"reckoning" poems
#Airborne (Pt. III)
(The soaring heart of Jonathan Livingston Seagull)
Every ascent begins with exile.
To rise is to lose the flock,
yet find the wind waiting..
faithful, invisible,
unafraid to hold you.
The breath that fills him is older than dust,
borne through the reckoning
of one who first owned his own shadow..
Each atom refined,
each word made Light.
“To breathe is to bless,”
Jonathan whispers,
*“for every breath must leave the world
cleaner than it arrived.”*
His lungs remember Eden,
and the sky bends to his remembering.
Below, the drizzle hums its dull chorus..
the fat and the fed peck at comfort.
Jonathan breaks from the circle,
rising through their fog,
his wings burning clean in the cold.
“Fear not the thin air,”
he calls,
*“for only those who hunger for height
will learn how mercy breathes.”*
He learns the cost of air,
the ache of height..
and in that thin solitude
where only truth can breathe,
he knows at last
what it means to serve God
with the evil impulse:
*not by hiding it,
but by turning it toward Light.*
Before the Word becomes sound, it becomes breath.
And before breath becomes air, it remembers its Source.
This is the mystery of Jonathan..
the soul who learned that flight begins not in the sky,
but in the heart that has faced its own eclipse
and has chosen to turn toward the Sun
#
Oct 12, 2025
Oct 12, 2025 at 10:48 AM UTC
#An Exegesis on the Humiliation of the Word
The world is ruled by darkness.
What appears as harmless is theater,
what pretends neutral is already bent.
The macrocosm corrodes;
and in the microcosm, its reflection gleams..
even in places meant to be sanctuaries of truth.
A poetry site,
born as refuge for broken voices,
becomes another stage of control.
Here too the phrase resounds:
neutralize the threat.
But neutralization is not annihilation.
It is paralysis.
It is psy-ops.
It is the removal of anxiety..
not a side-effect, but the aim itself.
Darkness builds its stage for this alone:
that the "angel of light"
may drown his own reckoning
beneath a world of deception-built self comfort,
so he need never feel
the truth he already knows.
Comfort is his curtain,
numbness his crown..
*the removal of his own anxiety;
his game.*
This is why the world is his theater--
*Darkness does not destroy at first..
it sedates, comforts, smothers.*
Hence..
The whole world is his fully gaslit stronghold,
..for now.
Fade back into the moment--
The young poet arrives,
bringing her unspoken pain,
her hope for words to heal.
Instead, her very wounds are seized as footholds.
Hearts. Reposts. Endless affirmation.
Not to strengthen her voice,
but to redirect it.
She is seduced into belonging,
and her trauma becomes currency.
Unresolved, her ache entwined with lust--
a sacrifice prepared for false altars.
The angel of light has done his work:
offering inclusion without transformation,
belonging without responsibility,
“light” without source.
The poet is neutralized.
Her searching silenced,
her voice absorbed into fog.
Those who carry this fog
cling to cowardice.
Unable to face the judgment within,
they align themselves to the herd;
envy-filled, they only know to mock.
Yet they replicate themselves,
so their refusal of Light
is never revealed--
*Perfectly exemplifying their "Great Example"
the most envy-based mocker of all.*
The microcosm mirrors the macrocosm.
What nations suffer,
individuals now endure--
Comfort without clarity.
Belonging without truth.
Safety without healing.
Yet the living Word endures.
Every attempt to humiliate it
only makes its fire burn clearer.
Carriers of darkness can swarm,
****** and smother..
but they cannot create.
The true word cannot be erased.
Unfiltered, unedited,
spoken from a reconciled temple,
it pierces fog.
It reveals.
It heals.
And so we speak..
not for ourselves alone,
but for those who come searching,
hoping that poetry
might still be a place
where pain can meet truth,
where silence breaks,
where Light is not withheld
but revealed.
