Poem – “His Extinguished Eyes” – 11/29/2022

Once I saw what gleamed, until
I only saw what dreamed. One dark
realization, never before rubbed,
smeared, left under curtains;

there, as a disguise to the daylight
with the misery.
He wanted his chains broken,
his mask torn off,
left with the bandages, his skin,
the nakedness of honesty.

He dreamed under a glaze,
a stir from a heavy heart.
He hoped during the craze
of those jealous of death:

to death’s imminent embrace
of a man with no more
life to taste.

His tongue, a hornet’s nest,
his puddling tears – honey.
Fields this dark and lurking
are finding him wanting.
An empty trail, going backwards
goes nowhere,

not to a mother’s arms,
not to that man’s kin
who weep when he sleeps.

Only when hope draws itself
into winter’s sudden warmth,
can honesty be that next degree
outside of that endless sea.

Poem – “When it comes to Love” – Modern Romanticism – 11/7/2021

Still you
Keep running the tears that to
Mankind’s hurts, in the war for bloodied dirt
Follow wails, will lead to worse.
Leave sorrow as dew
To make the mourning as morning
Without the sleep of the sun
Staying where we are entering.

While love is warm, apart
From faces scarred,
We keep the bullets entering hearts –

We send forth showers, towards eyes unmarred.

Some touch,
No falter to what God has brushed, –

As my shoulder is the bed, not the shield,
For everything you cannot wield.
With love at every breath,
A wrinkle beyond all age,
Here to tell of the offspring to death
That with winter, cannot erase,
That within books, remain as the page.

His eyes still love
With beauty he should not retrieve
From above.

With a kiss he did leave,
He dances upon flooded shores,
Absorbing tears, raising you for more.

Some stilled part of your eyes –

Can see beyond the haze, the weighted skies
From where you cry.
As love opens its wings,
You will remain, to accept what Heaven brings.

Grief Quote – “The Meaning to ‘Peace be with you'” – 6/25/2021

“It is grief that stains the living soul. It is not peace with the bereaved, since it is peace with the dead. Those who grieve are in pain, because they wish to be with the dead. To recover from this, reverse the wish to be with them, to the understanding that the dead live on in the heart. Comprehend that, that love is eternal through this. Their peace for remaining life, not for the pain to them.”

– Modern Romanticism

Quote – “The Man who Cries” – 2/5/2021

“No man will cry over sentimentality. He will, however, weep when the boulder during the present, buries him further into the earth. The guilt, harbored upon his shoulders, docked as a ship within his heart, overloaded with the cargo of self-disappointment, offers him the curse of blame for what he could not protect. Competence is, to a man, his own pride. As he kneels over the ruin of what was once so beautiful, so gorgeous, there comes an innate sense of remorse to swallow his senses, and to ever be the last understandable thing to come embrace him.”

– Modern Romanticism

Poem – “Grieve Me, in every Word” – Romance – 9/20/2020

The funeral strikes the hour,
As I waltz past
The raining petals
That do not,
Repeating
Do not
Burn, nor tear
Apart, at their solaced shower.

Her hair falls back, lifeless,
Never again
To be brushed by the hand,
My hand,
Facing the floor,
Soaring towards the naked shore
Where eyes can glimpse my stroking tears.

I had loved,
Meagerly loved,
Simply loved
The rose gathered amongst
All these forgotten petals.
Her face,
A stark whiteness
At the loss of radiance.

Why would God shut His heart?
How will I continue to love
The smallest pieces that have yet
To be gathered
By a sinner’s hands,
By my own
When I cannot face my eyes?

The pieces
Of one shattered heart
Locks the grief,
Makes me weep.

An Analogy of Grief & Memories – Excerpt from a Short Story – 9/16/2020

Breaking between syllables, this painter is lost in his wreckage. A void for discovery’s sake, to see a face that looks back to his pain, to the absence. As this memory unites with himself, a hollowness begins to become so apparent in its torture. Just a single pang of loneliness, doubt, and uncertainty to keep him shivering. Just a face that is here to ignite in his mind, the spoiled times of his youth, beside her. A familiarity so transparent that it designs itself even without a paint brush, to be glorified in hasted waste. A pile of limbs. A contorted soul. A spark of grief in his heart that never forgets, when he cannot ever turn his head around to face the flesh of her.

Just an epitome. An epitome to this grief, that could be kept in a book. Just a hollowness. A hollowness that never lasts, though always keeps itself locked inside of himself. A pain, and it is a one that doesn’t ever die, though slowly makes him feel as though he is dying.

Love never runs far from us. We always hold, in our heart of hearts, the precious, alluring memories that never seem to give up their pull. Pressed, we are not, by those memories, as we always return to them with shimmering eyes. Just a face we want to see, from our mind of minds, that is described to be the definition of beauty. Just a face. And, a one that doesn’t ever fade, unlike the form we have buried.

We have, of love, just the eagerness to look. To stare upon what we have captured, in our heart of hearts, to our mind of minds. Just a speck of bewilderment causes a pain in our eyes, to weep just enough to press ourselves down. We are pressured by grief. Though, as we said, memories pull, like magnets to attract, rather than repel.

Short Story Excerpt – Title: “A Display of Sweetest Grief” – Romance – 9/15/2020

Grief is never so much a thing to conquer, in as much it is merely felt, like a leaf that had strayed from its branch. It has nestled itself into our shoulder, and stays there, not vowed for escape.

All tears carry weight, simple weight. All memories carry not weight, though force. We are not weighed by our memories. Though, we are more pulled by them. Like the most alluring type of gravity, we are countered from that escape, because grief has made us run in a memory’s direction. We want to feel pain, because pain is all to feel.

