After the Storm

This is the last installment in the "Iron Malestrom" Series. Sorry for the delay

The storm has passed, the island’s still once more,
But it has changed, it’s different than before:
Had not the storm warmed up the icy isle
And turned its stillness on its head, to sweet
Swift motion? Had it not stopped the repeat
Of the dull cycle of small, still sand piles?
Had not the storm done all of this and more?
And had it not, if only for awhile,
Brought brief distraction to the tiny isle,
And made it different than it was before?
Had not the storm provided for the plants
The nourishment that they would need to grow?
And did it not begin new ones to sow
That would the island strengthen and enchant?

A Peculiar Revelation

T’was only after
Propelling ‘round that bend
Salty squinting, past the sun,
Ignoring pain like a thousand
Hammers colliding with my inner shins,
While slightly delirious, did I
Finally
Look over my shoulder, and realize
Nobody was there.

Many are well-acquainted with the back of my head,
Though cordiality is not exactly its specialty.
No, mocking movements maintain the truth.
Daring countless customers catch up
Only to be left in the dust.

Backs cannot speak,
For this I am grateful,
For I would be haunted with whispering visions
Of failure, loss,
Dead dreams,
Gently placed in the fire, burning innocent hopes evermore.

Apprehending my condition:
Excessively ahead in this race,
But blatantly behind.
Outpacing the world takes a toll on the soul.

Slowing down now, stabilizing my pace,
One notch below, numb comfort.
Steadily jogging along this rain-kissed path
So I could meet you.

Bombing

The bomb ticked with silent threat
As the fuse was lit from a distance.
You and I at opposite ends stood
With increasingly weaker resistance.

The fuse grew short, I expected that.
It was natural, it was right,
It had to occur.

Agonizing, demoralizing, tantalizing,
Us despising the tension rising
With each inch of string the spark devoured,
As the bomb pulled away and cowardly cowered.

Then it happened, the brightest of lights,
Like a firework in the sky, exploding
With jagged shards of brilliant illumination.
Except this firework was no joyous sight,
Yet I'm sad to say it gave me delight
To see the very human fright
That tore across your face and into the night.
Everything changed with that mighty crack,
As we were surrounded by a beautiful black.

Now the sky filled with sad debris-
The hopes, the dreams of you and me.

And still we stand at opposite ends
Staring coldly at the other's unchanging face,
And still we mumble words of care
With intentions good and pure,
But that bomb has rendered us numb
Of the feelings those words once did stir.

Infection

Shimmering heat waves in the chill of the night

Oxymoronic, a spaceship in flight

How can I comprehend if I wake or I sleep?

The warmth of the shallow, the lure of the deep

Mysteries are like poison, they sing siren songs

How many rights do I need to undo all my wrongs?

If the first step is even admitting they ache

Do I anesthetize, do I feel my heart break?

And the reasons seem off, it’s subconscious and true

Does it even exist, what’s the goal I pursue?

This is purgatory, my path lies ahead

Though the unfamiliarity fills me with dread

This is too little, I know I need more

Why does shallow mean shameful, this heat I abhor

Is unraveling thoughts, am I growing or worse,

Am I realizing that all this life is a curse?

What’s the point? Surface seems to be all I can travel

The threads are too loose, my world starts to unravel

I wish I could find something deep, at the core

Or will I simply wash up on oblivion’s shore?

The mundane seems illusory, just a distraction

Day in I act, day out, get a reaction

Can you blame me for seeking respite, an escape?

I just need taking over, mentality rape

The tears just wash anger, they roll down my face

And they mask all the pain, they attempt to erase

System failure, but what if I keep going on?

After all, who’s to know if I don’t say what’s wrong?

That’s the heart of it; god, how I hate how I live

(There’s a joke- if there’s god, he’s got nothing to give)

Once again, seemingly full, just a shell

Of false promises; burn them for fuel in my hell

And this heat without light makes me question; oh shit

Contemplation is easy to start, hard to quit

Just like anything else that goes under the cover

Of labels: connector, or daughter, friend, lover

And this itch I can’t scratch, it lies under the skin

But here I am stuck way outside, no way in

They tell me to remedy, want to refuse

I need a solution that won’t make me choose

Between self-respect and my ideals and needs

Because discontent doesn’t die out, it just breeds

And I’ve learned through my trials that it’s hard to ignore

What’s the cure? I’m so damn sick of being unsure

I’d set myself on fire to get rid of this ache

Would I burn, would I melt? But how much could I take?

