A sea of unspoilt snow
I blazed a trail alone
So long
But this night in the bitter cold
The silence of a fresh fallen snow
I glanced behind
And saw to trails instead of one
We walked and ran and grew weary
Together
And together we blazed a trail for home

K.
You are my love. My sin, my soul. The only light of my life. Fire of my *****. Source of happiness, laughter, cries, tears, and oddity. You are that bad, believe me, but never better than you are now. Your name will forever be on the tip of my tongue. But sadly I could never utter it properly. Because probably I would feel shy. I would perhaps feel ashamed, if I dared to do so, or if I accidentally happened to say it out loud. I have never confessed this to anyone else. But I need you. I know it inside and out. I crave for you so much. So much indeed. And I know that deep inside, you need me too, although you are simply too proud to admit it. To you my laughter will always remain a ring of annoyance. It will never be enough. You will always long for more - from her. I will never be enough, because I will never grow up. I will never be an adult. And she is grown up. She is more of an adult than me. She is indeed an angel to your eyes. Her steadiness startles you; and delights your senses. You thoroughly enjoy it when it is so. She is but an image of perfection; her sound of laughter is of tranquility and calmness; she is indeed a pious image, a resemblance of faultlessness. Something that I could never truly achieve. Terrific but true - she is, I mean. Not I am. I will always be a kid. Sad but true. I will always be me. I will always be your outspoken, attentive young tutee to you. No more than that. I will always stay just the way I am. I will never acquire my womanhood, nor that am I inclined to, in your eyes. I will always be a girl. A student. Or whatever it is without surely any womanly attribute. I don't deserve to break my singleness. I can never cure it. To you I will always be myself; with all the misfortune and inability to be a true woman. But I understand that I will never be a woman; I don't deserve to be a woman in your heart. I will never be blessed with such courage, as I am not worthy of that. I am not allowed to enter your realm; a whole lot that is entirely different from mine. I have always been fated to be alone, and will always be left behind, even when you are ten or eleven years older than now. I will always be twenty-three. I can't age, strangely, despite my being a human. I am stagnant and odious, I am static and immovable. I am but a symbol of a fruitless tree to you; who dreams and hopes too high without having the ability to attain its true realisation. K, I am full of flaws, I smell of defects. I am adorned with fateful imperfection. And she has none of this. She is unimaginably perfect; she is all lovely and her beauty invincible. I can never be like her. Never indeed. But I am willing to change; if that is what you desire. I'll let you think that I'm obsessed with you. I will just smirk at your silliness. Over and over again. Hmm. Sounds like you've got no other option. Sounds like you are an idiot trying to comprehend my meaningless words too seriously. But I am just what I am. These are just my thoughts. Let me be obsessed with my thoughts of you. Let me make you appear in my dreams throughout the night. Day and night. All the time. Dreams that are unwanted but inevitable. As long as I breathe; as long as I could still trod the earth, let me think and dream of you that way. Stupid thoughts of obscure infatuation, I know. Guilty pleasure. The killing of my independence, my fragility, and uselessness, yet altogether the expression of my deepest feelings that I have often tried to bury in my chest, a thousand times.

Like I said, I'm willing to change; for you. If that is what you need; your utmost desire to be fulfilled. It is as simple as that; because what pleases your senses delights me, and therefore what delights me is what pleases your senses. I indulge myself only in my everyday thoughts of you, where I could jolly embrace and trace your epic proportions in my arms. I want to touch you, to cherish you fully. I want to be inside of you, just like you're already inside of me. I want to see you by my side, breathe in your air and feel your steady but unrelenting heartbeat in your *****. Your manly *****. The one I have always yearned for. I want to feel your skin against mine. I want you wholly. I want you so greedily. I want you so selfishly. I want you to be just mine. Just mine. I don't want you to fall into anyone else, because I perfectly know they are unworthy of that. Of you. One that should be my sole treasure. My precious treasure. Only mine. Because you are everything. You are the exact embodiment of who I am. You are the gold to my silver. You are the silver to my bronze. You make all of them complete; you rid them of their mutual envy. Just like you do to my soul. You repaint my soul, you release it from its gruesome weariness. You make me feel complete, unspoilt, and undivided. You make me feel as a whole. Unperturbed and unabashed by the torment of love. You purify and keep me warm and secure. You are the one I was predestined to love. The one for whom my love was created. The one I was fated to be born for. The one my very soul was meant to be with. The one that I should cling to, and should clutch tight as mine, forever.

