The Things That Still Rule

The bitter rush of old ocean-

Impossible, yet a ghost of gods

tossed in elaborate song!

Stale and sweet,

The mighty roar of waves rolls in,

A velvet, too smooth with lost wonder

grows brittle claws like arrows-

still at war with the silent voice-

Innocent, yet another soul lost.

The magic still lies, of course,

Deep in the fortress yet untapped-

The darkest stronghold, a dulled enigma,

a palace of the greatest machine.

Forever in tongues few will know,

are enchantments, untouchable on tightropes,

for their false gods who stand,

ready in songs of siege.

(The real demons, the real lords

call those threads a city of light).

Soul Like Water

My mother sings a fragile song,
A mystery, for anyone else
Who hears but the words.

Broken, they tangle, dive a thousand leagues
To where they truly breathe-
A silvery, ghostly binding,
Beyond to the misty, mistaken core.

Here, they gather, gather
Unsifted, cold, unwanted,
Blue web like the ocean above
Until the waters break to strands.

Starboy

One day, he'll take me
Through the simpler veils of open night
To gaze upon his starry sky.

There, his world sits still-
He tucked his firmest mark there,
Hid his gentlest smile.

No stepping stones, introductions
Prompt well in that place,
No words could stay.
We will just be.
Up there, he'll be;
Only he will take me.

Great Spirit

Stride the world with humble tread
That shadows all your woe,
The moon does shine in deepest night
That arms a broken bow.

Your troubles are those far ahead,
So far, they fall behind.
Follow those that plead your path
Like bitter melon rind.

Touch, then, touch our lives,
Your pride upon the sash.
That window of the darkest soul,
That shard among the ash.

A Window Into a Soul

A soul not far from my own,
The sun shining in a different place,
In a different time zone.
A different caution we all create and live,
Of course, for no two tick alike,
No two have the same cogs...

Those things that push us forward
And wind us back,
Grinding forth when we must meet
Ourselves, and two ways to run
The same route, the same process;
Writing, if for the world it is.

Flat dimensions do run forward and back,
After all,
Sifting down to find the "up",
Falling down to rise elsewhere,
Such this life, an infinite stream
Of words, words that live apart.

PS: This was an activity from the Writer's Guild meeting that I had today. It was to interview someone else and learn about them, then write an autobiography for them. This took about four minutes, give or take. I meant for this to be a bit of a portrait.