Cry of the Nightingale
I am afraid it is that time of night
When black velvet loses ground to gold. Hark!
From the fruit of my heart that dread sound bites.
Please be the nightingale and not the lark,
For my weary soul cannot hope to rest
Whilst my love lights the world with her smile.
From me that sweet, innocent moment wrest
Past the sating of our bodies riled
Is enough to bear; do not quench the fire,
That blessed burning from which warmth blossoms
And so fills my veins like liquid desire
When my angel's voice, gorgeous and awesome,
Winds through my soul like love's melody.
O cry of the nightingale, let us be!

Beacons of Hope
When destitute death surges like a tide
To extinguish the sacred glow of life,
Or those cold, copper war machines collide
With iron and steel warriors in strife,
It is we who stand true and hold the line.
Wrath of Mastery ravages our foe
Whether by fire's fall, shadow's decline,
Or by the broad path paved by Water's flow,
An ever-changing, ever-ready eddy.
Light shines on, a resplendent call to all,
Enervated foes and warriors ready
To unite with Balance and to enthrall
The foul, evil forces that interlope.
We are upholders, the Beacons of Hope!

Bear Not the Walk
(For Eukara Vox)
Bear not the walk along the black velvet
That Death observes from the obsidian,
Decaying throne of darkened lives well met.
Tear along it with defiant grin,
Illuminate the void's inky corners
With the vitality and love you gave
Unceasing from birth to that day of hers,
That day which green to white happily gave.
Defy your fear and control that chrome hog
Were it an afternoon like any other,
Perhaps awaiting you a fresh hotdog
Prepared by grandnephews and their mother.
Bear not the walk nor trace of reluctance,
For dawn's gold light glows soft in the distance.

Asleep and Respiring
I rouse in the rays of a rising sun,
An angel asleep and respiring
In my arms, her heart selflessly singing
A song of light's warmth and souls soundly spun.
Upon our skin the serene remnants run,
Within your core is Phanean thrumming,
Within mine is a still lake becoming
A well of wonder and satisfaction.
My one and only, my sun and honey.
With you I can forge heaven out of hell,
Convene with the stars in your sterling eyes,
And face the fields of all failure sunny.
If I could be anywhere, I would tell
Of however I feel when we twine our ties.

Empty Shells Forlorn
That time betwixt frontier trails yet again:
The wagon roads run ragged and torn.
Persistence fades, our weary all are worn
By grounds unfound and reign of far wrought fen.
Muck clings to man and boot like those of ten
And tremors tear through empty shells forlorn,
Their skin as leather- bleached from famine borne,
Eyes sunk in sockets and from hunger widened.
We carry on through pitch black mud no matter-
They at my back and I at theirs for good,
Forging ahead through thick and darkened marsh,
Undeterred by road's length or grime's spatter
Through power together in brotherhood.
Now up ahead the distance seems not harsh.

Time Forgotten
(September 2013 13th 13th War)
Malevolent moans from time forgotten
Have rent air no less tainted than before:
That strange rose fragrance air now rots in.
Despite spreading their pestilance in scores,
Never before have they found such a plague
And yet those necromantic tyrants know
Too well the power- indistinct and vague-
They once used, terror and misery sown.
All is lost behind a veil of shadow
That will be pierced by lustrous spears of light,
With erronous evils reaping what they sow-
Destroyed by the raging warmongers' might.
We have met this power before, my friend.
That foul force will break while we never bend.

Fight for You
"Trust thyself:
Every heart vibrates to that iron string."
It's the thing all the old ones say,
The phrase our parents sing when they,
Like every other, want you to be you.
But there's little you can do
When the world leaves you on the shelf.

Despite the splatter of myriad colors
Your soul emanates like a sun
In the eyes of bleary-eyed children,
We turn gaunt and grey with dust.
Our minds bend and hearts rust,
Configured for self. The dust deters.

It should not.