K, you are the only love of my life. I will always want you, although this very simple need might sound absurd to you, and on its own way even seem to be impossible. You are the answer to my prayer, from up above, and since I was but a young, sinless infant in my mother's arms. In you only do I lose my presence, my heart, senses, and the whole streams of my decent consciousness. I long for you, and even in the midst of all anger, hatred, and the world's greatest disdain, I will but always long for you. I miss you, K. You are the only source of light to my heart. My darkened heart. My terrified soul. My raging despair. And unfortunately you seem to be the only one who could heal it.

I sit here on this lonely windswept ridge
Overlooking a wild place
Of peathag and bog and wild heather
Of outcrops of gritstone rock
Standing like rotting teeth
In ravished gums
Bleak and dreary in the rain
But still a place to be loved
Hardy sheep graze the barren slopes
Watched over by equal hardy men and dogs
Out in all weathers
I'm lucky
Because I know the tracks and trails
Crossing this wild land
I know the streams of fresh water
And the sanctuary for my nights rest
In my small lightweight tent
This is wild Yorkshire
As yet an unspoilt place

Man is  born unto the  rainbow of opportunity.
The dazzling palate before him as he draws his  first infant breath.
Perfect and untainted, this tiny being as he  enters this vast world.
His only purpose being his very existence.
The sheer wonder of this colourful land in which he finds himself.
A world of moments, of sounds.
Of touch and scents.
Of visual exploration through those eyes that have yet seen no horror.
Skin that has yet to feel physical pain.
Soft and unspoilt as he nurses close to his mother.
Skin not yet a fortress behind which he will hide many ills.
A skin that will learn to shrivel in shame.
Harden in the face of fear, like armour.
And wilt  in the absence of love.
Bloom  turning from rosy red to sepia.
For though man is born unto the rainbow.
The horror of humanity is diligent on his heel.
It’s hulking cape of  blackness, angst and despair.
As man destroys all he has been given in nature.
Turning his hand then against his fellow species.
Born into a roiling sea of corruption, control  and greed.
Where the myriad of healing greens,
Of mysterious purples and creative oranges,  lost forever.
Their brilliance fading like an aged tapestry in sunlight.
Turning to browns and greys.
Leaching their beauty through a lifetime.
Until there becomes only  blackness.
Until his is the dark heart of despair.
Bleached and brittle like driftwood on a desolate beach.
Washed up and empty.
The human condition and its agonies too much to bear.

Looking out of the window;
a ribbon of duck-egg-blue sky,
fringed by the sun's late light,
is sandwiched by grey cumulus.

It frames Sycamore tree tops,
red tiled pyramids with their expectant aerials
pointing West, littering clean lines.

It is a mute view;
serried bins wait for the mornings collection,
cars sit dumb, curbed,
their daily commute completed.

Two starlings flit, silent,
and in the far distance a high contrail is picked out
in gold as a thread in blue silk.

For five years this view remains changeably the same;
unspoilt by the entropy of new perspectives.
This is the summer of un-broadcast malcontents,
pacified in Brazilian spectacle. Days simmer here and there.

Soap operas filter through,
made to massage the message
of consume and discard, of holidays and pistons.

And in the mornings, that never come,
we abandon the cars that cannot diverge
from work-honed routes,
taking to the air from Sycamores as Starlings.

June 2014

I write as I’m told,
Of the sights that unfold,
Of torture and torment and bliss.

I write for I can,
With the spirits at hand,
Filling in parts that I miss.

For the laughter and cries,
I lend you my eyes,
To see what it’s like to be me.

