Life, Liberty

You huddle, jeering, as the roar of shell
Erupts and mortars cleave their chasms through
Grey skies, their homes, vast sands, and men we knew.
False lightning booms and smites this desert Hell.
Your boys convulse, know fear, the putrid smell
Of rotting fam'lies, hope, and comfort too;
Their medals at the chest: the smoke-drowned view,
The burning bones, a dying land's last yell.
But still you laugh, amused by this strange sight;
And still you smile, eyes blind to screaming guns;
And still you live to praise Horace's lie.
If you were born into this barren plight
You would not howl, or smirk, while discord runs
The cold steel bullets through your throat's dry cry.

Masters of None

Slumped over and disheveled we leaned to
See what men, like us, could be. We saw their
Eyes, bright and gleaming as the sun, and knew
That they'd been borne to sentiment and care.
Those shining faces, gazes white with pride
And eyes that shot like darts, knelt down, fell back.
They stared into our hearts with care denied;
We stumbled from the beat of their attack.
From out the fray, we stuttered, looked on glass
And saw our faces, dumb with aged fatigue.
We felt our hands and knew, from out that pass
Of time, that we'd been cast out of our league.
So here we slouch, a warning to our peers,
That they may learn from us, our wasted years.

Parting

The twilight of five years approaches quick;
Our sun is setting in the quiet skies.
The flame must soon engulf and leave the wick
And we must part, and fade, and cry good-byes.
Our time has come to sail the turbid seas,
Roam lost, rave loud, and never find our rest
Until Time's wisdom finds in its decrees
Reprieve for all: the weak, the poor, the blest.
And you, who follow in our bygone ways,
Must hold our torch of memory. When we
Are gone, fix not some stony hearts or gaze
Upon some false, misleading jubilee.
In passing now we leave to you our home,
Where mem'ries once did live and still they roam.

To My Mother's Father

When I am aged, my hair in wisps carried
By quiet winds, and struggling smile to arch,
And eyes hazed by Time's hand, my heart will march,
Struggle to the land where you were buried.
I will meet you by the church where, married,
You dreamed to hold an infant's hand. I know
I am the child as she was then. Your glow,
Through years, sits idle in a frame, tarried.
And we will sit upon our homeland's bough.
You will cry and tell how, once, you loved your
Other and I will sit, forlorn with sighs.
I will hear your boundless wisdom and know
Why you had passed and left us on this shore
When on deaf ears fell your forgotten cries.

An Ignoble Penance

We wander through a sea of waning truths.
A faithful girdle smashed and dying did,
Once in those distant years, hold Christ, forbid
The throngs of sinful men, of damnèd youths.
It lies in pieces, broken, foreign now
To those who grow, who birth, and now are born.
We yearn to see a great repair but mourn
And fail to rest our Saviour's tired brow.
I strode between those saving words of Grace,
Compassion, Love and those that split my heart;
I bled but filled it with those Godless sighs.
I cannot bear to see my Maker's face
Nor feel His arms where once we'd been apart;
But I repent and, shamef'lly, meet His eyes.

On Recognition

Ah, but for the chance that eyes strung wide
And far, and minds that climb the highest peaks,
And tongues that sing the sweetest from their cheeks,
Could, in my quiet, simple words reside.
To know that I, with some secluded pride,
Could hear their praise: the girl, the boy who speaks
And tells of those forgotten lines from weeks
Antique; and others with their thanks provide.
Could these be truths where once I'd writ the err?
Nay; for this and other rhymes die slow and
Drown among the unremembered sea of
Rooted depths, discordant songs, distant care.
They join the drowning minstrels' sombre band:
A cacophonous clash to minds above.

To Byron, Shelley, Keats

When I behold those antique written rhymes
—The majesty and beauty of their sighs,
Divine and boundless vision of their eyes,
Eternal verse not bound by mortal times—
And view some glimpse of endless grace, sometimes
I shrink, diminish, hide these worthless eyes
That, dreaming, once had hoped their verse to rise
Among those ageless odes and beauteous chimes.
But I hold now— in heart, in mind, in soul—
Some raging words that cannot find their ink
Nor speak with actions, silenced by some plight.
My quiet ramblings cease, they are not whole.
Those silent words—cannot their speaker think?
They sink again and vanish from Their sight.