Thoughtless Recursion

The seasoned, foot-worn trav'ler often knows
The forest's branching paths: its tangled web;
He knows to where each path—each journey—goes,
For they with erstwhile steps he once did tread. 
In springs gone by with his own feet he learned
Which paths were bright with hope and which brought pain,
And where they branched and twisted—where they turned—
All this to know which paths to walk again. 
Yet even on the present winter's eve,
His thoughts do wander from his journey's end,
And he from light thence takes his thoughtless leave:
On pain-filled paths he once again doth wend. 
He knows inside which paths will bring him joy,
Yet why can't he his feet on these employ?

The Blind Artist

At times I am an artist,
Painting with broad strokes
And quick dabs and jabs,
Carving the world to my vision,
And slicing the image of my will
Across the canvas. 

I paint blindly, at times—
often, really—
blinded by how I would see the world
Were it colored as I wished,
Without regard for what lies
Already painted before me. 

In the fever of my frenzy
To establish forth my dreams
Sometimes I paint against the grain,
Against the contour of the canvas,
Against the current of the river and the wind,
Against the flow of what should be. 

When my vision finally clears,
Then at last I see
My brush, my words, my hands—
All I use to forge forth my reality—
Were merely just a sword,
Thrown 'bout haphazardly.

I open 'gain my eyes
And see the world I marred for what it is,
And tears of fiery regret
Well up form deep within.

I see the world torn and burning,
Sliced asunder by the dream
Of a self-blinded man:
Seeing, but wouldn't see,
revising with his brush-turned-sword—
revising selfishly—
And as my eyes are truly opened,
I see that that man's me. 

The Jealous Hypocrite

Consider thus the Jealous Hypocrite
Who wishes to monopolize my time,
Yet when she finds it so convenient,
Discardeth me as trash or dirt or slime.
She calls me forth on many routine night,
To watch with her—to heed her every call—
And though the show and time is slightly trite,
To answer her I always drop it all. 
And though it's she who's always asking me,
She says that she does sacrifice for sure
And though I oft do make a meal for her,
They fall as naught to all from her I see. 
And when she's gone I sit alone and cry;
Yet when I'm gone, I'm heartless and should die. 

Psalm of a Tortured Soul

Each moment is but an intangible gadfly:
It’s born, it lives, it dies,
As the next rises from the ashes of its carapace,
Blazes with the heat of life,
And then falls.
One after another
In quick succession,
The assembly line of time rolls on. 

By some involuntary instinct,
We pick up the ashy shell of each moment,
Dust it off,
And place it neatly next to the last
On a shelf in our mind.
Sometimes this is a crematorium, or morgue,
That smells like lost opportunities
And times gone by;
At times it is a museum,
Where we pin each moment by the wings
In proud display;
At the same time, it is an asylum or a prison,
To which we, as judge and jury,
Sentence these,
The lifeless husks of moments, to life
In prison,
In part, as punishment,
And, in part, so we can watch them
From behind barred windows
And locked doors.
But in no way is it a dusty warehouse,
A labyrinth of long-forgotten ways and shelves
Housing long-forgotten items.

For we are compelled,
By some force within ourselves,
To review and revisit and relive
These moments that have come and gone.
When we lie awake at night,
And try to close our eyes,
They haunt us like the burning ghosts of fireworks
Branded on our eyelids.

And, as these moments flash repeatedly before our eyes,
Blinding us,
We reach out, and with the pain of grasping embers,
We mold them
From nagging, buzzing, regretful gadflies
Into dragonflies, regal and majestic,
And into butterflies with wings of fire,
On which are painted proud eyes
Unmarred by shadows of regret within their depths.
But, even as the shadows of these imagined moments glow,
The husks of husks begin to crumble,
Falling through our grasping hands,
And leaving behind nothing
But the unchanging shell of that hated gadfly.
 
And again we reach out with insatiable anguish
To mold and shape reality with possibility,
Even though there is a nagging knowledge
That it is too late,
And with the effort of pushing up a hill
A boulder dragging with the weight
Of unwanted memories,
And delicately balancing it at the top,
We, for just a fraction of a second,
Repaint ourselves perfection,
Only to have it come crashing down,
Reminding us of the futility of the exercise
Just as we begin to push again.
 
Yet, despite the hopelessness
Of our inability to change
The past,
We can draw hope
From our torturous revisions,
For they can become reality,
As, in each instance, a new moment
Is born, and lives, and dies,
Followed by another,
And another.