#
Oct 3, 2025
Oct 3, 2025 at 10:59 PM UTC
like blue blisters in the sun her eyes pierce me
through with a fierce reckoning as she looks on
"you can't keep me here, I'm long gone" she said.
and I smoked the rest of my lit cigarette as I watched her
walk passed the wall I had built around myself
and out the front door. she walked away
with the same sizzling stride the others did
and I'm left here with a beer, partially intact, happy with my secret pact
to never fall in love
with a blue-eyed blonde beauty
ever
again.
Jun 9, 2010
Jun 9, 2010 at 9:05 PM UTC
Nigeria, a Dying country,
Her kinsmen will gather in war to share her sweat
More troubles for the unborn and her growing heirs,
The unfolding dread non-soldiers at heart like me.
Nigeria, she spring forth from the dark soil
Her past never stop to echoe, her Iroko turned void
Blessed with milk, honey and seeds with hearts fixed to the creator,
The sword bearer of coal war-ful gladiators.
A vineyard in the days of her reckoning
A different story after her great hair home coming.
Tale of a true black race
And the down laying of her good moral ways.
Just like how a river side tree dries,
So does her firewood also cries.
Her genuine red caps are nowhere to be found
Her wind, her seed will have to make do with the feeble dust in character around.
Shaking is her government seat on the rock
Still steady is her opposition in their secret walls.
They keep killing her vision in disguise of trying to unlock
While they battle to pluck away all her roses.
The voiceless murmur and watch,
Her pocket papers fly and run
While a once great country keep dying on.
Dec 18, 2013
Dec 18, 2013 at 11:52 AM UTC
I stagger out of the Paradise Rock Club. 11:04pm.
42 degrees. Short sleeves, no jacket; I give zero *****
I have experienced something beyond words, but I'll try
In 50 minutes it will be All Hallow's Eve, a Monday
Due and not yet begun I have an essay on James Joyce and
A reckoning on the occult, inner mysteries of the CPU.
Again, I give zero *****
The last hour and a half were the best possible use of my time.
Not 5 miles away, people I sympathize with
are protesting the failure of America,
But tonight I have seen her undeniable beauty:
904, as the fire code rates, packed in to the inch
A choir united, the director:
A man who tonight skipped his Aunt Steph's funeral at her request
To be here
To direct us in each anthem.
In hopeful, truthful noise
Our hoarse and untrained voices combine
And as Mr. Key observes, against all odds, against all reason
Make the most beautiful sound.
D.B. Guy
Slightly drunk, tears in my eyes
On the Green Line
11:17pm
Nov 3, 2012
Nov 3, 2012 at 3:12 AM UTC
Cyclonic is your kind of adjective;
I suppose I was born to love storms
like you.
I could never really keep my hands to
myself. Nor my mouth. Or my words.
I love you like hurricanes love destruction
and mornings love reckoning.
Jul 11, 2015
Jul 11, 2015 at 7:05 PM UTC
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.
Time drives the flocks from field to fold
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold,
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.
The gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,—
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.
But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.
5.9k
.
Lear wanders in stormy open, bares warring elements,
The heavens blister, crackle, night is balmy shroud,
Wretched monarch babbles in sprinkles of wind cold,
Arguments lost by ones own pouring perturbations
And raining sky said 'nothing will come from nothing.'
Howl, howls into blackness treed in lightning splits,
His outcast soul, reels, fleshed, cut to smithereens,
Tang of salt burns on the bluffs and the sea rages,
So entire and ceremonious is Lear's fall meted out,
Air spoke, 'nothing from nothings ever yet was born.'
Sky proclaimed to man child King, here is a reckoning,
Each mad choice was self infliction, now wind flays
And sweet Cordelia lies in her innocent **** grave,
Sky, in thralls of thundering asks, 'what say thee now,
King of highborn follies, even purple heaths are rags,
Yet black and above you and night shades, whine,
Unworthy King, done in by compounded effects,
The might of maelstroms in low butterflies wings,
How now, bare trees, knifing reeds, skeletal flashes,
To rains of night are ever your lanyards my lord,'
Sad Lear so near oblivion fell mute, sky went on,
'Howl and cry mad King your reaper calls beyond,
The icy brisk heavens await to brusque you away,
Your slipshod kingdom was mere and fools' dream,
Howl, til howls abrupt abate, for nothing now comes.'