Close your mind,
Clear your heart,
From this world break apart,
Eventually you’ll start to see.

Hear the line in your head,
As if it’s just been said,
Write it down as another unfolds,
For it comes as a voice,
Unspoilt by choice,
Though supreme by the questions it holds.

Conifer-covered hillside
in the hinterlands
of this sleepy town
on a warm day
in this mid-June

The unspoilt soil
neither grieves
nor revels
and there's no revelation in that-
just what you see.

It's just what you see.

The quivering quakeys
can't hack it even when they cackle-
an attempt to unravel the shackles of
their incomplete alchemy-
cause it's never enough

one laugh is never enough.

The high's always flanked
by a sunrise so rank
as to wrinkle the brows
of the loudest and proudest-
the laughers and criers, or livers and die-rs

Just give me the bliss of the birds
and a big lidless urn to retire my fire
when the work week expires
when I finally can see even truth holds some lies
and when the sun sets too low to appraise the horizon,
I'll fly.

I'll just fly.

Fields of green is surely a lovely scene
unspoilt of man's vision!
Which seems build on everything
plus adding pollution!
In between swaying trees plastic bags
lot's of cans and rotting rags!

Any idyllic view fly tipping is common
saving money the priority!
With a touch of pylons and mobile masts
and those wind turbines to.
Land spattered with concrete and steel
in despair helpless you kneel!

Completely drained at what's being done
over two centuries plundered.
That's detrimental to earth's natural order
continuing to **** the resources!
Certainly will take it's toll on civilisation
like the Mayans obliteration!

Has this happened before and now replaying?

The Foureyed Poet.

Bring me the men, said Bettina,
bring me the men of passion,
bring those of high class, those
whose purses are overflowing,

those whose mothers spoilt
them rotten. Send me the men
of lower classes, bring me those
whose voices scratch the ears

of the well bred, send me their
hearts in jars, carry to me their
coins gripped in hands. I am a
lover of men, I soak them into

my being, I smell them in my
dreams, their hands are my soft
saviours, their tongues are my
snakes of satisfaction. Let loose

the sons of shallow mothers,
unloosen the tame of heart and
loose of tongue, let me embrace
their bodies, hold their penises

with tenderness, kiss their lips
like one possessed. Men are the
bane of all women, said my mother,
her eyes were undone by my father’s

ways, his heart was of ice and his
body of iron, he cursed me with
his dying breath, his torments I
boxed away with the dried up

flowers and cast off underwear,
he dwells where the heartless
reside, **** his soul and hide
and eyes. Bring me men of a gentle

disposition, those whose skins
are yellow, whose hearts are soft,
who shudder at the thought of a
good ****. I am the daughter of

pleasure, a niece of hot sexuality,
a sister of the free and untainted,
unspoilt by the ways of the ones
in charge. I see men in my nightly

bed, in between the sheets of plenty,
on the mattress of my desires; they
are the lamps that burn my pleasures,
my lovers, my treasures. Bring me

the men of the cloth, the God lovers,
the ones waiting for the last salvation,
let them loosen themselves on my
desirable flesh, bury their holy noses

between my plumpish ****, their tongues
upon my skin, their souls free of the
maybe promises. I am the granddaughter
of Venus, the lover of men and life,

the keeper of the long ago wishes,
I am the one they think of on their
bended knees, the one they lift to
their heaven in their daily prayers,

the fulfiller of their deep down desires.
Bring me my comforts and my gentle
end, my last good kiss, my final ****;
bring me the echo of them crying or

loudly laughing, the last farewell,
the good time lady, the last bad belle.

