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When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,
Thy youth’s proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a tattered **** of small worth held.
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy ***** days,
To say within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty’s use,
If thou couldst answer, “This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,”
Proving his beauty by succession thine.
    This were to be new made when thou art old,
    And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.
Jazz Sep 2017
Forgive my anger,
For death of a loving loyal thing,
Forgive my anger,
For inability to watch flightless birds fall,
Forgive my anger,
For frustration in a thriftless township,
Forgive my anger,
For failure to walk the unsteady paths,
Forgive my anger,
For fear of non-recognition of deadly things,
Forgive my anger,
For childish carelessness I heed fury for,
Forgive my anger,
For the failure of my babied plant to fruit,
So forgive my anger,
For justified failures.
winter Nov 2022
the end of the universe visits me each night and whispers the consequence of sleep
the dark, like a blanket, drapes itself over
the ashes of all we grieve
this bed where i lay, once soft and serene now threatens a place to be burried
consciousness drifts as i draw my last breathe, and what's left is this thriftless worry
i'd like to wake up, and i'd like to live on
but the end of time each day comes
i wish i could've saved all those who are gone
but the pain eventually numbs
Briscoe Aug 2019
As I lie in bed,
Light falls like a stranger’s memory
On the walls of palest grey,
And tonight, of love, money and dignity,  
I have nothing to say.
I have known every name and noun.
Vow and verb, vowel and word
And finally find nothing to say.
I suppose that’s what must be done,
If the floor lies in blatant disarray.
I suppose that’s what must be done.
There’s a pattern of bricks and torches
That are on a screen and are nothing more
But the firing of neurons and the burning of my eyes.
I would walk out into the night
Were it true that I could find my shoes.
For I cannot dare have bare feet bear the ground
And be mauled by such an unnatural place for them.
Laptop lit up
Like electric candlelights
With candid candescence,
Why would I dare into the fray of night,
Or daylight’s thriftless touch
Which would age and burn me
Like a vampire on a pile of wooden stakes
That kindled, burnt, dwindled and burnt out.
Ladies and Queens of the night,
Gathering in a circular court
And being veiled behind that smoke
And the strokes of grey paint
That were here before anyone.
She crescendos and sharpens into a crescent blade
That glints and glistens by sunshine in the night.
Like his scythe, which cut through the light
And drew nothing but the dew and due payments.
I wonder if he would bother come by
And thereby transport me but not my body.
For why would he come try
And change my position
When no other conviction
Has succeeded.
Without and within the voices they sing
Don't dare.
Care without the face that does.
Share without the side that shows.
Despair and depreciate without the face
Of sorrows and woes.
It's all rolling along and I’ve done nothing wrong.
Made no mistake.
Made no call to heartache.
This is all.
This is the hall of the humbled king,
Who still bears his solitude
But reduced like Vesuvius
Has no longer his magnitude,
Only that he was destroyed flameless.
Without and within the voices they sing.
For he was born and has borne
Nothing of importance since, but innocence.
It is, I suppose. It must, I suppose, be done.
It is, I suppose, of no great importance.

— The End —