May 27, 2015
May 27, 2015 at 10:10 PM UTC
big rat, bigger cat
who eats
who runs
who makes the rules
big rat, bigger cat.
the rat has sharp teeth,
sits on a throne of broken bones,
stares through eyes of shattered glass,
no future
no past.
who s first,
who s last,
the rat's heart
loosely wrapped
barbed wire
who s first
who s fast
big rat, bigger cat
but King Rat has dreams,
wants a kingdom
an alley chat
the cat asks, meow?
snakes in the garden of eden?
wolves in suits?
crows on the telephone wire?
every throne
every king
a reckoning
alley chat, alley cat,
the cat gives, a wink.
deep and wide,
the cat smiles the gate,
"trust me."
Sep 2, 2025
Sep 2, 2025 at 10:12 PM UTC
She’s the last of the fairy tales.
The mobs came with pitchforks and torches.
The ashes of the golden era stains her skin.
Her magic dwindled, wounded by the sins of man.
She seeks not revenge, nor justice.
She seeks punishment.
I have been the guardian of her heart;
A heart she feels she no longer needs.
There will be a day where it beats again.
Not this day.
On this day she waits in the dark,
Waiting for the day her memory is forgotten;
The day her tragedy becomes a myth.
On that day, reckoning will come
To remind them their cruelty is unequalled
By the spirit of a fallen star.
On that day, I will be her harbinger.
On that day, I will resurrect the memory
They wished would stay buried in the depths.
On that day, the hearts of man will cry for mercy,
Only to fall upon deaf ears...
Because I made a promise.
Cross my heart, she’ll never die.
Look your devil in her eyes.
Mar 24, 2021
Mar 24, 2021 at 11:51 AM UTC
Come and let us live my Dear,
Let us love and never fear,
What the sourest Fathers say:
Brightest Sol that dies today
Lives again as blithe tomorrow,
But if we dark sons of sorrow
Set; o then, how long a Night
Shuts the Eyes of our short light!
Then let amorous kisses dwell
On our lips, begin to tell
A Thousand, and a Hundred, score
An Hundred, and a Thousand more,
Till another Thousand smother
That, and that wipe off another.
Thus at last when we have numb’red
Many a Thousand, many a Hundred;
We’ll confound the reckoning quite,
And lose ourselves in wild delight:
While our joys so multiply,
As shall mock the envious eye.
4.2k
What ship, puzzled at sea, cons for the true reckoning?
Or, coming in, to avoid the bars, and follow the channel, a perfect pilot needs?
Here, sailor! Here, ship! take aboard the most perfect pilot,
Whom, in a little boat, putting off, and rowing, I, hailing you, offer.
4.2k
Twice amongst the meadows watching
from behind a Cyprus tree
he stares at thee with anxious waiting
glances nervous as he yearns for thee.
Twice amongst the meadows walking
plucking blossoms as they bloom
release from capsules such a fragrance
that make the glorious angels swoon.
He tasted bitter poppy petals
chewed to paste they cling and swell
to the innards of his teeth
each tiny bud they do expel.
grass and sun combine to create
an early summers reckoning
that bring about the union of
springs infant buds to bring to she.
From behind his hiding place
he comes to thee with frail mutterings
coyly he presents an antidote
to cure your failing frame.
As that maiden swoons from fever
pale as winter's deadly moon
fight she does for every swallow
that comes from each shallow breath.
Indeed her lover knows her sickness
and with ointment doth he bring
but to late he comes to aid her
for he is a timid thing.
In his arms she breaths her last
and with her dying plea
she implored as to why
he withheld his love from she.