I wanna say ghost crumple but fear the retribution for assuming something other than

something I vaguely remember no that's a downright lie as flagrant as a flag flapping

in defiance I remember so well as if branded by that moment scalded by my focus

your post-****** scent and that smile in both your eyes and your own cascading

laughter the honest laugh done in private when truly experiencing wonder and the

baby smell in the crater where your neck joins your skull to that body your body

young and heavenly unspoilt like a river's passion cresting itself and returning to

your carefully manicured shores I wanna say paper cut but anticipate the ache the

burn that will cause me my body my brain my heart we called it spleen in previous

times something other in the future no doubt in my mind my heart my body the echo

of recollection of a different color and a different flavor than the original worn into

something other by the abrasions of both time and nostalgia a different shape all

together taken by this memory but its intensity a twin identical and more perfect in

reflection of your reflection in a sunlit moment the denim blue of curtains unable to

contain the refraction sliced delicate by the broad leaves and your bare skin still

glowing from a washing and a shaving and you are lost in your own reflection

humming songs and curling your hair bleached shocking white with blonde intention

natural roots so Nancy Spungen but more or less that much more careless and

ruthless a thing you were in that moment only I couldn't and didn't know it I wanna

say please just leave it, but I daren't and I shouldn't and at the time I couldn't couldn't

bear to think it but really just like cancer I just knew it and I didn't and you didn't and

we stood there and I wanna say we let it but we didn't and it happened and now it's

just reflection recollection and despair

Trolls are
Faceless behind a screen
Preaching words of places they've never been
And feeding the flame to those who wish to perish,
"Just get another one" to those who had a recent miscarriage
It's all rather barbaric.
To have a tongue of barbed wires
With poison filled salivas
It's all very toxic.

Trolls have destroyed lives
behind words of a keyboard
Each keystroke a string of disasters
Each sentence a blood spilt on unspoilt grounds
And when death occurs they are no where to be found.

Trolls are underground gremlins
Who believe that building a bridge out of the corpses they make
is the only way they will ride to heaven.

Judge not lest ye be judged
But I believe the contrary,
I have not known your pain
I have not known what you suffer
But I will not wait for the words to buffer
For the videos to buffer
Just to hear and read your words
About how I don't belong on this world.

Build your bridges of corpses
Ride your keyboard horses
You won't be able to destroy
What has already been destroyed.

I don’t know about those pastoral scenes
Those bucolic and primordial endless greens
Unspoilt trees and murmuring streams
I know the concrete and the pavement
Uneven cobblestones with cracks in them
With dandelions growing through
Only sometimes

I love the later more
I’m in love with the concrete behemoths
The back alleys of life
The gnarled bouncers (unreciprocally)
The curious glimpses at weathered flyers on the floor
I love the sterile street lights and the worn faces ILLUMINATED by them
The ushers and hustlers and cautious taxis
The drunk geniuses
The night-swimmers
The nudists
The opinionated
Etc

Yet life whittles down these loves for that of the
Calculable
The
Regimented
And
Controllable
Etc

The gentle roll
Of unspoilt land
Goes on and on and on,
Endless shades of green
Pouring into one another
And then into my eyes.
Wide skies and cascading light,
Luminate bark and the scent of growth,
And change,
Or both.
I crave the sea,
To lap away my aches,
But I ache for you,
Each bone pulsing your name.

But I find stillness in the clouds,
A white cloth of calm,
A lullaby.

And thus the sunset beckons now the night
As stars begin to glow and so reveal
That once the dark has quashed out all the light
The moon and stars display with wondrous zeal.

As man will walk in countryside by night
Polaris shining bright to light his way
Where pitch-black sky was not a unique  sight
He searches  for that unspoilt place today.

For mankind spread and in his wake made light
Which blurs the view of Heavenly array
While phosphorescence glares so very bright
We miss the wonders of our Milky Way.

©Joe Wilson – O for an inky-black sky…2015

Going back to the place of my early youth
was a big mistake.
Remembering the luscious meadows
air so clean singing birds.
Country lanes a small running stream
sound of an engine of steam.

The thick dark smoke billowing behind
through unspoilt land.
Our heritage there for everybody to enjoy
small villages and hamlets.
Animals of all kinds living without threat
no sounds of a passing jet!

Shocked at what  I saw and what time had done
no more the countryside.
Where such beauty had been a trading estate
the small town an urban mess.
No trees the stream now under a motorway
an unkempt park in which to play!

