Poems of War – Poem #1 from “Soil of War, Sea of Grief” – Title: Held, in the Droplets – Modern Romanticism – 4/24/2022

Mothers toss
last remains of comfort,
nestled to their sons
nestled in the sun.
Some Reaper
brought them to sleep.
Somewhere in Hell,
the fire yells
the sounds for the knell,
as the funeral burns, to the
walks towards the sea.

As all masked faces
are singing for lifelessness,
in the emotionless
stances, to the stance of the patriot
warring to the war of caught soil
in their eyes.

As all mothers’ bear emptiness
in their uncovered arms.
As all hymns are broken in
the fading church,
water enters the heart of those
who fled, in the dread
of leaving in the grain.

Polluted, in the stain
of grief to the heartbeat.
Raining weaponry comes faster
than anything to the shells
of bent forms in the dirt.

Their faces, unmasked.
Their graces, unshielded.
Their tears roam as soldiers
carrying buckets for the fire
to wipe the stains
never clean.

Poem – “For Early Graves” – Modern Romanticism – 2/27/2022

To the eyes, to the moonlit
part of earthen eyelids
that winter shut, that night had hid
beneath where bones are
forming trails in the scattered dirt.
Life above, pages below
written in the earliest hour,
laid in the latest light.

A soldier's cross, a mother's woe,
while faces, the same in glance
to what left an entrance
from arms to the limited land.
Love keeps carving hearts
inside the lightless land.
Graves dug for what Heaven knows
roams among tears for many years.

Next page to a later life,
torn from the book of promise
to be more than the garden's end.
Life, on a rope.
Bullets, on a slope - 

raining upon the graves
for secrets never saved.
An eye misses a shell
upon the war-torn shoreline, - 

a misfire for a place in Hell,
standing frozen, all this time.
We walk over to embrace
our enemies on their weaker side.
More comfort in the hold,
in blood or arms that fold.

Poem – “For Wartime Eyes” – Modern Romanticism – 2/27/2022

She runs, crawls
the same pace as her infant
that starves in her hand.
Counting the scars
embedded in the earth,
where faces sink in their tears,
where sickness
is a choir’s song.

Counting the stretches
either on a furthering road
or this mother’s belly.
Naming the marks
where a child escaped
either from her
or from its home.

A funeral, with the leaves
leftover from a resented autumn.
Much to be lost
with the curtains over flesh,
with tears to shoulder death
as a simple mother
carries a petal for its rest.

Frozen child
stares up, in the quiet night
to see a pair of flickering eyes.
Number, now
the nameless, countless
scars, in the earth.

Her eyes let loose the stars
to be buried with
her child, in the earth’s heaviness
of weight and cursed fate.

Poem – “Not this Bad, everywhere” – Modern Romanticism – 2/27/2022

When will the lion’s jaws
close to the stench of a wound,
while a mother’s arms are aflame
for the warmth of her child?

While the soldier prays
where the night stands still,
in the sight of knees against sand,
there are fathers
who grace the motherland.

Bullets on paper,
bombs to heat the shelter.
Loneliness revisits the eyes,
apart from unification
to the outskirts of remembrance.

Love will win
for the bleeding heart’s territory.
Mankind’s sin
recreates a burning road
where a mother runs,
where a father stays
to die for the running blood
between birthing legs.

A virgin fear,
two eyes taming the fire
another generation desired
to spit upon gathered eyes
as the forms pile higher.

Politics – “Biden – the Face of Weak Leadership” – 2/24/2022

“When character is neglected for its objective value, then no matter the title to the leadership position, leadership, itself, becomes ruined.”

– Modern Romanticism

The definition of leadership is not meant to be subjective.

Although, some fools will take the meaning of a thing that it defines itself to whatever a person says it means. Universal meanings for certain definitions that are meant to be kept whole, unchanged, to be passed on through their preservation is what resists a nation’s divides.

