Submission

by

Fettered Rise

Image by © Chris Galford.

Darkness

Begets salvation.

–

Closed eyes embrace

Wide-spaced longing,

Riveted in fire like

Old angels lacquered

With the doubt—

–

The weight,

They will come to call it,

It lies heavy on the backs

That would toil clouds

To submission.

–

Naked passions

Circumvent the sense of it,

Armani dreams, Gucci heart

Wing-tipped longing stands

Fleshy and forgotten.

–

Icarus saw this

Falling.

* My latest work for One Shoot Sunday. Based on the images I provided this week when I graffiti’d One Stop. Yes, that’s right – my travels around Lansing have yielded a great deal of graffiti photos, and this week we decided to plaster this little offering of rebel-art up for all you fellow poets to pour over. So have a look, see what catches your fancy, and enjoy!

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Just a moment

If you would—

Never dread the dedications

Just a moment for a lifetime

Bubble “D” for destiny—

All suits and servility,

Master of the masterless

Hordes your own deception

Initial here to sign

This life into the hands

Of an angry world.

Not to worry—

You weren’t using it.

* For The Thursday Poets Rally, Week 33.

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Repetition

Hunched shoulders to the

Sun of my iniquity,

The voiceless being cries “arise!”

And my back bows

Like a farmer to his plow

Repetition of identified

Annihilation of character

Gradually weans the child-mind

To thoughts of nonexistence—

Sometimes I think I’m going insane,

Then I wake

And do it all again.

* My latest contribution to the wonderful One Shot Poetry Wednesdays! Once you’ve had a look, check out some of the other One Shot Poets as well– they’re a skilled bunch of poets, looking to form a community and support one another.  Enjoy!

by

A Man, A King

What is a man but

Flesh and bone gave breath;

Such mortal beast

To buck beneath

The reins of my imagination.

Cry out for me, ye bloodied hands

I am the stones arise on emerald hills

My flesh the graven gold

Of toiling back and grinding axe.

My blood be thee and thine

All rivers flow to mine

Call me God, for all I see is all I am

A fire in the earth

Tempered in the sea of sable madness

Yet to swim, yet to circumnavigate

My ambition, this thing of steel

No land might ever satisfy

The hunger of my soul.

All songs, they sing for me

Each note a dirge unto my memory.

Each breath, praise, for it is mine divine

Providence, they say, a god-in-man

Whoso could ever hope to say

I could not turn the tides.

I am the horse that rides,

I am the bolt that flies,

I am the child that cries,

He whom only fate defies.

Behold my majesty and yet despair

Of he who masters everyone

And nothing, and no one, still.

For the latest Monday Poetry Potluck!

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Deception

Photo by Chris Galford

The fire dips beneath the azure sea;

All eyes turn to their own hands.

No one spies the serpents slithering

From the long stretched shadows

Of a garden ripe with glistening fruit.

Demons whisper in the peoples’ ears—

The straw cast down,

The crows descend.

Fruit rots and garden fades—

Ravens circle high above

The corpses of the fools.

Old men stir within their ancient tombs—

The dream is dead,

Another Rome, decayed.

–

For The Thursday Poets Rally, Week 28.

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I Will Not Don the Black

I will not don the Black

I will not bend the Knee

I will not break my Oaths

Or break my Word for thee.

–

Take my Head

Or take my Hand;

Break my Body a Thousand Ways—

My Will shall ever stand.

–

Just because you own the Law,

Does not make you Right—

Just because you hold the Crown

Does not ignite my Fright.