Shrivelled, exposed, cold,
warps and wefts waste us away
the body afflicted with decay
O!, I say, the hey-ho way of the live-long-day.

Whatever has lived will wither, languish, and decay.
Time pines away the live-long day
aghast at a quagmire of guilt, regret
spilt water, wine? I forget.

No transubstantiation this,
no drift into immortal bliss:
this work of resistance is
an inception into art
of all the heart-wrung soul that is left in me.

A lamenting for
what?
the passing of the light?

Maybe a winter tree stripped,
bent, gnarled, entwined in the winds of time.
the wind a modulation of voice, a volte-face
a variation in rhyme. Surely, no man
has such bad intent as to awaken from sleep
those legions of demons that laugh as we weep?

Stripped down, dying back to the root,
we leave a shadow behind the sun.
a withering ensues
from which we take such passing grace,
as blown in hot breezes, it freezes
the many faces of history
into a repetition
spiced with all the dusty uncertainty of victory,
streaked with the blood-red tears
of the false prophets
grinding the days’ mysteries
into the measliness of routine
we need a little empty space and time. .
for everything under heaven is strange and new
and resists the conformity of rhyme.