Traffic and fumes now filled my sad gaze
as I compared my memories.
And the happy days then safe to explore
all of our natures graces.
Standing on what was once a grass hillside
now under houses this did hide!

This seems the way of life today!

The Foureyed Poet.

Lizbeth dreams
of Benny

having him
in her bed

just for kicks
her parents

down the stairs
in the lounge

unaware
she's upstairs

with Benny
having ***

in her bed
the first time

at long last
so she dreams

inside her
13 year

old young head
Benny dreams

of Spitfires
in dogfights

or finding
in hedgerows

a blackbird's
nest and eggs

all untouched
or holding

in his palms
a Peacock
butterfly

wings unspoilt
settled there

he dreams not
of Lizbeth

or of ***
anywhere

not in church
or her bed

and knows not
what's inside

his 13
year old head.

From the top of the steep sloping green hills
they sat relaxed on horseback to marvel
in awe at the natural beauty of unspoilt land
uncorrupted by the destruction of progress
taking away the virginity of the landscape
where creatures safely interacted unharmed
by callous hands in pursuit of immoral gain
the countryside balance they did not retain!

With no tall grotesque buildings to sully the view
nor chimneys from factories that regularly
spewed more deadly toxins to choke our lungs
then the air above clear from human impregnation
from more suspected elements of depopulation
weather harsh but the seasons were well defined
there before pollution and technology encased
our lives and the nightmare future to face!

#TheFoureyedPoet.

Look out of  my window
To see normal life
Mediocre and boring
Same thing day to day
But as the light
Begins to fade
A difference occurs
So subtle
It is hardly noticeable
Darkness descends
As life disappears
Streets deserted
Streetlights then
Illuminate a
Hidden beauty
Hues of orange
Shine on stone
Of the road
Reflection of
The light
Amplify the
Barren isolation
Of the street
The emptiness
It is the beauty
Even if it is
Man-made
It seems unspoilt
By man
The sun rises
To ruin the illusion

peeled back eyelids
splay venous binding;
snake skin exoskeleton
though not brittle but
woven like rope
stretches its casket,

though tenuous, its
compound dimples
gaze as pupils not
sure where the
sun is meant
to be

I leave
a jilted shell -
afterbirth horror! -
as forgone lifebearer
so that by contract,
unspoilt to be ridden,

a progeny delights
in its own delicacy.

A fairyland of undergrowth, with a damp musky air,
St Lawrence has a faithful oath, to cultivate and share.
A thrive of all alive, in lush green leaves of old,
The trees in mists sublime, inside a micro climate wold.

A secret world of organisms, multiplying million fold,
Where delicate microcosms, dare to be so bold.
This natural habitat, from seedlings very small,
Quenched by a water vat, chalk streams a waterfall.

Waterlogged muddy bramble slips away at will,
Fertilised to nourish, it's hard to keep it still.
Thatched cottages blend, among the evergreens,
Flowers wildly transcend, into unexpected scenes.

A house made of glass or stone, brick or thatched,
An array of different homes, wholly mismatched.
An under cliff protected, from wind and heavy rain,
Where settlers have constructed dwellings on delicate terrain.

Red rocky backdrops, contrasting in the light,
Emerald carpet covered tops, against a cliff of white.
A multitude of Cretaceous hidden footprint tracks,
Of pre-historic fossils providing us with facts.

Alum bay provides the candour, steep hill cove, the English day,
Black gang chine, the entertainment, screams above a silent bay.
The noise of nature's habits, where a gentle hush is heard,
Of scurrying little rabbits, or a cheerful songful bird

Home to Dickens and to Darwin, Carl Marx to name a few,
Alfred Lord Tennyson inspired by the picturesquely view.
The Osbournes, Alan Titchmarch, are living here today,
To escape from commerciality, and keep all fame at bay.

Well-trodden shutes take a stranger to the sea,
Along a Pirate's secret route to claim his offshore ******,
Time has not dissolved these perfect pretty scenes,
Well used in the past and still there to be seen.