Need some mental camaraderie, trying to find

Something sharp to pierce through this infection of mind.

Broken Within

My eyes have blurred,
Growing and shrinking like a lense out of focus,
Sending deceiving messages to my brain
So that my words are slurred and slain.

I'm scrambling within to avoid the confusion,
To escape the grave grasps of disillusion.
I can't make out the sight
My mind projects inside,
As if there is some hand with
Fingers spread wide,
Laid across the lense, chopping the picture
I am supposed to receive.

I'm crying out for help but my muscles are still.
Impulses normally common cease despite my will.
I'm in a state of pure psychological panic,
Frightfully fearing the worst,
Nursing a most lustful thirst,
That for the life of me I cannot name
With even the slightest clarity.

Help, free me from this cruelty, this
Unjust state of fright and disgust.
I'm looking out from within, longing
To run far from this carbon prison.
I can see you through these small windows,
Yet my heart, my mind, my gut knows
That if I escape, things will never
Return to what they are now,
And, oh how I want to come back
But that nature won't allow.

And what is a risk, anyway,
If you have nothing to lose?
I'm risking everything to rid these blues,
For you and I to flee these shoes,
In which we are regrettably pitted against
Each other in a battle neither of us
Are willing to lose.

You'll never see.
I'll never change.
You are the unstoppable force
And I, the immovable object.
Either we escape the path of the other
In a dangerously narrow encounter,
Or together we ignite a bomb that will
Forever darken the world we together know,
With a brilliant flame turned to a depressed, dull glow.

Will we ever revisit the time of old,
Where you and I were one in the same,
When love was the only story told?

We will not.

Bumper Sticker

The evidence is stunning,
Appearing everywhere,
On the screen you watch,
The clothes you wear,
The car you drive,
The message you bear.

Won't the sticker suffice,
Sure it looks right and nice,
But behind it are lies and vice,
You're just afraid to pay the price
For daring to think to look twice.

Your music blares loud
As you ride along,
Head pointed down
While you sing your song.
The sticker will suffice,
You can do no wrong.

Your fingers push the keys
While you steer with careless ease.
You're a patriotic tease.
And when you finally look up from your knees
Your misguided muscles will tense and sieze.

No, don't look now,
You don't have the time,
For the truck of debt, exploitation,
And putrid political slime
Is headed your way quick
With all its dirt and grime.

You're the epitome of ignorance, but you're through.
It truns out you are completely untrue,
Because when one word is red, and the other is blue
Logic says contradiction must fill the sketch you drew,
And the problem is that you never knew.

What do you do now
That your sticker is crushed,
And the word you thought true
Has been reversed and hushed,
You're on your own, and aren't
You the one who said the weak get flushed?

Step back and look around,
Embrace the truth hidden by lies,
Forget the shit they feed your eyes,
Take to the ground left unbound
Byt the restrictive remarks like those
Upon which your 'morals' are wound.

-"Stand up for America! Be American!"
-"Only the Stong Survive"

Like Uncharted Seas

Like uncharted seas,
Like the stars above,
It is mysteriously present
In the depths of your mind,
Out of the way,
Yet in plain sight,
Not allowing you to forget the magnitude
Of its incomparable importance.

It will plague your mind
Like moths to a lamp,
For the thoughts that pulse
Through your head, so damp
With the prespiration of
Intense anticpation,
Never, never cease to
Supply fear to your
Mind's immense imagination.

Like the waters below the
Vast, stretching horizon,
You know it is there,
That in fact it does exist,
Yet lies just beyond the reaches
Of your perceiving, probing mind,
Something you long to find,
But is too awesome, too unfathomable
To even begin to visualize
As a tangible object you can
Extend an arm to pluck from
Inexistence and pull into the
Boundaries of life as you know it.

Dark and wide,
It rests in your brain.
To look upon it would
Force your eyes to strain,
For the sight of the future is
As dark as the night,
Dark and wide as the
Deep, black ocean that knows no end,
As cold as the waters that twist and bend;

Such is tomorrow, in which you must learn to fend.

Tomorrow No More

Not a man in this world
Can know his fate,
Nor change his past
From the memories of hate.

