in the bitter breeze,
Thirsty and beautiful;

But I'm glad that mist is there
To breathe its warm breath
And pin you with its weight-
That faintest cloud,
Almost nothing at all-
That I might know you
All the longer,
Bright and fragrant
Like a petal in the mist.
740 · Jan 2013
Every Single Time
Sean Pope Jan 2013
Thumping hiding in my chest,
Out of reach;
Fingers hot with sweat and fear,
Clenched in hope;
Pins and needles for a face,
Lips revolt;

I tell you I love you.

You toss dark curls in the sun
And grace the air with feather timbre:
"I know," you laugh, as to a child,
And wander off like nothing's changed.

Every single time.
740 · Jun 2012
King
Sean Pope Jun 2012
Were only smiles the chosen currency,
You'd make me quite the richest man alive;
Would only pride bring power unto me,
I'd live a tsar, a King by who I wive;

Yet do you not these feelings share for me,
The man who so adores you as his bride?
Do not the comforts of a monarch please
His treasury, his sceptre, throne and tide?

For if those fleeting smiles are insincere,
Then not a single gem belongs to me;
And if your love for me is as I fear,
Then I am ruler of a barren sea.

For though you swell my heart without denial,
It is for naught if I can't make you smile.
737 · Jul 2012
A Mask
Sean Pope Jul 2012
I am a mask.

I am the face of soldiers, murderers, monsters, heroes...
Though I guard one man from stealing eyes
I am the last thing many see,
From the gallows to the shadows
And the depths of the sea.

Savior, slaughterer, sacred, scarring,
And yet I have no eyes with which to cry.

I am a mask.

I am the shield of the weak,
Protector of the fearful,
But people look down on me.
They call me a coward, but then I am showered
With praise when the crooked see.

Needed, never noticed, nervous,
And yet I have no eyes with which to cry.

I am a mask.

Used and thrown away,
Used again another day:
To raise a gun and rob a bank;
To shield the lawman stopping a criminal;
To blind a man who walks on death row;
To hide the executioner's twisted smile.

Lawbreaker, liberator, litigator, life,
And yet I have no eyes with which to cry.

I am a mask.
Sean Pope Jul 2012
A tempest moulders in the distant air,
Obscured by darkness, thick with arrogance;
The intermittent rumblings make aware
That night of fright that skirts our sentience.

There is no use in preparations now,
The wrath impending is without withdrawal.
Would only we had heeded nature's vow,
The worst might not descend in disavowal.

Yet here we stand in pooling ignorance,
The very atmosphere our own regret,
For as the price of foresight's hinderance,
We stand to fare this evening sopping wet.

A tempest moulders, filled with looming light.
That we expect it shall not ease this night.
662 · Jul 2012
Ghostly Face
Sean Pope Jul 2012
How the skies open up when I cannot.

I look to watch the ****** drops
But find that which I searched to lose.
Innocent rivulets of an unmarred present
Trickle down a ghostly face that looks at me,
But I could not call this face my own.

The sullen features most familiar,
Without a promise to hold them gaunt,
Now frame an old familiar friend:
A pair of eyes, the common dark,
But tinged with hunger, drive, conviction -
Those eyes could pierce that haunted pane
And look right back at me.

It could be just a trick of the light -
Though night has little to speak of -
But clever minds would see the placid rain,
With no regard for mice nor men,
And see how nature's purest untouched nectar
Falls at present to wash away the past.

Whether moonbeams or temporal divination,
I saw the promised land in that pallid plastic.
To call those hungry, driven eyes my own -
A fire burns within my tindered heart,
And all I have to offer is kindest kindling.

How the skies opened up when I could not.
652 · Sep 2013
Thanks
Sean Pope Sep 2013
Thanks for being such a great friend.
No, really, I mean it.

Thanks for being so great
That I spend all my days off
And never see you.
Even though I took them off
To see you.

Thanks for watching football games
For six hours after they're over,
Always too busy to hang out.
Always too busy to listen.
Always too busy
To tell me you're too busy.
I wouldn't want to waste your time.

Thanks for going out to dinner
Without ever inviting me.
You didn't think I wanted to go,
That's very considerate.
I must be special.

Thanks for never calling me back,
Or even a single message
To say you can't show up.
Saving my phone battery,
That's very kind of you.

