Kerplunk the game has *****
Held in place by spikes
One draws,
Hoping the oppositions ball
Falls from the frame before your own,

Falling from favour with one
You love
One that you adore is much like that too,
With every conversation seemingly
Drawing another peg

My ball is barely in play any more,
I'm hanging by a thread,
Whichever move I make,
Whatever phrase I say,
No matter what the care or intent may be,

Will surely be

Ker

PLUNK

Inevitable our end and we
Know not when our individual
Light will fail,

But just as a candle flame is
Threatened by every breeze
So too that thread

My life hangs upon is
Subject to parting by any one
Of a hundred stresses

And sadnesses,
Yet I feel intuitively mine
End is coming fast,

The devil offers more for
My soul each passing day
And yet

I say him nay,
But I know what haunts
My body and my mind,

If not by name or label yet
I know that it is here
And so quite soon

I feel my flame
Will soon
Be out

The brief smoke of my
Snuffing carried out of
Knowing by a breeze

That I will know nothing of
As I will be
Elsewhere

Once armoured and indeed
Once a fearsome tank
Of a man,
I strode across the battlefields
Of my life
Swatting trouble from the skies
Like flies from a sweaty face

No more bothered by trouble Than by a bluebottle
A man of certitude and confidence,
Capable of rising to meet and beat whatever
Life threw at me,

However it seems that love
Has become mine undoing,
My Achillies heel has been mine heart
And mine heart is breaking in pieces,
No more able to pump the blood
I need to live this life
About my walking corpse,

And so I'm shucking my armour,
The plate falling with a muffled thud
Upon the grass as each leather strap is loosed,
So strange to feel lighter as my
Weakness grows greater
And mine ending draws
Ever and certainly closer

I am an onion,
Layer upon layer there
Is of me,
And none of these
So readily revealed
To casual scrutiny,

Oh  no you must work
And work hard to
Learn each layer,
Reveal every closely guarded
Aspect of my being
Or my soul

But dig hard enough,
Dig deep enough
And with a sharp enough blade,
And with dedication
You may just see
That which I may choose you to

The butler falls for the princess
As much as the Lord ever falls for the maid,
And even from his inferior role
Might feel
Albeit briefly and in error
Like a master of the palace,
When his princess fawns upon him
And lies beneath,
All alabaster perfection and
Perfume and passion,

Yet when all is done and said,
Whether in or on,
Even under the bed,
He's still the butler,
She's still better made,
She will never be his
No matter his dreams
Aspirations or hopes,
Or what with her legs spread
She said,

Because she is a princess,
She has no thought of
Love for a lower form such as he,
He scratches an itch to be sure
Which left un relieved might
Be sore,
But her parts and her heart are
Both bound towards someone more,
Much finer,
Far richer
Much better,
Than he.

This fool is not dressed
In colourful rags
With bells at his toes
And the horns of a ridiculous hat

This fool does not cavort
For the applause of a court,
No tumbling or bumbling
For applause,

This fool stands aghast
Seeing in its awful scale
The enormity of his folly,
The depth of his error,

This fool is in jeans
And a shirt and yet
Not a stitch of his
Dignity left,

This fool is just
A fool who loved
Much too well
And who's stilled heart now

Is broken in hell

A hand that is open clings to nothing and no one
And none can tear its grip away as it holds but air,
A hand that is open is unthreatening,
An open hand is peace,
An open hand invites welcome and presence,
An open hand over the heart is a greeting,
Even if that heart
Is breaking