Dancing with you.

Your green eyes shock my senses
And draw me helplessly near.
Your dancing locks
Run through my fingertips
Like falling black water.
The smell of your raven-hair
Course my veins with life.
As we dance here,
Our hearts become one
And our deepest of souls
Kiss with enthusiasm.
With my hand in yours
And your breath on my neck,
I know what it means to be alive.

See more like this at http://misfitian.blogspot.com/2012/03/misfitian-3.html

In Artefex Carmina

There was once a girl who lived in a white-cedar house. She lived in a particular time, perhaps it was this one; in which life had lost all originality. Her name was a common name, perhaps jenny, or julie, or amy, or susan; but she preferred only to be known as, “In artefex carmina”; the artist of songs. You see, that was precisely who she was. At the young age of just 18 she left everything she had ever known, carrying only her small, silver, music-playing square. She had determined to live her life with a soundtrack. Setting the shuffle, and tying her strands of indigo-black hair into a ponytail, she embarked. She took the only road she knew; the oak lined dirt that led away from her white-cedar house, into the great, deep unknown. She did it step by step, and heartbeat by heartbeat, and song by song. She made it into the great unknown, but once there, her battery died, and she had nothing with which to revive it. So she spiralled. Artists without inspiration always spiral. She spiralled into shooting things into her veins, and smoking things into her lungs, and inviting those who did not love her into her heart and soul; and in the end, her heart and veins and lungs were left broken. She wished she could trade her blanket underneath the overpass for her white-cedar house down the oak lined dirt road, away from this great, deep unknown. Sadly for her, life rarely ever gives back white-cedar houses, as they are somewhat hard to find. In her blanket under the overpass, with her broken veins, and lungs, and heart, she finally opened her ears and closed her eyes, and she heard. She heard the sound of the overpass creaking, and the sound of busy cars, and the sound of careless ravens and whispering oaks; and beyond that, with other ears she never knew she had, she heard the wonderful rhythm of life. Her veins and lungs became alive with the sunlight rays of kick-drum sound that flooded her soul. The shattered pieces of the heart she had left began to beat for the first time in a long time, and once again, she embarked. This time it wasn’t a journey away from anything, but a journey content with where it was. She walked and walked, and as she walked, she sang. As she sang, her haunting indigo-black voice reflected the voice of the land and life around her, and people began to stop and listen. She walked past plains, and mountains, and hills, until she reached a yellow salt ocean. As a gift for her haunting voice, a fisherman with a salt and pepper beard, and broad, wrinkled shoulders offered her his broken down ship. She felt at home with this broken ship, for she too knew what brokenness felt like. As she ran her fingers across its worn and splintered sides, she recognized that it looked just like her soul. The girl with the haunting voice spent 6 long months repairing that ship. At the end of it all, she had worn and cracked hands, and her haunting voice evolved and subtly sounded of sea-salt and grit. As she boarded the old fishing ship to say goodbye to her temporary home on the shore of this yellow salty sea, she sang a haunting, gritty, beautiful song that sounded so much like life, that the fishermen forgot their grudges and smoked pipes together. She set sail to the wind, and beckoned it near with a siren call, and the wind wrapped around her and under her, and through her to set her sails away. No one from the yellow salt shore, or the creaking underpass, or the town with the white-cedar house ever saw her again, but the ones who heard her sing say that they still hear her salty, gritty, haunting indigo-black song through the whispering oaks, and cawing ravens, and creaking overpasses, and busy cars to this very day.

Parched and thirsty,
I hoarsely cry for
You.
The sound of Your voice
Has gone from my ears,
And your beauty is gone from my eyes.
Come near, oh Savior!
Come near, oh LORD!
I hear simply the message of life
And cling dearly,
"Fear not, He is risen."

Inter Vivit

The future waits
   and draws my attention
      like a narcissistic fool.

A hope for honor,
   a thirst for means,
      and a dream for fullness drive my thoughts.

It shall come,
   I will attain,
      and have my life in my own hands.

Until then, I will settle
   for future dreams,
      and a place between lives.

On being a man.

It is found in Roosevelt's valor
And bounding gusto.
It is found in Frederick Douglass's
Coffee-colored courage.
It is found in trenches around the world
And throughout history
Where men took their stand
For their children and wives.
It is found between the scars
On my grandfathers side
Where Viet-Cong bullets
Tried to take his life
Because he stood for freedom
Because he stood for right.
All I have to my name
Are worn chuck-taylors, wrinkled t-shirts
And a heart to be half the man
That they were.
I've taken my oath,
And signed the dotted line
To defend my country,
My bookend,
And your rights.
I'm waiting my turn to stand with pride
Wearing the garment of honor,
The symbol of courage,
The graveclothes of many honorable men,
The uniform of freedom's defense.
I'm waiting the turn to make my last name proud
As my grandfather before me.
I'm waiting the turn to stand with honor high
Wearing the title of Private First Class
My badge of valor,
My accomplished prize.

A visit from a shadow.

I was alone.
The swirling of the night
Beat upon me
Like a hurricane of silence.
In a moment of
Gravel rythym and humid goosbump response,
I was startled by the apparition
Of a blurry, distorted
Baptismal caravan of ankle-chained slaves
Singing the words to some spiritual
Born from the labor pains of oppression.
As one ghostly, glistening figure
Stopped to look me in the eye
I realized, our past never dies
But lives forever on this land,
In between the trees and fields
And baptismal rivers

see more like this at http://magpietales.blogspot.com/

On behalf of a grateful nation.

The magnolia winds sing a mournful whisper-hymn
As the black-clad harbinger of death and life
Speaks the strains of a sorrowful, bitter song
With cadence and familiarity,
Like greeting an old friend.
The teary-eyed widow
Looks on with silence on her lips, but none in her soul
As the flag draped coffin that held
Her life and joy
Stood at attention commanding her gaze;
A veritable vacuum of life-marrow.
As they take the starry, striped banner
Off the wooden tomb,
With gloved hands, and clicking heels
She sees his face as lively as ever.
They fold it sharply, and slide it into her hands
And she feels his lifeblood pumping through its stripes.
The firing squad awaits orders, and with a word
They hail his sacrifice with a hail of lead.
She jumps with each discharge,
Feeling more and more separated from him.
Looking on this scene from three stones over,
I remember when they brought me here.
The same teary silence surrounded the start of my rest.
The same barking guns released me from my prison of cold.
This is the cost.
Remember those who paid it.