Stampeding through the wind,
Navigating low valleys. Boom.
Thunder swallows me.
Reborn into bedrock,
The mountain side crumbles.

I died in the womb of despair, the umbilical
cord of desperation suffocated me.

I was floating motionless in afterimages
Of what took me to this place.

My thoughts were stillborn in the aftermath
Of what I had tried what I failed to do.

As I came in to the world of clear minded reflection
I breathed where there was none.

I was neither here or their but now I breath, from
Still motion I inhale life once again.

A chill wind
prepares the land for sleep
snow-weighted clouds
brush golden-stubbled wheat fields
and bare clotted earth
laid out in heirloom patchwork
stitched from lean and bountiful years.

Poplar trees
arranged in perfectly
contoured lines
resist enforced conformity
their flaming arms
reach for each other
tangle and entwine.

Here,
good souls touch down
like wind-blown seeds
from distant lands
of sunlit love
fading purple twilight
and midnight blackness

gently settling
in fertile, protected hollows
where possibilities rest
and winter-over
awaiting the time to wake
and begin anew.

We couldn't
Swim in the
Light
Until we almost
Drowned
In the
Darkness

an efflorescence flower
           is slowly becoming;
a long awaited hour
and a drawn out humming

the emerald fields
     of sharpening grass
                 a bed of roses
and thorns made of glass

an ethereal demeanour
concealed in the smoke
           slowly digesting
the aged poisoned oak

Dagger buried in the depths of my heart,
pain seeping out of every crease causing of an eruption of tears.
Consistent manipulation into giving up my hopes,
A conning of my inner treasure.
Mend the broken pieces of my emotions,
the scattering of my feelings,
shredded apart because of a stolen hope.
A borrowed courage to believe that I could be loved.
The right to know that a heart was destined to belong with mines.
The privilege to smile without reason.
Pinpointing the flaws of my love,
questioning where does it become “too much”?
Torn apart from the inside,
a decaying courage to try,
denying myself of the experience to fall,
pain accumulating with every ignored cry,
every plead pushed to the side.
A vacant space now occupies the nucleus of my emotions.
They withered away with every disappointment and tear.
So everything within me dies,
(Oh, how bitter the feeling)
in hopes of a rebirth.

Some say that when I die
My soul will fly
Into some newborn life
Human or otherwise.

So that could mean that I myself
Am full of older souls
Who once were kings or queens
Knights, paupers, heroes or villains:
Anyone that will have lived
And died already.

But since our living numbers ever expand
It could even be
That I am a new soul
Totally free of the past.

And all this that I write right here,
Could equally apply to YOU
My friend.

I find some comfort in
These radical thoughts,
Though others prefer
Nirvana.
(Freedom from the cycle of life and death).

Paul Butters