A quiet friendly cloak, behind a rich and wealthy hive,
This isle of natural opulence, where many past events survived,
Ancient stone church steeples, where priests left their gold,
Built for religious peoples, as a refuge from the cold.

Take a step back in time, to unspoilt and unruly soil,
Where the elderly recline, in this haven for the Royal.
The Victorian architecture, preserved in perfect light,
An outlook of conjecture, is called the Isle of Wight.

(20 minute poetry)

In shards of crimson
when hell fire and brimstone
burnt the touch of man.

I travel as I am
unspoilt by tragedy.

Look at me
does it worry you
that I got through and
left my woes behind?

It's Christmas let's be kind,
break the habit of a lifetime
and
find that decency,
we could be King for
one day.

Nail your colours to the door
not to the cross.

Heroes come
and heroes know
the time will come
and they must go

I'm already there
felt the heat on bare skin
burnt the bridges and
dove on in

to swim.

The tide will take me
remake me
in the image of a Moon.

Anyway
crimson's too high a price to pay.

Tuesday and it flickers on
one more hill to climb?
descend?
and does it all depend on how
we look on it?

There was a time when the world seemed
an easy spoil of conquests
within reach-and we were young and blinded,
sure of our steps in every wrong direction.
We were free and unspoilt, unchristened
in the many facts and figures that took us
down a long road to destiny.

Who cared about the roofless sky
the waters rage, the waterfalls incessant spill
and magnificent spray that baptised us
in wonder. Who cared about the drumbeats
at the dead of night
and nightmares that gripped the soul
in its tangled knots. We were Woodstock
and Glastonbury, full of Vietnam wars
and journeys to the Moon and Nixon and
FlowerPower. We were filled with everybody
else but ourselves. We were free
from the chains of society.

And then the cells closed in, the ranks faltered
Moguls took over the stockmarkets
and the jobs were dismantled and monopolised
the riches were ransacked and the free love potions
that came with cannabis and upside down waterfalls
bleeding chairs and rock music
beads and baubles and denim fantasies
became tagged with slave labour and oil spills
and mountains of rubble stored in giant cities
of concrete boxes. All the worlds cities were locked
in invisible borders that shot people down with laser beams
and synthetic drugs and coloured t shirts.
We were locked back into our freedom cubbyholes
that were now governed by empty heads with dark glasses
and steel rimmed belts that zapped you into line.

Four decades of smouldering in the rubble left us
limbless and mindless
technology does our work now
and our brains are frozen and hacked with strange numbers
of which we know little. We cannot love again freely.

The remnants of those decades still linger
on the borders of the soul where butterflies
once flew and songs were belted out one after the other
into giant stadiums where  people danced with bare skins
coated with mud and magic. The pink stripes never really
vanished, but our bodies still alert to joyous music
that the whole world clapped and rattled to. Gone.

Our world was taken from us
and the poor ******* that now stretch down the clogged
highways of the mind and roadways of
consumption without work will never understand
how we lived and learned and laughed
in that free open world.

Author Notes

Nostalgia. Thousands will agree to what I write of a time gone by. We  are now trapped in a sterile world where automation and technology have overtaken our will to be ourselves once again. Soon we will be gone into that other world where freedom exists again.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

the blood in my veins a speedboat
a suffocating feeling in my throat
this body is not made for the brain
unexpressed frustration and pain
should there be a reason for it all
or is it just the me seeing it all fall

simply living in a land of the fittest
however not fair to criticize the nearest
alone when i see them losing their minds
lonelier when i see i have lost my mind
i wish to be free but i feel brainwashed
being judged and misunderstood
expressing the bottled-up hatred
it's so exhausting, often feels wasted

then you start writing - let some **** go
still trying hard not to go with the flow
and always wishing, wishing to be a bird
untouchable like an eagle
invisible for the entire earth
then i'm just existing, being there
pure behaviour and unspoilt nature

I saw a flower seed
planted into the ground
and grew by starlight
to be forever dirt bound.

I saw a flower's first petals
So unspoilt, so pure
As I witness the scent
sprayed to allure.