Oct 21, 2010
Oct 21, 2010 at 10:48 AM UTC
#The Battleground Beneath Her Skin
(A Physiology of Light and War)
Before it reaches her;
even before her breath draws it in,
I break myself down..
not as surrender,
but as choice.
Each particle stripped bare,
each atom exhaled
made clean by the reckoning
of my own dark,
infused with the stubborn
weight of light
earned, not borrowed.
Within the responsibility of what
leaves me,
I enter the quiet union—
the kneeling choice
to align with the hand of God,
to let even my smallest fragments
carry His capacity to heal.
Every airborne particle,
accountable,
deliberate,
refined enough
to cross the distance,
to enter her
without deception.
Beneath her skin,
a war unfolds.
It is not loud,
not made of swords,
but of smaller things..
things unseen by eyes,
but never missed by the marrow,
the blood,
the quiet trembling of cells
that have known both wound
and wonder.
Light and dark..
not in theory,
but in matter
thread themselves through every atom,
every strand of her being.
Not metaphor,
but measurable:
*the way shadows lean into the soft chambers of her lungs,
the way light, when chosen,
can rewrite the blueprints etched into the bloodstream.*
This is the battleground..
her body,
her breath,
her most involuntary places.
Where no poetry of
seductive manipulation..
no whispered counterfeit
can cover what is real.
Only substance speaks here.
Only intent.
Only what survives the fire of accountability
earns the right to stay.
The particles come;
stripped down,
atomized,
refined.. not by accident,
but by the slow, steady grind
of volition.
They enter her;
through breath,
through pores..
*through the quiet, relentless openness
that even fear cannot close completely.*
And inside--
the war begins.
.. .. .. ..
Mitochondria spark—
tiny engines deciding
what stays,
what burns away.
Capillaries widen,
rivers branching through her like
tributaries
willing to carry
what is real,
what is earned,
what is Light.
The counterfeit falters here.
Pretty words mean nothing
to oxygen.
False portraits
dissolve beneath the chemistry of truth.
The cells remember;
they choose.
And as the Light infuses
the quietest corners of her..
her thighs, her hips,
the soft stretch of her waist;
there is no seduction,
no trickery.
Only the hard-won intimacy
of substance made pure.
Not by the blending of oils,
not by the friction of skin,
but by the deeper,
unseen alchemy
of what enters,
what lingers,
what refuses to bow
to darkness.
The battleground is hers now.
And though the shadows will not
yield easily,
they cannot claim her;
not where light
has been chosen,
earned,
metabolized.
The war is not over,
but benea.th her skin,
within her blood,
*Light has begun
to rise.*
#
Jun 28, 2025
Jun 28, 2025 at 11:54 AM UTC
The clouds move over the sun
as the stage is set, lights dim
Movements of dancers getting set
nervously watching as the clouds darken
Lightning flashes in the distance
as the dancers beat there chest
the rolling thunder reckoning its approval
as the lead pumps her fists
The first drop falls with pounding grace
as the dancers jump up with thunderous sound
The soaking drops rain its applause
as their collective feet touch the ground
The wind licks at the cloth draped around them
as they spin and flip as a choreographed group
And the wind yells in violent glee
as their movements express their vigilant youth
The dancers finish with their perfect end
as the elements smile on the energetic routine
And as the lights raise and the clouds move away
The dancers turn and bow to the future of We.
Apr 16, 2012
Apr 16, 2012 at 4:08 AM UTC
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy Love.
But Time drives flocks from field to fold;
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward Winter reckoning yields:
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies,
Soon break, soon wither—soon forgotten,
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
Thy belt of straw and ivy-buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,—
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy Love.
But could youth last, and love still breed,
Had joys no date, nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy Love.