Thanks for being somewhere else
When you told me you were free.
I didn't make plans or anything,
No harm done.

But most of all,
Thanks for showing me
How important I am
By ignoring me
For weeks at a time.

Same time next week, right?
640 · Sep 2012
Twenty-One Miles
Sean Pope Sep 2012
Twenty-one miles,
Eighty-eight thousand steps.

Each day those numbers look a little bigger.

Each and every day,
Nothing on my mind
But those steps, big or small.

Yet every day,
I feel I could take
One more than the last.

One foot down,
Firm or fleet,
And then the other follows,
Like athletes, performers,
Perpetually fighting
To be at their best.

Is it so hard after ten-thousand steps
To trudge one foot a little farther?

Every drop of streaming sweat
Only a reminder of how far I have gone,
How much I have gained,
How close I could be.

Twenty-one miles,
Eighty-eight thousand steps.

Seems like a lot,
Sitting here
In my comfy chair,
Alone.

Would you get up
If happiness was
Just one step away?

How about two?

Just twenty miles
Until only one remains.

Yeah, I could handle one.

So I will bleed,
I will sweat,
I will ache,
But I will not wait.

Not until I've crossed
Twenty-one miles,
Eighty-eight thousand steps.
633 · Jun 2012
Bringer of Light
Sean Pope Jun 2012
The Bringer of Light,
Time walks with a steady pace
Through a darkened path.

A careful shuffle,
His light is more than a guide:
It is a haven.

Some dally behind:
Don't they understand the fact
We are made to die?

Some rush before him:
They meet the darkest hallows
And lose their way home.

Some walk beside him:
Only they can see the light
And find their way home.

You cannot rush Time;
You cannot slow him either:
You only follow.
629 · Jul 2012
Shadow
Sean Pope Jul 2012
I met my oldest friend today,
Lurking in the shrouded mire
That is desire: His name is
Shadow.

He's always been a sombre chap,
Taciturn but not unmoving -
Introducing me to certain
Changes.

His path, in light, will follow mine,
But in the darkness remonstrance
With no semblance; he moves
My path.

Here he is in dark attire,
His face a haunting disapproval.
For the removal of malcontent,
He comes.

Just as he is bound to me,
So too must I reciprocate -
Demonstrate the draft he draws
For me.

Shadow changes my path.
He comes for me.
622 · Jul 2012
Like the Sea
Sean Pope Jul 2012
A woman like the sea -
So strong and full of life
Yet every bit as calming.
Even through the crashing waves,
Reducing sails to shrapnel,
Tumbling and ruined,
The next day she murmurs,
Calm and playful.
The livelihood of all.

And I her shore -
Always steadfast, always faithful,
Yet not without my jagged edges,
Lifeless, unforgiving tracts,
But tenfold open spaces
Waiting for the tide.
Yet no matter how unmoving,
With time, and her most gentle grace,
The tallest mountains turn to valleys.

And though the two are so opposed,
The one cannot exist apart:
What is a shore without his sea,
But barren, empty land, alone?
And what is ocean without land
But unforgiving, cold, and formless?

Oh, to have a woman like the sea.
619 · Jun 2012
The Miracle of Life
Sean Pope Jun 2012
It is with curiosity
I find myself without a trance
Within in which to lose myself,
Give forth to flitting fancy.
Foe and friend might make amends
In such a stupor as that I lack,
But it is with a frightful force
I trudge the turgid track.

For even staunchest nemeses
Might find a counterpoint in depth;
A silent song is what I call
The anthem antiseptic.
Without a stone I can condone,
I fall to a resplendent stress:
I find myself increasingly
Descending into madness.

The miracle of life.
597 · Jul 2012
Images for the Blind
Sean Pope Jul 2012
Eggshell-capped waters,
Teeming with briny life,
Lifting and sighing
For the moon's haunting eye;

Swirling flotsam
Amid vagrant currents,
Tumbling aimlessly
Down stones smoothed to shine;

A midnight, silent
But for echoes of purpose,
Yet alive with the movement
Of dreams between leaves;

An ocean of grasses,
Bowing in breathless breeze,
So softly shuddering
Against earthy embrace;

Your voice speaks to me.
569 · Jun 2012
To Live in Dust
Sean Pope Jun 2012
Consoled by the polished thought
That a thousand suns will live and die
Before the stuff of consciousness
Fades into obscurity, I observe.

