This darkened - smoke filled room
Seems like a silly place for people to gather
In such a smelly sardine fashion.
The band on stage finishing up its last number
Of their best set of copy cat blues.
The neon bar sign flashes as if a short
While the bartender bellows out “Last Call.”

One fellow sitting at a table in front of me
Seems to find his nerve.
I suppose enough Jack Black was all that was needed
To make his first move.
A few words pass and then
He leads his new found princess
To the dance floor.
Many leaving, many preparing to leave
As these two begin to dance.

They move perfectly together
Without any sound
Except for the drummer who ends
The beat with a final clamber of sound.
The guitar man leans his weapon against the wall
While the keyboard player turns off his magic.

But the two just keep on dancing.

The bar tender begins swabbing the decks
While an old gray haired man
Sweeps the floors in front of him
Turning the chairs up as he goes.
Sweeping away the memories of this night -
The old man stops to pick up a lost yellow rose
Someone dropped carelessly on the floor.
The old man takes the rose over to the couple dancing
Taping the young man on the shoulder he asks,
“Did ya drop this?”
The fellow, still moving to the imaginary beat responds,
“No sir, but I think she did.”
Taking the rose, holding it in one hand, she doesn’t miss a beat,
Still dancing with her newfound partner.
Walking by my table the old man nods at me
While saying, “It’s time to go.”
Getting up I place my chair on the table
Still watching the couple dancing.
My ears still ringing from the sounds
Of the band as I finish off my water.
And I wonder,
I wonder if I was a drinking man,
One like the one on the dance floor
Tightly absorbed in the moment,
With his new found lady friend

Could that ever be me?

Maybe,
Maybe if I hadn’t dropped the rose….

Are not thou supremely good and wise,
Imparting these prodigious gifts - not in vain,
What wonders are reserved inside the breadcrumbs reign?
Amidst the breadcrumbs - the arguments have shown
Such truth’s only given to guide us all home.
Your visions’ mildness I shall not condemn,
Taking up my pen to force your diadem.
'Tis true, Q grants the people what most they crave,
Even more perhaps - than mortals ought to save -
For lavish grants suppose the monarchs were all tamed
With more than goodness than my wit can proclaim.
But when should good people strive their bonds to break?
If not when evil tyrants are negligent or weak?
Let Q give on till he can give no more,
‘Lest we find ourselves homeless and poor -
And to every shekel which Q can retrieve,
Shall it cost a limb, a choice - or a prerogative?
To supply new plots, shall be not my core,
Nor to plunge us deep in some expensive war,
Which, our treasures were never meant to supply,
We must, with our remaining kinship, refuse to buy.
Oh faithful friends forget our jealousies and fears
Call on each other to solve the issues, don’t rejoice in tears.
Whom amongst us, when our aid is torn,
Shall be left naked and left to public scorn?
Are we not the next successor, whom we fear and hate -
If we allow these obnoxious leaders of state
To turn all virtue into nigh and overthrow
And denounce all righteousness both good and foe?
Q’s right, they fight for sums of personal gold,
The collateral is all of us to be pawned and sold -
Like sheep to the slaughter, Where We Go One We Go All.
They corrupt their titles into law,
If not, we the people have the right to reign supreme.
We did not make them the kings, these kings are made by them -
An empire has no power unless that empire has trust -
And without trust, it can no longer be just.
Take them all down for the general good redesigned,
In their own wrong any nation cannot be defined.
In altering that, we the people can be relieved,
Better the evil ones suffer, than all nations grieve.
We all know their evilness their sins they chose,
God was their king, and God they durst depose.
Call now on your own piety, your spiritual, filial name,
It is our right, to be fearless and let us build our own futures’ flame.

True love must assert a soul binding liberty -
But what is right in you, seems like a crime within me.
Your favor leaves me nothing else to require,
You answer my every wish and long out-run all my desires.
What more can I expect while I live?
All your princessly diadems that you so sweetly give -
On that: there you pause; then sighing, you said,
This is justly destined for your worthy head.
For when from my toils I shall at long last rest,
This latest augment of this life - oh I’ve been so blest.
Your lawful issue shall to my lap once again ascend
To the collateral damage of my heart that somehow you end.
My love, though oppressed,  moves toward your light -
Dauntless  –  secure  – full of a native fight.
Of every royal virtue that you surely must possess;
Never be still dear, be the bravest, be you, be the best.
Your courage knows no foe, your truth to proclaim
It is your loyalty that I hope is your biggest fame.
Have mercy on this nave my dearest find,
For surely you must be of the forgiving kind.
Why should I then repine against Heaven's decree,
That somehow, someway - you fell in love with me.

