Torrents of vapor ridden wind, snatched at her hair.

Below, rattled the rapid, riotous and vast, rippling sea.

Churning, like a chewing, charming serpent's lair.

Once long ago I knew her; with time she left me be.


On the edge she was, with will to leap t'wards the horizons.

The brittle cliff would not give way, for even it was curious.

Dare say all of nature reacted for the most prurient reasons.

Even the sky descended to watch, with a lightning so furious.


She beheld no fear and the sky wept with thunderous applause.

Her bare marble-like features glistened in the gleaning of the gloom.

Why she stood there, triumphantly, tempting, terror, for what cause?

It will never be known, for she never was, in a time before this doom.


The earth shook like the hands of a beleaguered, berated old man.

It erected monoliths. Volcanoes, pluming molten magma skyward.

The red glow brought heat; earth thought to please her, or so was its plan.

The elements wrestled for the better view of that beauty stalwart.


Never had a sight been so majestically violent, so mightily tame.

Where she stood, should and would forever more be a sacred place.

The tempest of the elements raged on, though none would win the game.

A silence, softly, settled the rambunctiousness, and halted their race.


The skies parted with a sad and lowly somberness.

Every elated, embittered, element safely put to rest.

As the sun swept aside all their postulated, pettiness.

Rays of the sun showered her with bright white zest.


The lady, she moved with unfathomable grace.

She tilted her perfect head up to the skies.

With the slightest of a smile shook her face.

Like all before, she left them there surprised... and forever, there she stood.

your command is not my wish, Ilion

”give us your entrails of the hidden innocent truths of oft too quiet souls, a soul bearing the realities of who mankind is at its root”   Ilion Gray

it slaps me as a usual unusual,
an unexpected realization thanks to your in-sight,
that all our wordplay is just gardening for life’s lost collections;
out of order, badly memorized memory markers;

one must snout-root around in the backyard for the
entrails and the bones of generations of pets that are
hollowed out hallows,
kept in a sanctified corner crypt rarely visited

a lost treasure of honorable burials with pomp and circumstance,
many Star War figures play-interred by a boy who’s now a grownup, with two children but doesn’t come to visit cause he has man-size responsibilities and his California backyard is so very far
from the ‘park’ of his youth

strange that we hide the innocent truths
that are neither shameless and seamless,
but yet, nonetheless
warrant safekeeping in nearby dirt treasury chests,
lest,  just in case, to see the future,
we need retrieve
brilliant bright flashbacks kept below deck,
just nearby, just in case,
the ball bearings of the soul requiring viscous lubricating

souls grow quieter with age, even as the
grunting of bent-over digging up what is down down,
grows daily more noisy,
as deeper depths require the work of
pluming  and plumbing,
as time adds inches of soil, just as a tree adds an annual ring

you smile outwardly at what you inwardly auto-wince,
as you think twice about
what truths you may uncover, for better or for worse,
too many,
best left soiled encumbered,
for great is the risk of soiling oneself
when uncovering the
recovery of the best buried

but what was your wish dear Ilion,
transmigrates, and is now a command center  of
self awareness, realities, are scars,
some worn proudly and others with unbearable shame,
uncomfortably uncovered in roots of nightmares
watering in the
subterranean subconscious

the dreams we do not wish for,
come and command nonetheless from the way way back of the
chambers of the backyard brain, a reminder that
quiet souls should avoid the trails possibly leading to
grand entrances of entrails,
sadly admitting full well,
one cannot hide from risible, mocking, loathsome,
guilty truths to the surface rising

when I give you of myself,
exposing old roots hastens their endings,
exposed, they cannot be replanted,
not in earth, not in concrete, not in brain cells,
is that old friend,
what you truly wish?