Some fool has said that art is art because the artist said it is art. Then, some other fool will say that one other definition to a thing is itself because the definer to it had said so. Is leadership caught up in this curse? I would think so. Whether art or leadership or anything else, such essences cannot be defined according to the singular person. Preservation to the meaning of a thing must be kept intact, because our greatest long-term divide is to lose the meaning of it.

Why are human ever divided? It is always based on miscomprehension. Whether art or leadership or anything else to the meaning of it, it was rendered a Nihilistic meaninglessness because of simple misunderstanding. Yet, being misunderstood is also an insult. If one must tell the world who they are, rather than show themselves to the world, they are a deceiver. If there is no proof and no evidence, then you do lie. Leadership, in specifics, is not what it is when a person must explain it through words, rather than reveal it at first glance.

Then, how should a leadership be judged? It would not be based on experience or knowledge. It is more based on what is seen at first glance. Weakness to a leadership is through character. A strong leadership displays the objectively correct character. And how is that character determined as correct? It is, when the leadership is judged by another nation’s leader.

Weak leadership lacks heart. To the heart, there is care for one’s country. To the mind and some fool’s value to it, for leadership’s sake, that something as knowledge and resource is the betterment for a leadership position, will simply result in the division that another leader will exploit. An exploitation, as this, refers to the weakness of the leader for how such focuses on the value of the resource (the mind) over care or correct character (the heart). A divided heart is merely a missing heart. A focus on resources, over the heart, is how a nation becomes divided, through its incessant infighting over them.

A stronger leadership comprehends what is divided to another nation, meant to be understood, during some former time, as the strongest over the other, enough to exploit how the heart is missing. One leadership with its heart as absent is going to be divided over resources. The exploitation is in how the heart compares to character, and if such is seen to be weak or missing from another nation, the once-strong nation will not be taken with much regard for remaining strength.

Define what is strong, in the objective sense, to a leadership, and you have the correct character. An incorrect character is a missing character. That character, being absent, is going to be seen of its void to the strong leadership with a present character. One cannot have their character divided, though missing, because when you lead, what is valued is not your experience nor knowledge, though what is felt upon the observer at first glance to you.

Poem – “At War, without Her” – Romance – 9/13/2020

The soldier crosses gaps
Of bleeding wounds.
Torn flesh
Are numbered to the extremities
From where crimson flows.
His face
Upon the yellow horizon,
The warm descension
Of a flame that is different
Than from those who aim for death,
By that of the torch.

Still, no brighter warmth
Than the heart
Of one soldier without the disguise,
When he can mourn for the safety of his wife.
A coldness,
Still,
A coldness compels him
To step onward
Past the memories,
Past the footsteps, behind.
Lakes form as red, greater than from his tears.

His legs,
Like towers.
His arms,
Like burning branches,
Exhausted from the heaviness
Of one after another
Heaving breaths.
A great compilation
Of things to lift that do not matter,
Other than his heart that weighs him
In different waters.

He uses his eyes to see the sun,
His ears to listen for commands,
His mouth to drink the taste of sweat,
To taste his tears,
To comprehend his own fears.

Quote – “How Cold to be to a Nation so Bright?” – 9/8/2020

“How can bravery stand, when the flag burns? How can she, who I love, be placed atop the nation of a many? How can, when civil war breaks loose, I must withdraw from her arms to the plight of a salvation? To save all who could die, alongside. Rather, to quiet the beating drum of fear. Rather, to call with the troops, with tears to my eyes. I could be near to her, fleeing from the coming wreckage. I could be far from her, stealing my heart away from her burning warmth.

For is it more to a coward’s way to run from she who will remain standing, or to run from the nation that might fall without me, the man, the soldier?”

– Modern Romanticism

Quote – “Why Love Originates War” – 7/27/2020

“If any human was allowed to wander into privacy without restriction, we’d not be conquerors. Such is never the case when a human will protect what should not be touched by alien hands. For it is not the offense, though the defense, that ignites the war.”