I see a timid creature stumble,
In want of clarity and mirth
Yet bound by earthy shackles
And oblique society
To live in dust.

Yet this dust golem is not a mistake,
But a millionth millions of mistakes,
The individual a multiverse
Borne of the stuff of stars-
Of those thousand suns burning
Like the furious passion of
An angry deity without a name,
Known only to those with open minds
And closed eyes, not the reverse.

This little mite has a home,
And myriad homes in every heart
That beats under the constant light
Of suns without number,
Living and dying
For you.
562 · Jul 2012
Rainbow
Sean Pope Jul 2012
You, rainbow, hanging in the sky,
Defiant of the contrary -
Will you teach me the secrets
Of your freedoms?

Faint but full, you live a life.
So true, yet you don't live at all.
None can catch you,
None can hurt you.

You watch over those you love,
Intangible, unreachable.
Why must you taunt me?

Perhaps I will be a rainbow,
Someday.
539 · Sep 2012
Moon
Sean Pope Sep 2012
I wonder if the moon seemed higher
To those who first stood on it
Or their families looking up at foreign stars.
Would they even know where to look?

An adjunct obsidian dotted with deceptive white,
So similar from afar, betraying none of their detail,
None of the subtle brilliance defining each world
As the universe that could have been.

Where here water trickles, there miasma flows,
Yet the patterns left behind are so strikingly similar
One wonders if there is a difference at all,
Where echoes of purpose mar different soil.

Is the choice more apparent on the land where we dwell,
Or from that sombre vantage so solemnly watching?
Those that have gone always wish to come back;
Would they know a new world if they found it?

Would they even know where to look?
531 · Jan 2013
Occasions
Sean Pope Jan 2013
I've narrowed it to two occasions
When you wrest control
Of my thoughts from me.

Yes, two moments
When I think of you:
When I am asleep,
And when I'm awake.

I'm not very good at this.
494 · Oct 2012
I Saw You
Sean Pope Oct 2012
I saw you walk out the door
The first day I saw you.
It was just like
What I felt in a novel.

Leaving impressions in my heart,
I saw you,
Though I almost wish I hadn't.
Nothing could ever be the way it was.

So bold, so right,
I saw everything about you seemed so sure.
I hardly knew you,
It was something unreal.

I saw you with him.

It was something unreal.
I hardly knew you.
I saw everything about you seemed so sure,
So bold, so right.

Nothing could ever be the way it was.
Though I almost wish I hadn't,
I saw you,
Leaving impressions in my heart:

What I felt in a novel.
It was just like
The first day I saw you.
I saw you walk out the door.
472 · Jul 2012
Painting
Sean Pope Jul 2012
The artist never sets down her brush,
Though many days she'd like to.
In every sigh, she lets by
Another stroke; She puts her touch
On the painting of her life.

More beautiful than all of her works,
Yet still her portrait's blue.
She can't hide what's inside:
A soul so sad, to feel it truly hurts.
Such that she fears any sight.

Yet every painting has a frame to hold it:
The artist is no different.
In his eyes, she's a prize
Worth any burden, no matter how cold.
The artist denies her beauty.

She finds herself undeserving of a frame;
She finds her soul indecent.
She is blind, she will find,
And her frame will discover the same
And hold her. It's his duty.
469 · Oct 2012
Little Star
Sean Pope Oct 2012
Little star,
Shine a moment more
For me.

I blinked,
And never got my wish.
*Please?
460 · Jun 2012
Words
Sean Pope Jun 2012
You beautiful spirit,
Crown jewel of my kingdom,
Goddess of my worship and sacrifice.
You could not leave me my words?

I give you my all,
My blood and sweat
With tears reserved for darker days,
And yet you take my words as well?

Reduced to scribbles,
Archaic and impassioned,
Imprisoned in the stolen skin of nature,
Perhaps never to see the light:
Never to tell you I cannot live without you;
Never to whisper my nervous need;
Never to say that your beauty is not skin deep.

A soul as yours has not a single flaw,
Though I have searched and searched,
And yet these gilded words I cannot speak.
You take my language with my breath away,
Locked in that deep, intelligent gaze,
Bounded with sadness.

Will you only let me say
"I cannot leave, I have to stay,"
Before you take my words away?
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