Stand up. Disregard.
Shake off the shale of a shattered world.
With wings unfurled and body hurled
Off the edge of disaster, catch the wind,
Steal it. If everyone feels you have sinned
For savoring the experience as you,
For living as you, breathing as you,
Then people of the world, en garde.

Fight for you.
Because I will.

Nooses
The cords of concrete cross our wounded land
Like iron chains around a convict's wrists,
Choking His influence and all that which consists
Of divine power: trees and captive hand.
Alike they're coaxed to drink of smoke and stand
Alone, apart in ancient shackles 'midst
A blackened sky. Their life, our life is kissed
By His unconditional lips- desist!
We shirk His touch before our foul desires.
We reek of greed, shallow and unfeeling,
And seek to mock ourselves with sparse spruces.
It poisons our land, ourselves, all pyres
Of our lost souls- not some foolish, reeling
Specter of grandeur. They are our nooses.

Melody
(Valentine's Gift to Aurauris)
Alone and languid before the lilting
Of sonorous, sovereign Vibrations
In Nature, in myself, I feel sensations
Like daisies before smoke- hacking, wilting.
Though His love's all round, ever-filt’ring
The darkness from within my soul’s station,
It is incomplete, lacking. Frustration
Wracks my body, my mind, my everything.
Then Melody pervades the lightless place
And placates the pangs that wrack me. God’s wounds!
They heal before the blessed smile of my Angel-
Embodied song, her beauty beckons pace
To pick up, to pluck my heart ‘til it’s tuned,
To have me wonder where from Grace she fell.

California Leviathan
(Inspired by Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath)
Orange orchards across the sacred land,
They are as Eden to the countless Adams
And Eves who bit the apple of those grams.
Leviathan spoke and turned the Lord's hand.
So cursed knowledge claws their stomachs, and
Wills body upon body, crouched on hams
To rise, recall the lesson of their Lamb:
To seize the right to live, to love, to band.
O Intelligence of man! Blessed soul,
Unite to tear Leviathan away,
To banish banes of love and dignity!
Cast down the corporate serpent from the Whole!
Return the right to witness rise of day,
Not toil in fields and die- let us be free!

Exorcise in Love
With love as the religious sacraments,
With arms of individuality,
With eyes that see only the innocence
And mend the high soul of humanity,
Crusaders of a new age, we soldiers
Slay evils- hatred, rage, and those between.

A Living Rainbow
(July 2014 War at the Core)
With lives of two entwined in heart and soul,
Those guardians to gates emerald green
Spill red across a violet atoll-
A living rainbow faded and unseen.
Eternally extinguished by our hands
Forced by the embodiment of Envy.
Now they are rid to remove cursed brands,
To kill the killer who's barring entry.
But it does not matter, what life we end,
Whether by Envy's death or evil's fall
We try our best to seek the best amends.
We have killed. We have stolen. We are thralls
To villainy in foulest of our ways.
The color is gone and leaves a grey haze.

Pro-Rhubarb Limerick
When we raced Mazurek's crew
They started to simmer and stew!
They couldn't catch up,
Those scurvy young pups!
So Rhubarb bid them adieu!

The Written Word
The written word belies its true intent,
Traversing time and space in one pen stroke
As embers of unformed daydreams awoke
And leapt across an artist's mind content,
So unaware that many are so spent
A word is naught but means by which they spoke;
A simple thing, a meager writer's joke,
A trifle meant only for their torment.
Alas, there is so much more to the word
Than simple thought or mind can hope to say.
As candles run their core unkindled, friend,
Our souls alight when word or song is heard.
It burns in all as sure as night turns day,
A melody made living flame 'til end.

The Frostwolf's Lament
Born to flame and bitter cold
With fur like sun-bleached bone,
The creatures on crags of old
Heed the call of the lone,
Forgotten Frostwolf's lament.
It echoes on the snowdrift plain
And trails her master went
When he left her to be slain
By the black-furred beasts of night.
Yet still the song resounds
When the moon casts a light
Across the ancient, snowy mounds
Still ripe with memories of eld,
Still calling out where she was felled
For master to be held.