– Modern Romanticism

Excerpt – “A Dream once Loved” – Novel – 3/10/2020

Love is the most successful tormentor, for even those who succeed within it, are tormented to belong to it. When a relationship fails, it is humans who have failed, not love.

We are attached to love, giving into the torment, because flesh is more vulnerable than a home.

Love cannot deceive, though love will also never reprieve. It will not leave the person from their suffering in its realm. Why do we suffer? We suffer, in love, because we feel the most vulnerable, in it.

It is especially a man who feels the vulnerability. He is soon cloaked by it, by the weakness that had always remained alien to him.

Love does not have flesh. It has wings.

A beloved does have flesh, and such flesh of a man will be strong. Then, to be weak, is a time where he no longer fights. He no longer fights for himself, though for someone else. As a man was the sole person to enter warfare, it was to fight for someone else. It was as Hellish, as it was romantic.

Blood holds the same color as the ruby-red lips a man aims to kiss, of a woman. What does the soldier see, whose mind is wrangled?

Men have an inherent instinct over failure. Men have an instinct over guilt, when it comes to action. Should their actions be minimal, then they will feel the failure through its driving winds.

What pertains to a man’s pain, in love? What pertains to our character, Alessio, and his pain, when wanting love? It is the vulnerability that makes a person wishing to be found, upon a road where their tracks are lost from falling snow.

We are never vulnerable when we love. We are, however, vulnerable when we are loved.

Flash Story – “The Sight of Oblivion” – Apocalypse

I stand above a pool of someone’s blood and attempt to notice the faces, in the attempt of my question, coming forth in trembling syllables, “Who had caused this destruction?”

A wasteland surrounds me in echoes of crying women. Of weeping men over the graves to their beloved, they too, sing out. They feel, as much as the women. And above this bloodied tide of many entrails and teeth, that has come from the many slaughtered, I see my own face. It is a face that has been swept over in emptiness. It is a face that is shown to be velvet in skin and fair in complexion; though, there is still question in the eyes.

The question repeats itself in still its trembling syllables, “Who had caused this destruction?” A world that shudders beneath panic and dread; a world that bleats the moans and cries of the wounded; a world that attempts to wield the threads of a savior. For I also ask, “Whose savior is this?”

It is a face of mine, revealed in this vermilion coating, at my feet. Though, there is also a form, dressed in a soldier’s uniform, and with arms that carry the gun. Carried as if cradled like an infant, this firearm is held close to myself; I seem to be in love with it. I have seen myself in this reflection; of my face, and of my form, and I ask the question again, “Who had caused this destruction?”

I have chosen to see within, to where one always originates in all their answers, soon to perhaps be muddied by a lacking clarity. I saw within to where other faces were seen, in memory of all of them; and beauty is instantly recognized for all its coloring. I have made a sculpture of flesh, and it melts as the candle of wax.

I see within to myself, and notice what creates all this dismay. It is for other faces, seen as well within this pool of blood, at my feet. I am, or have become, the soldier, the defender of myself, of all things perhaps external, using my gun to stab, and my bayonet to stab; and from this, I find answer, in myself. All faces seen in this blood, bleed tears from their eyes and add a clearness to the red.

After such clearness, there comes further answer. I see from all I’ve witnessed, that as a soldier, others are soldiers; as a man who bleeds, so do the women bleed. I am merely a contributor to the decimation. The destruction bleeds from me. The destruction bleeds onto me. For I say, “I am a soldier in grass drenched with blood. I am a soldier with a gun made from wood and metal. I am a soldier with a face so stern and vivid in its hardened shape. I am a soldier with and without emotions, barricaded by what I see, and what I neglect for myself. Sanity. That’s the ingredient to benefit the self. I recognize it. Bright. Clear. Never hazy. Never blurred. And I am, as well, the soldier whose reign of destruction is the same as all others of the same. I have looked within, saw my torture; I then looked outside, and saw blood.”