What cannot my praise effect in your singular mind?
When flattery soothes – or when ambition is blind!
Desire of the heart, is it an earthly vicious seed?
Yet, sprung from high, is it nothing but a ****?
But to God 'tis its glory and when love aspires,
'Tis but a spark of the most heavenliest of fires.
To the ambitious youth, thou too covetous of the flame,
Too full of the vermin running throughout thy frame.
Unwarily led astray from any virtuous ways -
Made drunk with love, and somehow debauched with praise.
Half desire, and half consenting to the ness of the ill,
For in the blood the sentiment - cannot it be still?
To thee I must reply — pray thee - what pretense have I,
To take up arms for justice or for your love’s liberty, I cry?
Love governs with an unquestioning right,
Love’s the defender and love’s the delight.
Be ye good, be gracious, be just, be observant of the laws,
And in loving wonders - be ye especially espoused to love’s cause.
Whom has love ever wronged in all its peaceful reign?
Love cannot sue for justice for any judgement would be in vain.
What millions has love pardoned or has taken on as foes?
To what revenge does love get even or even mildly expose?
Mild, easy, humble, studious and good,
Always inclined toward mercy, never spilling any blood.
If this is the love that you know put it on like a suit,
For in you -  you have God's most beloved attribute.

A view of blue leading a glaring eye
Toward a deathless heaven’s sigh.
Softly sinking the trembling sun,
As haply as I look upon you as I run.
In these thoughts I find myself desiring
God’s art within this simple man’s inspiration.
I look to the East, I look to the West
Looking for the primmer, Heaven’s Rosetta Stone, lest
It all be to difficult to keep it in heaven's focus.
I clean the lens and offer its richness
To a legendary creature somewhere adrift.
She gazes through my eyepiece bereft
Of the inner truth that she sees.
Focused ahead of you, you see the Helix Nebula
Otherwise known as the Eye of God, the Alpha,
The Omega, the Beginning and the End.
It’s then you see your body transcend.
You look from the eyepiece and then into my eyes
And I feel us tantricly knowing that we are soul mates.
“What do you see?” I ask as you turn back into the scope.
You answer, “I see the thread of hope
That holds the entire garland together.
I see that we are small and the world is big.
I see that we came from the one end and forever
We will return to the other."
Looking away from the scope she continues;
"In between in this life there is a contradiction
A duality – And if we are to ever experience
This oneness, the one mirrored in this eyepiece,
Then we as a pair need to break
Through the apparent reality and take
Hold of the hidden reality."
Looking back through the eyepiece
She continues, "That which I see
Is at the source of our dual niche.
Accessing, manifesting..
Mastering this duality returning us always
To source.."  

Praise not the barren, praise the rich consummate flower,
Fair only to those without sight, so full of internal power.
None nobler with an unlimiting petaled command,
Given by the earth’s love to all the native land.
Given a successive name, tall, short, light or dark,
Drawn from those once hidden away in the human Ark.
It is now, as when on the holiest of land
No less joyful as it spreads around my willful gland.
Covering the breach, and lengthening the strand
Rising like the Prince of Consummation’s imagined height,
Coming tumbling downward with diminished fight.
To unbetray the plot free of public scorn,
For this is our only blessing until his blest return.
To all those heaps which one petal does nigh bind,
Blown off, and scattered like tumble weeds that unwind.
What strength can you or your designs propose
With naked friends who round you upturn their toes?
If the flower is doubtful of how it should you use,
A foreign object would more satisfy its queenly news.
The proud stamen would assemble a friendship ring,
Foment the battle, and support the coming King.
Nor would this royal party ever unite
When in the flower’s arms, it strains to set it right.
Or if understood, the gripping interest soon shall break,
And by odious aid, make the reed return to the weak.
All sorts of vessels, by their successful arts,
Abhorring the panting, encountering their altered hearts.
From love’s incandescent rule, and a heart beats nature’s cry,
Thought, passion, common-wealth and health all belie
As the flower is the champion of all the public good.
As into her arms falls another chief of royal blood,
What may not the suitor hope, and to what applause
Might such a King regain by the flower’s cause.

How long wilt thou - this generation of deceit and joy – detain,
Starve, and defraud the people of our holiest reign?
Content ingloriously wasted to pass by as our falling days,
Like the flooding rains, as virtuous fools chase each other’s praise:
Till all thy fleshly allegories, now dimmed once shined so bright
As the multitudes grow stale - tarnished with each day’s new light.
Please believe me, ye youth by whose royal fruit thy must be
Gathered before ripened - else ye rot upon the tree.
Heaven itself must be sufficiently allotted, soon of late,
Like some unlucky youthful revolution born purely out of fate.
This false fate whose notions if we watch with skill,
For does not human good depend on human will?
Fortune rolls upward like lava, smoothly it does ascend,
From its first release, it takes not the bend.
But, if un-seized, it glides away like the wind
And leaves us - a late repenting fool far behind.
Now to meet with you, the you reading of this glorious prize,
As I spread these wisdom words before you as above you he flies.
Had thus Old Noah, from whose ***** we all offspring,
Not dared, when fortune called him to be the lead offering,
At the bottom of the ocean in exile he might still remain
And Heaven's sacred anointing oil would have been in vain.
Let Noah’s successional ages to your heart engage
And not shun the examples of this prophesized declining age.
For behold soon there comes three days of darkness to the skies,
As the shadows lengthen into the airs and then we slowly vaporize.