Tomorrow is a mystery,
An anticipated suprise.
Yesterday is through,
No second chance, no more tries.

Yet there are those who
Attempt what they cannot,
To capture a moment of
What today brought.

And they do not realize
That tomorrow doesn't care,
About them or they're doings,
About no past affair.

For tomorrow is new,
Tomorrow is not like today,
Tomorrow could destroy you
Or send you on your way

To fame, to fortune,
To a life of grandeur,
To what seemed today
Far as the sky's azure.

And for this fact, precisely,
You cannot size up a man,
Not with his yesterday,
Nor his tomorrow at hand.

No photgraph or painting
Can embody his soul,
They decieve and distort,
But a fraction of the whole.

Once tomorrow is no more
And yesterday remains,
A man can rest free from
New worries, free from past pains.

Then can you find the
Truth of his life,
His fulfillment of goals,
His endurance of strife.

When he is gone and remembered,
After the dust of life clears,
His worth is apparent:
The dash between years.

Iron Malestrom Series Part 2: The Iron Malestrom

It had arrived, that great and mighty storm,
It came and crashed across the little land
As warm and wet wind whipped across it, and
It rid the land of still and icy form.
The white-hot bolts crash down as fires rip
Across the sky; the only source of light,
They shower streaking sparks as they ignite
The isle and burn it up as the storm slips
Its iron pall about the land and traps
It, insulating, blocking out the Sun
And trapping heat – the damage has been done –
And now the steel clouds keep it under wraps.
The icy state replaced by flames’ display,
Now e’en the sea does match the sky’s steel gray.

Only After

Decisions come and decisions go
But really they are forever.
This the mind does not percieve
Until after you've pulled the lever.

For when you engage your mind
In what your heart proposes,
There is no way to foresee
A sight of thorns or roses.

In this instant you transform
Into something that is not you,
Rather a dangerous beast,
An emotionally logic brew.

Proportions are naturally tipped
To that side or to this,
But no matter the rations within
Intentions always run amiss.

It is difficult to prevent,
That is for man at least,
(Nor his counterpart either,
In which this process does not cease).

For he is unstable even
In times of great composure,
Because lowly, lustful greed
Can find no satisfying closure.

It is only after this wild time does exhaust
That we find what we have done, and find what we have lost.

Iron Malestrom Series Part 1: The Coming Storm

This is the first in a series of 3 sonnets I wrote. The series is called "The Iron Malestrom."

An island sits astride the still, smooth sea,
The air as cool and calm and still as though
‘Twere formed from frozen ice and could not blow
If Neptune did himself heave mightily.
Upon the far horizon came to pass
Colossal clouds, continuing to come
Unyieldingly, and yet, remaining mum,
The air and sea stood still, as smooth as glass.
The island, being such, could not at all
Attempt to move, and so in place it sat
As the grey waves grew tall and then fell flat
Upon its shores and clouds convened to form a pall.
And all stood stock-still in an icy form
Awaiting what would pass – the coming storm.

God Won't Let Me Pee

On our way home from lunch just the other day, my grandmother suddenly turned into what I thought was a random parking lot and shut off the car. In my confusion I looked up and discovered we had parked directly across from an old church, standing tall with a large wooden cross protruding from the brick below it. To be honest the building was quite beautiful, having a sort of rustic feel about it, as if it were preserving some piece of history one could appreciate.

"I have to say a little prayer", murmured my grandma as she exited the car. I was a bit perturbed at this point, because I urgently had to use the restroom; in fact it is my belief that if I looked in a mirror the whites of my eyes would have instead been a pale shade of yellow. But, to my discontent, we were going to pay a visit to old St. Paul's Monestary. I shuffled in with as little interest as a Red Sox fan at a Yankee convention. You see, I am hardly a religious person, and quite frankly, churches have absolutely no appeal to me whatsoever. At this point the only thing I was wondering was if it had a bathroom....it did not.