3.8k
Her Name is Woman
~for Woman~
The body replenishes, even the signs of decay
that come for reparation,
Positive confirmation
her organism survives, alive,
tree circles yet measuring time,
Till a devitalizing time comes, when,
this cellular process concedes degeneration
Then the wondering shifts; new facts sifted;
now the reckoning is not a calculation of
Mortality but of her living immortality;
dive to divine neath her black cloaking, reading
Wounded word revelations, her own Bible stories,
giving nomination to Woman-name
The long shadows that her souls excavations cast,
costs of her stories individual,
Highwaymen robbed her with glass knives
but each remaining black hole lights a story, lost, but
Burning icy inviting, pulling us into book boxes inside,
compost of sheets of composed white clarity
Care not that each riddling reference is obliged to be
oblique, inexplicit,
Woman her name, all encompassing,
her views codified in lines of faith,
Woman, is that not
a mining, and a manifest,
of hidden birthing,
comforting us in warm shades of
Human courage
12/26/18 5:51pm
Dec 26, 2018
Dec 26, 2018 at 5:57 PM UTC
You ever wish that you were a wild animal?
Sounds a bit indecent, but reckoning the sense of freedom, order, and understandings
;then, you'll look at it through a bird's eye
Doesn't it seem like animals have no issues at finding their purposes?
They seem to know exactly what is it, in which what they are living for
Oppose to us humans, they seem to be less frightened by death
Do you think animals have religious beliefs?
Some divine stranger they must let control their life.
Or are they responsible enough themselves?
And/or only have faith in what it mean to live
...Just live
The things in which they used to do is still their tendencies today.
Give me one lion that don't hunt anymore?
One pack or tribe that is ran by female?
One chimpanzee who think swinging from trees is out of style?
One shark who think blood is disgusting?
I never met a gopher who wasn't hip enough, who didn't "dig"; digging wholes
Every cat I know rub their skull, ribs, backbone, tailbone and tail; in one motion against other creatures for what I figure as comfort.
Shepherd, Yorkshire, or hound; however, they all get on the mailman's nerves
Humans... We just seem lost
Not knowing where we belong
Steady trying to figure out right for wrong
Attitudes always going up or down
Need to much to crack a smile
The slightest ordeal can make us frown
A successful human is visioned as having access to the whole world
Do you ever see a honey bee left behind in a swarm?
Or a polar bear climbing a tree when it's warm?
Their world has no critics
No trends
No high expectations
Just eat, sleep, and ****
Is that it?
Or there's more to it?
Two separate lives
But I'm influenced
Dec 26, 2012
Dec 26, 2012 at 3:55 AM UTC
I cannot mitigate his momentum in my mind
He charges through me like I charge through time
He is the rhino in my brain
A powerful unstoppable train
When I am weak
Survival is bleak
And there's a horned stampede
I'm unable to impede
Until I'm trampled
Into a stamped hole
By a giant rhinoceros
Who's power is preposterous
His herd is deafening
But he's my reckoning
When his rhino's roar
Echoes through my plains
He's my dino sore
In this uneasy terrain
His hooves thunder through my Serengeti
Sand flies in the air like confetti
Obstructing my view of his breed
I'm being ripped apart at the seams
By the vultures who sensed my loneliness
And made my body their ****** nest
I lay there broken and praying
For the mercy of a rhino straying
Oct 7, 2017
Oct 7, 2017 at 3:09 AM UTC
Living on borrowed time
Decision at drop of a hat
Down an empty vandalized street, I walk
through the horror of silence
and silence of serenity
perdurable pathway of life
The ghastly sights
and the rustling gates
scattered people with unknown tastes
emptiness in their eyes, anger in their words
void is profound
down the perdurable pathway of life
Bifurcated roads upfront
my perception, one to hell and one to heaven
the other end of roads, a mystery
I stood there comprehending, while
my mind harks back to before I came
down the perdurable pathway of life
Endurance of a toiler
Stoicism, a rare trait, out of gratitude to employer
pain and suffering he undergoes for common good
loyalty to his master, inspire of hardships
sincerity and humbleness of the bloke
will inspire me, down the perdurable pathway of life
Deprived of education
desolated on streets laboring
disparate from parental love, subject to father's fury
fractious relations but still ignores himself, for family and domicile
The kid's love and determination, will inspire me
down the perdurable pathway of life
Spurn love took her down
Her heart wrenched and pushed her beyond limits
killed herself, leaving her parents to sore reality
not a wise choice, but courageous
I ponder upon courage, rather than cowardly suicide
Death is not an option down the perdurable pathway of life
Happy faces around taunt me to do simplest
Reality speaks otherwise
Reckoning on past, the pathway is wrought
conscious and hard choices right ahead
The bifurcated roads to heaven and hell?
