Let us share
        an incantation of the old world
Let us unfurl words like a string of pearls
torn from ocean deep - I battled Krakens
to bring you these words – let me wreathe
the drowning seed of ancient demons
in a modern tale of high rise jewellery
You can wear me at your leisure
for I am a book of poetry - open in your hands
caress my pages - I offer ages of wisdom in sand
strung sorrowful about a stony neck
can you see the mystery of that cloud
striated by the mountains tip carved
deep into the sky in defiance of the wind
unbowed by time yet so vulnerable
to lion and tiger, to the hermit and his tearful rain
did you know that every beach was once a mountain?
so every ocean floor kissed the sky in its youth
let us built these fragments into clamshells
string them on pearlescent pages turned
by curious eyes and ponder how time
makes a mystery or a monster of us all
Let us share
              this incantation of the old world
for in words
              we can live forever

midnight every day
I lie in bed haunted by my own thoughts
and a question echoes through my bones
“can you really do it?”

almost two decades of the same thing
this question that bears down on me
is what I do enough?
is all of this exhaustion enough to prove something?

oftentimes I let myself be lost
between the lines and the colors and the textures
tangled in the words the world has bestowed upon me
trapped in the frames of what I display to the world

but with every piece I showcase
a part of me is eternally in each one
and the more I give to this earth
the less I have to myself

sometimes I let myself collapse into nothingness
breaking myself beyond repair
trying to find weakness and striking there
just to pour more into the art that I struggle to create

is there really anything good that will come out of this?
is using every ounce of my heart and soul worth every single day?

but if there is anything this cruel world has taught me
it is that I do not just give up on what I love
and what I love might be the death of me
and yet it is the immortality that will carry me on
it is the beauty that I am willing to leave behind

There probably IS a “God”:
Some supreme power and intellect
Who rules the Realms.
Define your God, if you will.

There may be many gods around
Throughout the vastness of the universe
For us to pray to too.

Did God Create our Universe?
Who knows?

But what do I care?
All I want to know
Is what’s in it for me?
Will I get but a pittance
Of a few decades of Life?
Or will I live on in some afterlife,
Reincarnation or whatever?

This may sound selfish
But as I say,
I don’t care.

I resent the certainty of Death,
With every fibre of my soul.
Atheists give me no comfort here:
Only Religion gives some Hope,
Despite our history of “Holy Wars”.

So what can I Believe in now?
What Faith can sooth my soul?
Only Hope.

Paul Butters

None of us gets paroled

From the prison cells we lock ourselves into.


So that we all can fit together inside

These jigsaw lives that we lead
.

Which  of course, eventually all blow apart.
We are merely the fragments waiting to be reassembled.

Every moment of thought is but a small drop in time.

Each piece fits the next piece.


Although we may try to avoid,

The murmurs of our own thoughts. 


It is our hearts that yawn and awaken slowly

From their long winter night’s sleep.

You and I are mere mortals, 

Who dreamt of a life without end.


We are the ones who make up immortality. 

For the sake of seeking sweet comforts and sad joys.


This is the story we tell ourselves
Whilst slumping back to our cells.

The heavens mourned
   in my stead love.

They railed and rent
   themselves through,
   in the deep knell of the thunder,
   and the flashing light of the lightning
   as it struck in all its fiery promise.

The gods themselves
   wept my tears, my love.

Rivers upon rivers
  from those fickle immortals,
  for where they are,
  they were moved.

Because I mourned you
   my love,
I mourned you.
I mourned you,
  so deep.

But I was too far
  from my eyes to weep.
Cut off from my arms
  that I could not tear my
  clothes.
Closed off from my throat
  so the world would never
  hear the banshee in my wail.

For as my body mourned,
My soul sought you.
It reached out ,
  to Hades Realms
  if that was where you went.

It asked
   why would you leave us here?
   this body of mine and
   it's soul.

So I could not weep
   and I could not wail.

And so the heavens,
   they mourned for me.

Each cup of nectar
for me you filled
tasted entirely different,
but did just the same.
transported my spirit
out of the planet, on
ethereal wings of light.
Every time I drank it
I swooned and forgot,
everything other than
the love you poured on.

Inebriated by a love
I never had a chance
to define, I can't think
you and I as two
entities different,
oh! my lover immortal.
No other lover
would have done
what you to me is doing
Your absence as a  person
never did bother me
you are the one reigning
within, wordlessly speaking
I can see how your eyes gleam
the moment, I just think of you.