My grandma entered before me and dipped her hand into a small marble bowl of 'holy water' mounted on the wall just inside the door. From the looks of the water itself, it seemed to me it had not been replaced in about a month, so if I had any intentions at all of touching it before, they were dashed then and there. I let my eyes wonder away from the bowl, taking in the rest of the church. To my suprise, I found it awingly beautiful. The walls were of some sort of smooth stone, and vibrant paintings and portraits spotted the walls on either side. The ceiling, too, was home to other paintings of similar quality, making the entire scene a true beauty to look at. Small wooden pews covered the floor with a narrow isle in the center, accompanied by thick, murky white pillars along the sides. The arrangement drew my eye to a large organ, and sculpture of Jesus on the cross just behind the pastor's pulpit. Again, I couldn't help but appreciate the rustic antiquity of the sight; it was something I had never seen before. I embraced a feeling of appreciative wonder; that's how I would describe it best. I became enveloped in a delightful trance, following the lines and colors of a setting that I would normally have disregarded. I truly did appreciate the building just for being there, just for housing such a wonderful creation; that is something I never thought I'd say about a chruch, ever.

Now, Im fairly sure my opinion of this place would have been slightly different had it not been relatively empty, including the absence of a pastor preaching god's word to me. In that case I suspect I would have scoffed and waited outside on the steps. But instead, I took a seat in one of the pews and took in the scenery new to my eyes. I believe it was that silence and feeling of emptiness that grabbed my interest with such a powerful grip. I was left to understand and perceive the church as I so chose, with no distraction, no manipulation, no infulence upon my senses and thoughts but the church itself.

Yet, I could not help but notice the three or four elderly people sitting in the rows ahead of me. All had their heads down so I assumed they were in prayer; either that or they had fallen asleep, which was just as likely. When one of them shifted his position I decided they were praying. To me though, it seemed they were waiting, waiting to die, more specifically. It was as if they came to a place of silence, of peace, and of sheer beauty to greet their departure from this world, for if they had nothing better to do on a friday afternoon, then just what were they doing?

I knew well what they were doing, and for the life of me could not stop the protests in my mind. I wished they simply had been sleeping, rather than using their time to speak to the soft presence of nothingness. What a way to waste such an inspiring place, with such architectual brilliance and masterful scenery. God took no part in it's construction, nor it's decoration, nor it's establishment. Upon seeing those elderly people bowing down to a sculpture of the protagonist in the most well-known novel this world possesses I silently shook my head and to myself declared the church a dedication to the wonders and capacities of mankind, in place of its actual purpose.

As I left the edifice, I noticed a confession. I did not dwell on it, nor slow my progress towards the door, for I owe nothing to god, and he owes nothing to me. I am mine own self, and he is a mere figment of my imagination, existing in reality if, and only if, I so choose. I left the church in admiration of it's asctetic appeal, yet critical of it's purpose. It was a wonderful representation of mankind's capability for brilliance, creativity, and more so its immense imagination - which in this case was perhaps the single aspect that fed the fire of my silent protests.

At the very least, the house of god could have provided me with the simple luxury of a place to urinate, but instead it left my search unfilled, and my faith weaker than ever.

The Heart Player

Collecting hearts like some collect small coins,
He takes each one and rakes it in,
And builds the mountain up as more begin
To meet that fate, succumb, and join.
He’s clearly done this many times before,
Because he knows just which card he should play
To fool the rest and get his way
As his collection of red hearts grows more.
But it will all be over soon,
As the king takes his righteous raven queen.
But she is just as soon forgone, unseen,
He throws her back and shoots the Moon.
You should have known right from the start,
He doesn’t really care, he’s only playing hearts.

Guru's Gold

It was my decision.
Examining that crude pebble, rolling throughout my palm,
Gripping, then giving with all my might into indifferent, thrashing water
Knowing it would remain. That river does not give much back
Except liberation, inherently accompanying loss.

One, exclusive event
Becomes a catalyst of
Change.

Radical revision of a hushed heart,
Not painful, but relieving,
Dawn of throbbing and beating,
Demonstrating incredibly fierce signs of vitality.

The rust is spent. Shaken off. Who needs it?
I have a world to seize!
You say some things can’t be had.
I say nothing, marching forward.

Now weathered, tumbling down a long, winding river,
beginning coarse and unfriendly, rather rough to the touch
but
Captivating. Always alluring.

Architects carve for those who cannot decide,
I decided.
Rude ridges of rock now cast into darkness
Generating an ideal sequel resting on some foreign beach,
Smooth, polished, defined,
Not on display.

Is it easy to find?

No.

Only the noblest of travelers may come upon this stone,
For its luster only gleams for genuine ingenuity.
Perhaps someone, someday, somewhere,
Will recognize a true treasure.