on a cold day, quickly turning into night, i labored in the forest, splitting logs for fire, to sustain me through the long winter nights.

looking at the sun, setting, on the horizon, i'd  have just enough light to make it back to my cabin. i cleaned my ax, started walking, into the cold dark forest, to my little cabin.

i'd stopped working, my body cooled, the cold seeped in, touching my skin, making me shiver, wishing for warmth of a long ago summer.

i walked, in silence, i never felt so alone, no sun in the sky, no singing birds, just a lifeless boreal forest in the cold of winter.

i felt forgotten, abandoned, buried in the earth, an emotional pain so intense, so deep, it makes grown men cry.

reaching the end of days, no family, no friends, eeking out a senseless existence, not knowing why, too old to work, too young to die, i plod along.

reaching my cabin as the night consumed the sky, the loneliness of winter overwhelmed me, enveloping my body, worse my mind, in the nihilism of why.

tears start to flow, as i opened the door, i wept then cried, as i entered the house, cold and dark, an echo of my life, no fire in the hearth, no food on the table, no wife to hold in my arms, to warm my body, my heart.

i light a fire, then my pipe, pour a glass, and sit in my chair, in front of the fire, staring into the flames, alive with warmth, my only companion, the only reason, i am still alive.

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (A Movie Poem)

The absence of love
makes one a villain
in other’s hearts.

In the proposal
the weeping willow
sheds its leaves
to the sky,

while in the bowels below
the servants of the earth
forge war,

pull iron from earth
as it screams
to be reclaimed.

Above, silk napkins
unfold into laps
with a curt snap of wrists.

Into the depths
the princess falls,
into the opposite of heaven.

She opens her eyes
to the evil above her, around her,
near her, pouring out
like bearings onto sheets of gold.

“Maybe,” she thinks,
“we can exist
without fear of war?
Find a way together?”

This is no fairy tale,
but yet this
is precisely a fairy tale.

She dreams of her wedding
where all are invited
and all are expected.

She can see butterflies
swirl around her wedding gown,
her face reflected in a golden bowl,
the bloom of thousands
of attending fairies.

But yet, she is still falling,
full with the wisdom
that the spindle
curses everything it touches

and that her subjects are locusts
fated to swarm the earth
a thousand years
enduring the evil promised them,

until she burns herself out,
the last blood of the Phoenix,
destined from ashes to be transformed.