this swifter's grift -
lifting loosely
fitted accoutrement

lourden fruit
carelessly held
silkened, gimlet lit
shamelessly rivened
to a paler shade
of need.

solitude's
enchanting seed
may confer
a grander banquet’s call
but, this tug of
grandiloquent oblige
and politesse . . .

master and slave consort
black and scarlet
swift of tongue and fingertip
unbound so neatly
and leather blind



tell me muse of the anger flesh on fire
is there really dignity in defeat
that eludes the victor

tell me muse of the truth in nature
ill-graced tail-lamp broken
is destiny all ways ordained in contradiction

tell me muse do hearts all times submit
to the beacon call
shyness long forgotten
narrative so harshly written

as ne'er before
with an insistence
ageless yearnings bellow  
as but glazened shadow


if reason sleeps
there will be no learning
no refuge
only to each
for their crimes
a four-chambered riddle



All Rights Reserved
James R. Morse, NYC  2013.

I am adrift in shadow when parted from you

existing in a non-life and a non-death
caught between dominions of light and dark

my soul, disincarnate, hangs suspended
impaled upon the sundering hook of an obscene
numinous dismembering of the essence that is Us

twisting and battered in an enervating wind which
moans and wails like the wretched, suffering ******
filling a haunted and dissonant land with anguish
at the midpoint between rivened you and I

all aspects of me are halved, dissipated
I must survive with half a feebly beating heart
inhale for but one struggling lung, choked with ash
seeing only half the sky, half the world

My scattered thoughts incomplete and disordered
I drag myself, mauled and maimed, towards
the next transcendent moment of palpability in Us

Khronos, laughing, mocks all my efforts
drags the hours just beyond my numb fingers

I can only touch you if I reach inside of me