Leave off the slave's soft cruelty

Leave off the slave's soft cruelty

The worms that eat your mind

Beware of friendly sympathy

To feelings not your kind

Ours a wretched lot, to bear

the joys of Spring, + bury them

Some would deign to take our

rotting corpses + marry them

Truth is splashing in the stream

Follow footsteps into dreams

Winding paths, terrible wrath

Nothing's what it seems

Fire burns to carbon dust

Sturdy stones in which we trust

Precious metals, clothed in rust

fail to shine, yet beckon us

       on into the Nightmare,

       Midnight's vanity

       Dawn discovers right where
       we left our sanity

Ode to the Winter Solstice

            What is this effluence that rises deep within

            the midnight hour when bleak reality reveals

            her hidden hand, conspiring vibrant fruit, and Man

            can sense a stirring far beyond the barren path

            of opulent, bejeweled, fattened, clinging hands

            that wait to wring the neck of the gay firebird

            and quell the longing heart in desperation vain,

            but wither like fair Persephone’s narcissus?

            O, how I have felt it these past few weeks of late:

            the inexplicable desire to see my thoughts

            inscribed, immortal like some new constellation,

            the sky to set on fire as Helios cannot.

            Throughout the pain and anguish of my days, which drive

            the wise to this inescapable conclusion:

            that Heaven can’t be stopped by some hypothesis,

            it slowly does occur: Winter’s finally here.

12/21/14

@dGabeEvau