I watched a red flower
go through photosynthesis
growing warm with sunlight
seemed rather intimate.

I saw a flower bloom
amongst a lamp post
under the light of stars
that lit up the coast.

I saw a flower in the night
its petals spread across
the seas coating the waters
with a little bit of gloss.

I saw a flower, so beautiful
so I uprooted the flower
hoping that it lived beyond
the confines of an hour.

I saw a flower, uprooted
from the soil
yet never once did wilt
or ever spoil.

I saw a flower so beautiful,
a rose that casted a shadow
in my heart, forever giving
me shelter and making me glow.

I saw a beautiful flower
a scarlet coloured rose
that could have made me
abandon poetry & prose.

...For I could not call myself
a poet, knowing that I could
never describe the perfection,
of the rose as a poet should.

...For I could not call myself
a poet, knowing that I haven't
learnt the words to describe the
rose that showed compassion.

I dream of a long awaited  freedom.
I find myself alone on a beach.
Pale sands before me stretching to the azure blue of the ocean.
I turn and I notice that there is but a single trail of footsteps in the sand behind me.
The soft golden plain before me untouched, unspoilt, virginal.
I breathe the warm sea breeze and my throat is tight and rasping.
I glance down at my body and discover I am naked.
Vulnerable and unprotected.
My form is thin and fragile and I muse I must have been here for a time.
As if emerging from the deepest slumber, bleary eyed and cloudy of mind.
With a tangible feeling  within of a severance, a long awaited shift.
I squint far in the distance and to my surprise I see a house atop a hill.
I notice that the windows of this house are crisscrossed in iron bars.
There is a long drive leading to a a set of unyielding padlocked gates installed  amidst  high stone walls that surround the property.
I remember then...This is the home of my childhood.
An incarceration felt long after I had flown.
Those same bars and walls carefully recreated and erected in my own life, by my own hand.
I take a final glance and turn away.
The single set of prints in the sand a reminder of my own path , waiting to be trod.
Realisation that the old ways can no longer serve me.
An awareness of the power within me to break free from those who seek to control,silence and limit my growth.
The walls and bars offering not protection, but oppression.
A disconnection and detachment from others and ultimately from oneself.
Waging a war against an invisible enemy until one is but a vessel full  of fear and discontent.
I shall not visit the house on the hill again.
My home shall be without walls and endless as the ocean before me.

Like an ant I walk on the forest floor
I hid under leaves from the midday mayhem
Finding my own way in a wilderness of rotting flesh
Until I come across an oasis of a green unspoilt eden
I see the dark clouds rolling toward me
Not a leaf in sight

i spied Time a long way off
bent and stooped on wooden staff
his beard too long for me to see
a figure on skyline boundary

i shouted to him at top o' my voice
but never dreamt he'd hear
it seemed i really had no choice
but travel through the years

the years they took their toll on me
the pain, the hurt, the misery,
but when i bent my head to bear
i felt no injury

at times like that i felt the joy
unspoilt timeless eternity
in that moment to enjoy
lack of personal enmity

as time stood still, beyond this world,
a taste of time to come,
then i'd forget that old man knurled
over staff o' mourning hum

but recently he seems much closer
not so nearly stooped or bent
could it be i'm getting older
approaching that wondrous event?

he winks to me and smiles assent
his beard flowing in the winds
patiently, he waits advent
o' when he'll grant me my wings.

he doffs his cap and waves to me
allowing me to see
the path i've trod, the misery
was all so necessary

Had wanted it to happen,
without me.

Remorse was turning against
the self. It was growing very large.
You could feel the enormity of a
suicidal microcosm, enveloping you in its borrowed light―
and rugged terrain.

The peace― it was absolutely absent
in the myriad stars, earthen lamps,
the ethereal beauties of unspoilt hymns.

The spirit was gone. It was all
a floating skeleton of man searching
for the real legs, natural eyes, and
a roving heart.

I wanted to pause, in the penultimate
explosions, when the tornado
dies and I would wake up.