The soldier waits ...
With rifle unaimed
With bullets unfired
With bayonet unfixed
With uniform unknown
With boots untrodden
With rations uneaten
With canteen unrepleneshed,
With words unspoken
With letter unread
With locket unopened
With face unseen
With dreams undreamt
With life unlived
With love undiminished,
For a grave to be dug.

You asked:
"How you came to your dead end?"

How did I?
Perhaps too much of chasing butterflies,
or maybe running barefoot in hot, avid pursuit
of those looping, berserk kites

adrift like airborne serpents

in delirious evening skies.

Then there were those chimeric rainbows -
sedately fantastic illusions of dream jobs,
and loving homes with ambrosial glows.

They all eventually led to the same prosaic end,
for, any-which-way, all roads wound up
at appropriately conventional
and consequently beaten bend.

Till the chase went on, it was the same old story -
All fulfilled ambition promptly subject to
increasingly falling marginal utility.

After all of it was said and done,
every little crown lost and won,
the agony of the question still remained
no last words arose,
to which to exclaim and say Yay!

Life had me in its hook. See:?
while this is what it meant to be free: !

✽

Fossilized in my den, I stared wistfully
at life's irrevocable loose ends
and this is how my friend
I arrived at my proverbial dead ends.

The poets are all just lost finding words.
And when they corner something’s essence,
A glimmer of truth or a scratch at the profound,
Does not all but a measly tuft of hair escape their page?

O timeless sloth, I must with thee abide,
Let it be not to my own destruction.
Another life from me thou must divide,
Say to me t’was of mine own instruction!

I cling desperately to thine branches
I must weather the slings and arrows of
Most untimely sharp commands, and blanches
At my staunch resoluteness thereof.

Cease! Cease! See not the moss amongst my hairs,
Nor my talon-like nails, still, motionless.
Judge not, entwined as thou art in bland affairs
In your gray monuments to boastfulness

For nothing is equal to nothing.
To mime futile work is all but bluffing.

Cold sneering leaves stick through frightful roots
Green shatters droplets of desire looking to ensnare views
A crescent wind sticks through circular layers ripping with bitter apathy
Yet paying to days of grey

Now I have seen divinity
In clearings wide as all the sky,
All grassy green and riotous:
Long blades a-rattling, aimed at Heaven,
Warring with an unseen wind.

And I have seen futility
As plain as winter's frosty breath,
Where fields of green gave way to death
And skies of blue surrendered, too,
Wrapped up, abandoned in a white tomb.

They'll muster up for war again
When Spring trips in to dance and sin
As if their bellicose endeavors
Ever had a snowball's chance.

And here is Hell, their every movement
Sisyphus against the rock -
Each blade of pristine imperfection
Dances by the wind's design.

We are tired of years ago tired of to be tired.
I’m a clock in the shape of a woman, counting months in weeks
Weeks in days in hours in minutes in seconds
Recorded in the strands that make me
Water slipping through my hands, I’ll ask you to keep it safe
But you only have your own hands to use.

Hiding from a rainstorm
is supposed to be tranquil :
                the patter of rain...
                the rumble of harmless thunder...
                watching the storm, but never feeling it...
Just raindrops on windows, with you safe inside.

But what if that thunder is the breaking of a friend's heart?
The lightning, the slashing of her dreams?
Her storm is raging within a snow globe…
From the outside, beautiful and perfect...
Unless you know the truth.

Thank God for that glassy protection, right?
Except...
             For all your good intentions...
             And best efforts...
             And wishful thinking...
All you can do is stay by her side
until her world settles.

What if that storm was a torrent of bullets,
Tearing her to pieces?
You can only watch,
Untouchable behind bulletproof glass...

I mean, at least you're safe, right?
… But doesn't it hurt you to witness it
Without being able to intervene?

What if that rain is made of salty tears?
Heartaches and losses and sorrow...
You can try...
                 and be there for her...
                 and phone and listen...
                 and offer every ounce of your comfort...
But no matter what you do...
God still controls the weather.

I mean, at least it isn't your own suffering.
… But that's just it, isn't it?
There's no doorway through a wall of glass.

See,
The very best part of chrysalism
Is that you're hiding on the inside
Within your own peaceful world.

The worst?
You can't swap places.