Ode to ignorance. -Mag 115

You cannot capture my freedom
Though you daily try
With voracious appetite.
You, who are a
Vampire of freedom,
Who feasts on the unchained hearts of others,
Cannot capture my freedom.
Though you chain my feet
With musty bonds,
Or place me in a
Confining, glass jar
So you can observe me
Sleeping or awake,
You cannot capture my freedom.
For, I have books,
Which break all chains,
And the iridescent light
As my constant companion.

This piece was written for Tess over at http://magpietales.blogspot.com/

The type of friend you are.

Dedicated to my friend Ross Ponder.


You are the type of friend
who is a master at sharpening iron.
Even in the midst
of the clamor of battle,
as the dark ones hover close
with teeth gleaming for my soul;
you are the one who leaps out
from the trenches,
builds a forge from his own soul,
and does battle with his sword
while sharpening my own.
When it's all said and done,
and my enemies and chains
lay broken at my feet,
you are the type of friend
who bows down in humility
to wash the blood from my feet.
Your humility and bravery astound me.
The world needs more friends like you
          For there is so much dull iron,
          And so many bloody feet.

In Artefex Carmina

Here is a poem I wrote about 3 weeks ago. I tweaked it a bit for this weeks meeting the bar.

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.

Rest assured, green follows gray.

Gray rain clouds;
Bookends to my soul.
Gray to gray,
Fog to fog,
The intimate moment
When I and my surroundings
Become one and the same.
Where is the crisp life-ness of Autumn?
Or the clarity of Spring?
My seasonal heart lies dormant,
Waiting to be awakened
Once again.

Mag 114

I always wanted a watery grave

But always lived to far inland 

To have one.

I wish to die

Poetically, tragically,

Like a heartbroken pirate

Sinking to the depths.

I always wanted a watery grave

So here in this forest full of life

I crafted myself one

And laid myself down.

And whispered goodbye

Even before I really had

The chance to live;

Which is really the life of

Us all.

Find more like this athttp://magpietales.blogspot.com/

Duty's ghost.

He lifts a phantom hand up to his brow
Carrying weight from a score of long years.
Through blood of comrades dead, he crawled up sand
As Nazi guns menaced above his head.
All of twenty-one and off to a war
A captive of duty to freedom's hope.
He waded through the snow and ice of death
And liberated Auschwitz with disgust
For those who use the freedom of their power
To fuel such hate and force their brother's Hour.
He lost his life to a tyrants machine,
But it was freely given for a hope
That generations after him would cling
To the ghost of duty, and remember
The implications of freedom's high price.

This is my take on the prompt over at d-verse 
This is also my first take at Iambic Pentameter blank verse.

"The Fiddler"

This is my attempt at D-verse's "form for all" for this week. This is also my submission for Prompt Thursday's over at http://misfitian.blogspot.com/ Check both out for some great poetry!!!

The Fiddler
Boot-clad and black as night
Mute thoughts come alive
As the fiddler of death, and master of fear

Has captive control of this winter-world's ears.

With screech of his bow

His true colors show

Playing Chopin and Rachmoninoff

Saying, "Come home my love" in a soft

Yet menacing tone.

Set as the axis of everything, "home".

Mag 113- A simple gift.

I bring these flowers

As a simple gift.

I
-Who am but a reflection of you-

Bring these flowers as a simple gift.

We painted the town red

In the middle of 

The dark night of life.

We brought color to the darkness

And music to the moon.

You fly like an angel

Wrapped around a star

While I gaze on 

As a reflection of you

Bringing these flowers as a simple gift.

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

Green and un-heart-like.

Without your arms

I remain a broken heart piece.

My heart piece 

Does not even resemble

A piece of a heart.

It is green and lumpy

From lonely melting.

My hand reaches for you,

But the floating balloon of longing

Sinks lower each second without

Your eyes.

Return and bring red life!

Join my heart with

Whispering love

And revive my bloodstream

With blue-green eyes

Magpie 112

Rose-leaves and hope.

Dreamland cloudy,
I call to you from inside
My cracked and broken shell
Of reality.
Take me away
To a place where
My smeared crying eyes,
And my tousled, ruffled hair,
Can breathe a breeze
Full of rose-leaves
And hope.




Thanks to Tess over at http://magpietales.blogspot.com/ for this wonderful prompt.

A poem for Easter.

Dripping life drops

The unrecognized hero

Cries His bitter tears

Alone.

Stabbed to the heart

By the sharpest spark

Of betrayal,

He sweats

Great drops of blood.

They splash to the garden floor

As a foreshadowing glimpse of reality.

The traitor steps in

And leaves a kiss

Upon His cheek

And sulkingly leaves

To dispose of himself

In the most unheroic of ways.

Whilst the unrecognized hero

Gives Himself

With quiet resolution

 To the task ahead.

After the garden

Comes the hill.

Golgotha,

Calvary,

A murder of Divine proportions

The greatest massacre of history.

Forsaken and broken,

For the hope set before Him

He endured.

After the hill,

Comes the tomb.

The resting place of immensity

Contained in a cave.

But today,

The rays of life

Shone again

As the Son itself was loosed from darkness,

Bringing victory to His people,

And a refuge from life's harshness.

After the tomb,

Comes life. 

When mistakes become buzzards..

Demons of my past
Circle the skies of my present,
Seeking to rob me of now-ness
Like bald, black, buzzards.
They pervade my dreams,
Peering their murky black eyes
Into my soul.
My mistakes see me,
As I am,
As I was,
And as I will be;
I have become breathing carrion.
They haunt me,
Always present, but only seen briefly,
A feather here,
One bare gray foot there;
Absent presence is the most sinister kind.
I lift my heart to find,
That there is rest from my mistakes,
Release from my brokennness.
I am not carrion,
But a living soul.
I am not dead pieces,
But a vibrant whole.
I embrace my gifted heartbeat,
And echo it's reality
Writing the soundtrack
For the feathery flight of my mistakes
To bow out gracefully;
No more feathers,
No more bare grey feet.

This prompt was found at "Poetics" at http://dversepoets.com Much thanks to brian for this one!

Rest assured, green follows gray.

Gray rain clouds;
Bookends to my soul.
Gray to gray,
Fog to fog,
The intimate moment
When I and my surroundings
Become one and the same.
Where is the crisp life-ness of Autumn?
Or the clarity of Spring?
My seasonal heart lies dormant,
Waiting to be awakened
Once again.