Blow, white winds,
With echoes of the past.
While in your ice
Red-hot iron is cast.

Now the smith comes
Dressed in night’s shade,
Taking up the hammer
From the table on which it laid.

Strike after strike
The fire melts the ground,
Leaving a smell of familiarity
And a well-known sound.

Truth is this!
Like a branding iron
Cast into the
Cold winter ground.

Do not complain,
Stop being vain.
You gave me love as a start,
I gave you my heart.
You gave me a *****,
I gave you a baby.
You gave me a car,
I became your kids' chauffeur.
You bought me  gems and beautiful clothes,
I became your hostess,
To entertain your business associates.
You earned and brought in money, instead
I became your maid,
I shopped,
I cooked,
I laundered,
I ironed,
I cleaned,
I tutored.
I made our house into a home,
But at the end of the day, home you come,
Strut and storm,
"All day what were you doing?"
Just because dinner is a bit late,
Or the food  is not up to your taste.
I too,had a tough day,
So cut your crap and stop your bray.

Bodies sink into the depths,
Disappearing beneath the waves with no light,
The abyss welcomes them, offers them a new home: Despair.
Driven by frustration and the wish to return home, hatred is born.
Strong enough to break through the hellish, screaming cauldron.
This is my story too, the me standing right before you, is the one who sank into the bottom of her heart, disappearing in a hole of sadness.
I won't allow you to cross these waters, not without defeating me,
Sink, again and again, the cycle never ends, war never changes.
Even if your enemy might be your very self from the past long gone,
Give it everything you got and be ruined by the fate that chains you,
With every cycle returning, frustration, hopeless rage, envy and hatred are gaining strengh, losing more and more of themselves here,
Parts of yourself vanish between the iron bottom sound, where so many have fallen before, just to protect those who they held so dear.
But what is a war worth that has no meaning but greed at all ?
The things I held dear started vanishing long ago, rusted, dissolved,
All I am is a shell of my former being.
I am but just an abyssal.

~ Umi

- M i d w a y - H i m e -

I came up in Pittsburgh,
the Rust Belt of hard labor
with a deep love of community.
As children, we collected railroad spikes
from the tracks and we cut our shins
on random iron shards in **** hills.
Some of us were union middle-class
and others breathed the gray air of poverty.
That hardly mattered. As we stood atop
foothills that overlooked the city skyline,
soot embedded under our fingernails,
we lived as kings and queens
that oversaw the future.

-Ron Gavalik

The struggles are weights
which strengthen our reach into the finer realms in life
We lift and lift
To maintain a stronger grip on our true missions and
to strengthen our legs to dance the dance
to prosperous gifts.
Which we earn for the mutual benefit of us and all we hold dear around us.
Travels to distant lands to spread our light
of truth and passions to help those lost find their way
A well-spent way and ticket
aboard life's selfless causes on the Karma's Bus
We explore many different paths
as we strengthen our muscles of heart and soul
to swim the currents
and not drift down to the bottom of the rivers of life
called sadness and evil
in life, we constantly are outrunning the temptations'
race to engulf our souls to permanent blackness.
we train as we go
we learn as we swim life's rough waters
to seas so beautifully warm and relaxingly calm
Our destination at the end of our physical life
We depart to the life after such
we have won the race if at this point we see true and golden lights
and gifts are given to yourself and others
We have won through our inner strength's glow
and have earned additions to not just friend lists and family members
But, we connect with all we brighten across.
Our true proven partners
and parts completed within our empty selves
Pieces defined as "new sisters and true brothers"
We battled the worst.
Look how far we have come to a better future?
Focus not on the cold that freezes us
in these moments we question to darkness..
However, we must focus on the small warm glows of hope
that we sometimes overlook
within the strength that desperation and hopeless energies bring
as weights upon our backs
we become stronger, still
as we use moments as such as tools to strengthen
ties with our comrades and truer self-heart
We are the children of the Miracle called "Iron Will."

Highly explosive,
Thus, a term to explain the thoughts rushing to the iron maiden's head as she fires away a salvo of pure affection, passion and warmth,
The heat is unbearable, the impact, such as the afterglow, surpass the rising sun, with a noble, golden light spread across the painful wound
Melting away in the sweet embrace of her devotion, this is surely fate.
Through the veins of this girl, lust for the one she adores is building up, racing within her blood, all she wants is for her feelings to be returned, but alike the sun when it shines with such beauty, it cannot happen, the closer one gets to her the more he will be burnt .
But surely, serenety relies within lonesome thoughts, moments and the time, in which her wish has been ceased to be ever fulfilled.
Yet, as a single dandelion, which is raised with attention and care can turn a whole, lethal dessert into an allure, lively and gentle garden;
She too can find someone, who will withstand her passion, burn up in it and shine with her without vanishing, carried away by time.
After all, the light of love is for all to be litten.

~ Umi

I'll sit here blinking
The hours away
Moment to days
Right here I'll stay
(Breathing)
Entire epics
Written and played
Upon the stage
That is your face
(Nearby)
Sweat falls from its place
A tiny cascade
From the visage of grace.

Forever, a moment, an hour, a day.

And here I sit trying
To commemorate
The nuance of time
In the smallest of space.
Like an airplane fitted with
Too many wings
The grandest of things
Will not give way
To flight, or to mind
To the heart or the skies
It carries a load
Much too heavy
Inside

And somehow impossibly
Silly as hell--
Forever the curse to the solemn befell