Modern Romanticism

Rowing through winds
that drive onward vessels
that bleed heaviest.

Growing among shapes
shrinking in tensions
into their first dimension.

A line demands
a signature,
a uniform commitment,
a submission,
not a rewrite
to what didn’t exist.

I cannot lie
while teardrops fall
to meet solid earth
where I buried
a wounded heart.

I cannot strive
for more this way
while faces scorn me,
under the sun.

I cannot thrive
through this thunder
that disconnects
when it disappears.

Autumn leaves
have formed a path
I’ve taken to escape
a plague of memories
that round me
to the beginning.