Category: Art

An Insidious Grip

I want to hurt
Because I have been hurt
I want to punish
Because I have been wronged
I want to bomb my enemies
Because they have stolen my peace

And the grip of violence
Grows ever tighter
Until the meager remains of love
Trickle from my cold, hateful body

Will you still remember me
From this time allotted me
Once death steals the life from me
So all that’s left is what we see

Will it be a photograph
In your mind, an epitaph
Or the sound of my lost laugh

On a journey
To a strange land
With strange customs
Where nothing seemed familiar

I re-encountered Buddha
Long obscured for me
Made strange by the confines
Of my culture familiar

As the days go by
Time chips away
At memories
Falling away
As flakes of rust
From old iron

As the years proceed
The man I was
Drifts further
And further
Into the shadows
Until, in the mirror
There is only
The man who is

I dream
Of guardians
In goldenrod armour

In countenance: fierce
But whose hearts
Have the gentleness
Of brushed cotton

Rust reminds me
That decay, too
Is beautiful

Outside the library
Where my writer’s group meets
A rusted steel orb calls to me
As I exit every meeting

Come play with me!
Come play!

So I put my words away
My oh-so-many words
Take out my camera
And play with a sphere of letters

I often wonder
At nature’s hand
Both in awe
And as a query

Artist and creator
Of worlds fantastic
And unimagined
By lesser gifts, as mine

Nowhere to land
Nowhere to rest
Details blurred
No clear subject

Frustration
As true in art
As in life

Nothing lightens the burden
Like a hearty guffaw
Like deep laughter
Rising up from the depths
Clearing me of the darkness
Lifting up the weight