Chapter 1: Before it was Drained Away—Part 3

Yet, just when they had nearly given up hope, they came to expect a son, and nothing could have made them happier.  The whole kingdom, in fact, was overjoyed, for the people desired a prince from their beloved king and queen almost as much as the two did themselves.  Celebrations were planned and festivities were arranged in anticipation of that much-awaited day. 

When that day came, however, all did not go as anticipated: Queen Florryn died in childbirth, and their new son, Arttur, did not survive either. 

The people were crushed.  Their beloved queen was dead.  They had no prince.  But the king, he was beyond devastated. 

The king's closest friends tried to comfort him, and, in doing so, they showed him that they cared for him, but, at the same time, they failed to make things better.  Any thought of the queen brought him great anguish, and any attempts to console him brought only thoughts of the queen. 

But, he would not forget her—he would not forget her.  As time passed, many of his closest friends and advisors counselled him to seek love once again and to remarry.  This however was a hollow and obligatory sort of advisement, for his friends knew it would not be heeded, and wondered if it even would help at all if were, for King Decoltur always vowed he would never love another as he had loved Queen Florryn. 

As the years passed, and the king's friends and advisors began to age and die, the aging king himself realized that his own end was nigh, and yet the kingdom had not an heir, nor any ready means of providing one.  King Decoltur knew that, were he to die without an heir, the kingdom would descend into chaos.  The people wouldn't know who to look to for leadership or guidance, and those enemy forces the king had worked so hard to keep at bay would seize the opportunity to overrun the kingdom. 

The king, already saddened by loss and wearied by living, in an overwhelming spirit of duty decided therefore that he would not die—that he could not die. So he didn't. 

The king continued on because he knew his kingdom needed him.  He had spent his life working to protect and defend and build up his kingdom and his people.  Queen Florryn had done the same.  He could not afford, no matter how much he wished to lie down to a peaceful final rest, to allow the fruits of that work to crumble.  So he didn't. 

One by one all those he knew fell and died.  Before long, he was completely alone and friendless.  It was not long thereafter that the faces and the voices of those he had once known faded from his memory, and, when he could no longer remember the soothing songs of his queen, the nightmares began to return.

Living and waking the king was pained and wracked with the torture of an aging body, a broken mind, a lonely soul and a lovesick heart.  From his pain he dreamed and wished to die himself, and such dreams of the respite of death only accentuated his pain.  Yet he could not die, for his kingdom—all he had ever worked for, and all he owed his people—could not be allowed to fall.

As decades passed the king eventually forgot who he was, or who he had once been.  His weariness and nightmares had blinded and corrupted his soul: he began to grow bitter—to resent the kingdom and the duties that kept him tethered to this world when he would rather leave it behind. 

The passion of the love he had once felt for his people having been replaced with vengeful bitterness, King Decoltur ultimately proceeded to tear down all he had built up.  Of course, he was hardly the man who had built them up in the first place anymore.  He prohibited music.  He banned dancing.  It was forbidden to speak the name of the queen.  The peasants were worked fourteen hours a day, seven days a week to provide for the kingdom, and to pay for their inconvenient protection and their unwilling king.  Taxes were high and burdens were heavy.  The king's guard was many and harsh.  The peasants began to wonder if this king was truly the same their grandparents had spoken of with such awe and respect so long ago.

In fact, many began to wonder if it would have been better to have been taken over and conquered by ruthless invaders than to be crushed under the weight of a bitter king who refused to die. 

The king, however, continued to rule, and continued to hate his kingdom for needing the protection of his cold, iron first and his cold, iron will. 

So, no, the kingdom of Penmar is not a happy place at all these days.

And that violin now only plays either an occasional haunting, lilting melody of loneliness or the harsh screech of anger mixed with despair. 

Once this was a happy place, but certainly no longer. 

Elusive Butterflies

It seems that we for catching butterflies
Do lie as still and quiet as we can and wait--
To wait for those small gentle creatures
To land upon our lengthened hand.

In fact, it seems the more their wings
Do catch the fancy of our eye--
The brighter their color as they fly--
The more we think we still must be. 

So, when upon the one come we
that be most beautiful of all,
We find that we, instinctively,
Do lie as still as possible:

We freeze; don't breathe;
And slightly then avert the eye;
And with outstretchéd arm
Await in hope the butterfly.

Yet if in stillness we do stand,
But be not thus a flower more,
What chance the more do then we have
At last to so achieve our goal?

Conversely though, how could we
Ever expect the grace
Of our lovely butterfly
Were we to sudden give it chase?

Mask of Volition

Walk around like it's Halloween
With a mask 'tween you and me:
You could never tell
How I ever felt—
It's not that you would never look,
It's just I'd never let you see
The person who was really me.