Like a drain, death has a path for life. Like a disguise, life has a way to reject death. Like a martyr, both life and death come to live, and recede away in the name of each other.

What have we, of a man that needs no name? For a name would render such weight of grief, needless. A name is such a brand, such a label, so needless to inquire over, unless in memory.

It is he, a painter of no words, though many images. Images that have never decayed in his mind, yet have found themselves onto the canvas, many a time. Worlds of confusion that have been shaped into a scenery of sense, formed about blankness, made as wash of curves or tumble of scraping lines.

Here, upon a day when all weights can press him, as though these winds passing as bereaving sighs are rising from a hollow so deep, he can touch his roots. He can seek the verdure in the underlying wood, of tastes so bitter, though captured as sweet. Here, when grieving winds can pass through him, from forests that hum with the song of the same pressing tension, he can turn towards the earth. He can speak to the soil, to make of one loving face, a famous expression to him.

One woman, without clarity to anyone else, but him, in its magnitude. For her face could alight any drying ember in his heart. It is a stare from hers that could guide the stars to unite in one conjoined discoloring, of that garish white. Of all stars, mingling in his heart, making him wonder to their wandering, about so lost in this field of resplendence.

She could, were she alive, relive countless moments for him, in timeless recollection of countless areas to be lost. She could, were she alive, sing to him to find himself, and align with the innumerable to become a one.

Philosophy – “The Idiocy Behind Self-Love” – 9/13/2020

“One should name themselves as weak, and forever such, when they dislike the idea of attaching themselves to a non-material thing, being a person. For if they were to lose that person, it could not be seen as expendable. It would be seen as forever lost. True strength is only ever bred when one can rebuild from non-material things being lost.”

– Modern Romanticism

One realizes the extent of pain, once their heart has been shattered. One, as a generous sort, might say that their act of trust upon people, going into their act of generosity upon people, was taken for granted. Could it not be that these supposedly generous sorts took for granted what they allowed in their own lives? As in, the person who easily trusts took for granted all those who entered their lives, in treating them as expendables? One can only take something for granted, when what exits their own lives, is an expendable, and cannot be something the same as them.

When one loves themselves, one will be stagnant, in the belief that should one lose something never to be seen as an expendable, it was of no real consequence. That stagnancy amounts to perpetual weakness. For weakness can only be imagined of the person who could not endeavor to love someone else, more than themselves. If they did love someone else, more than themselves, they’d comprehend what it means to lose something that wasn’t a mere inconvenience in their life.

Self-love is only ever the idea of maintaining a materialistic mindset, when they cannot differ the material from the non-material. For of the non-material, there is love being given to those who are people of flesh and blood. How selfish can a person be, to love only themselves, always more than someone else, because all others cannot be attached, non-materially? Selfishness has to be defined only as attaching oneself to material things, and never to the non-material things that would be protected.

To love another person, more than yourself, allows one to understand the meaning of loss, were they to lose that person. More importantly, they’d understand the meanings of words like “dishonor” and “disgrace”. For loss can only ever be felt, when that non-material someone was loved more than the person who is loving. A loving person must love someone else, more than themselves, or it is not love. Love is sacrifice. Love is honor.

To believe one is strong, through loving themselves, makes them perpetually weak, because they are stagnant in materialism. One can imagine this as the morbidly obese person whose literal stagnancy has made them unwilling to give material and expendable sustenance to those who are starving. For if they did, they’d have fasted, and understand the meaning of sacrifice, not loss.

For to sacrifice, is not the same as loss. We lose, when we lose what we love, being something always non-material. We sacrifice, when we sacrifice what we cannot love, being something always material.

Poem – “She Falters for the Wreath” – Religion – 9/10/2020

Just a well
To dump the contents
Of her eyes.
Deep blue as Neptune’s children,
Awakened
As puling infants,
Close to no mother,
Close to no other
But the cruel hands of a Father,
Of God’s sheltering darkness.
For she
Can swear He created Hell.

Water the cries,
To water them, more.
Water the lilies, upon the current to the brook,
Draped as curtains
Over the stepping stone.
She has lost her husband,
Her husband,
She has lost her life.

Just a love,
As she spews to the noose above,
All words that come falling back,
Black as her sadness,
“What message to my plight,
Can you offer, to ease my sight?
What words to my wisdom,
Can you wield, as my shield?”

Just broken venom,
Unsaid prayers,
Fewest, forgotten syllables
That wield no material.
She has dropped a body to a grave,
To let it sing
Among the burial
Of her tears,
Growing somber blossoms
For many years.

Poem – “How to Count the Marks on your Corpse” – Bereavement – 9/9/2020

Stilled,
Without a sign to the breath
That would raise you
To feel the morning’s shower
Against your cheeks,
To receive the gleam
That can display life
For your acrylic eyes.

I could paint you
In the way you are,
Blossomed from a rose in a grave,
Written out as a song of sleep,
As to you, I could not save,
Though death whispered its lullaby.

Marks
Creasing you
In your state of decay.
Love does not shelter
The starved of me,
The empty of you.

You are the dreams
Without their stars.
There is only the guidance
Without my steps.
There is only the lighthouse
Within the storm.

I am unable to crawl
To see where the stars pin themselves
Against the deepest of blue,
In this evening, anew.
I am unable to see,
While I am unable to read
The marks of this death
Upon your corpse, that never fades another breath,
Like the sky that hangs down
The weathered, jeweled crown.