I've seen it all, down the perdurable pathway of life
Aug 2, 2012
Aug 2, 2012 at 4:52 AM UTC
I woke up too early.
It was still dark out.
I tried to read some
Hunter S. Thompson, but
it made me thirsty,
not a drop in the
place.
I wish I were in
Puerto Rico.
A few nights ago my
girlfriend and
I got into it.
She bit me and
scratched my face.
We were drunk on
wine from Argentina.
The coffee I’m
drinking doesn’t taste
right.
I wish I were in
Puerto Rico.
In the wee hours of
the morning
I decided
to shave my head.
It took four razors, but
I finally got the
job done.
I looked in the
mirror,
and a stranger peered
back at me;
a head like Gandhi
and a face like Marciano.
I wish I were in
Puerto Rico.
Yesterday
my girlfriend and I went
on a shoplifting spree.
I stole coffee,
a couple of books,
a hat, denture glue, and
a **** ring.
She’s a much better thief than
me.
She took
razors, two tapestries, laundry soap and
trash bags, makeup, shampoo
and coffee that doesn’t taste funny.
As the sun gently
kisses the horizon
and begins to bathe
Iowa City in golden light,
I wish I were in
Puerto Rico.
Tomorrow morning
I have to be in
court.
A month ago I stole
some wine and got caught.
My day of reckoning has
almost arrived.
I should just get a
fine that I will
never pay, but
with these things,
one never knows.
The judge could be
hung over or constipated
or worse yet, he could have
read my poetry.
I really wish I were in
Puerto Rico.
Mar 2, 2023
Mar 2, 2023 at 7:14 AM UTC
Tempest of feelings rage
Of black and white
Of up and down
Of yin and yang
Of this and that
Polar upon reckoning
Of words with and without frolic
I love you
I love you not
Of yes and no
I am akin to Nick Carraway
Of being within and without
Having feelings like these
Ravage me
I am complete
and I am not
Somehow
Vague as a disguise
Of a shadow in the morning sun
Of people and other people
You and Me
**We
are
We**
Oct 23, 2015
Oct 23, 2015 at 11:49 AM UTC
Feb. 2015
this writ,
content so obvious,
it begs,
why even bother...
Pen Man Ship
this is who you are,
this is your scent, scripted,
the parfume that memory triggers
declarative self-examination passing grades
if pen and paper
are your skin and blood,
then you, man,
ship to shore,
skinned alive,
in poems verbose spill all
ship in ship out,
the glories and the dreads,
expel ink oceans glorious India blue,
rivulets of tributaries,
spillages of what~where,
you are pen
you are man
you are ship
where intersect these routed things,
one is voyage~bound
for parts unknown
the pen be the oar,
and the man, the ship,
and when the sails raised,
the wind never fails,
only there is no
dead reckoning -
for there are no
landmarks observable
when sit~stand
to commence sail~writing
each writ a latitude recorded,
each poem a longitude drawn,
all together, a
body of work,
all together,
your life's coursework
is the captain's log
Pen is the Man is the Ship
in everyday words
he answers
the questions life poses,
in everyday words,
he realizes
the answers he (doesn't) posses,
with each passing poem
the ship, righted,
though the heading
remans unknown
Feb 9, 2015
Feb 9, 2015 at 3:39 AM UTC