Modern Romanticism

I've brought hope across
a finish line, where quaint verse
has been applied.
It regresses these eyes
far from more welcoming skies,
while I burn to keep these
comparisons running.

I melt, having wanted to know
what these footprints will grow.

I feel as if I've stamped out
a teeming garden of verdure,
made the soil sterile
that it will not ever sprout
golden words, poignant phrases,
in transparent newness.

Always the oldest song
repeats in its thunder,
across a mind,
within a heart where I
keep up a blunder.

I cannot turn these sails,
as I cannot revise this trail
where it will remain as
the scene for thick smoke.

I've spoken long enough
to sense the senselessness
in everything I do,
though I cannot depart
what compels me to wake
under each sunrise.

For I must burn,
I must melt, if it will
return life to life,
retrieve feeling to flesh,
even at the cost
of motion in the clouds,
a rush in the undertow.