Love Lost

Welcoming eyes, she had those –

They invited you in to laugh during the

Precious time you shared – she always valued that time.

She smiled, and you knew it was true.

Behind her eyes something was seen;

Was it a spark of childish fancy, concealed

Behind that lens of protection that she so often put up?

It was heartache: raw, brutal, honest.

But a love overtook.

Never could it be hidden behind the

Darkened, blurred horizons of the future.

But dampened by tears of paradise,

It slid away.

Retrieve! Do not pass!

An abandonment that aches, consumes, fears.

You try to avoid, try to forget that pain,

That all consuming pain.

Where now? Is it lost?

But of love, there must be no end to this;

There must be eternity!

Those eyes that spoke ardour do not speak.

The warmth fades; a chill replaces an embrace.

A child weeps, desires, regrets; knows,

That this is love lost. 

Zuihitsu

To be enjoyed… I believe this is the primitive purpose of nature. Perhaps primitive must not necessarily be translated as undeveloped or archaic, but instead as basic and correct; natural. Observe the trees, how they shudder from the mighty gusts of wind, and contemplate how this cannot be perceived as both exquisite and bewitching. They shudder … my soul shudders in harmony from within this sheath of selfish desire; to turn away from those longings, which have the ability to contort the mind into vile formations, is an ambition to be realized by all.

The soul, that basic instinct harboured inside the body, is a phantom; pure in nature, yet defiled by this creature that solely desires to ravish it. Destiny has forgotten (or ignored) our endless struggle with this odious angel, one so alluring that to touch it utterly consumes our minds; while it burns our nerves, wishing we were first lacking a hand with which to reach out.

Laboriously stretching upwards toward the sky, balanced precariously on the tips of the toes while situated dangerously atop the uppermost precipice, reaching for God; but you have forgotten your footing, O foolish one! To the depths at once, you abomination of the angels; you shall struggle, and I shall never unchain you.

The Cursed Stair of Addiction

Like a sudden drop of step, an accident –

You didn’t try to fall – it jolts your nerves awake.

Truth, beauty; both now banished.

There it sits, silently smirking, laughing at your pain, scoffing at its own agility.

It tricked ten million men into following it – ten million plus one.

Like a lover one yearns for but is forbidden to touch,

It deliberately drove you nearer to her scent,

And you, no longer permitting suffering, lurched for it!

The shadow of a great thing is left behind,

Hiding far deeper in corners and stumbling down,

Down the cursed stair –

Until not even a shadow will find you there.

Sympathy, A German Soldier's Tale

Sympathy, it is sympathy that has been my Kaiser over this contemptible existence of the prior decade, encompassing even this moment which I have lived; each laboured breath of heaven that I consume is heinous, for I am deserving of the naraka of the Buddhists, an agonizing hellish place to which I will be eternally damned when all is revealed to God on that day of judgement. For “the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God”… (1) Have we truly forgotten the Lord amidst our onerous journey that has delivered us not to the pearly gates of heaven, as we supposed it would, but into the jaws of the dragon itself? 

Our quest for salvation – But were we not told this was pre-ordained by the Lord! What of our souls, the only aspect of our lives truly in our keeping? It is treachery that has brought forth the fires of hell only to deliver them not to the doorstep of our enemies but into our own insulted faces as we realize the magnitude of how wronged we have been and how eternally damned we now are. Is there but one who can hold us responsible when we have been told we were on the road to salvation, that it was God’s will? It should be a sin to breath, a sin to live for that man who calls himself Fuhrer, a man who has sentenced to a forever death the souls of a million soldiers. 

I find myself but one of those who has believed a dozen lies, and only now do I realize this as I lay among those who I have killed, those who stare out of the deadness of their eyes in silent accusation; all of them, even those innocents with baby hair and tender features, they too are my accusers. And it is in the whites of their eyes that I most fear God, in the purity of once was that I comprehend my great folly and my mind begins to penetrate the extent of this great sin.

1. Psalm 9:17

Remembering Memories

Just a while ago he went away,

said he would come back again.

My fiancée, I loved him so;

I begged him not to leave and go.

Filthy foe, with gun and machine!

bombs that bring a chilling scream –

Trucks soon led him far away,

I could do nothing but wait and pray.

Yet the years went by and passed,

then finally – at last –

Our soldiers came home, scraped and hurt,

lined with scars of muddy dirt.

From explosions some lost a limb;

still, there was no sign of him…

Stepped onto a field and ran for cover,

leapt, but fell, to save another.

I cried, for now I was alone,

I wept, for now I had no one,

I screamed at God and asked him how

He could take him away – right here, right now?

They told me to swallow my tears,

said there was no room for fears.

I stayed strong and remembered his face

that was looking down from a heavenly place…

Walks in the wind carry his voice to me;

he tells me that if ever the need be:

God will summon his angels – On the cheek shall I be kissed –

and that he loves me, and he knows he is missed.