Dark Storm
Dark storm-filled sky
Oppressing all-encompassing
Overwhelming in its inescapability
A depressing blanket smothering those hunched underneath.
Penetrated by a ray of light
A hand reached out
An offering to escape
I don't trust it
It must be a joke
A mistake
I turn my head
The light disappears
Swallowed by the storm
I begin to walk away, rain beginning to sting sharply against my skin.
Consumed by the tempest
Wind cutting to my bones
Rain drenching my body
I am content
An expected pain is better than that of broken trust.
Golden hour
Golden perfection shades all that lounge underneath-
For but an instant, I can slow down and breathe.
Then a pain-
A writhing anguish-
Fear of loss-
Fear of change-
I close my eyes and look away.
And when I turn back, clutching my chest.
Nothing but rotted wood and bare leaves remain.
Shattered World
A shattered world stretches for miles
Winds blow through the hollow mountains
Whispers like steel scraping along bone
Rasping all that remains of old man time.
Above a sky of flame burns.
It seems alive as it crashes across the horizon.
Deafening in its silence.
Crushing in its weightlessness.
Light flickers
Rigid steel interrupting natural flows
One last fingerprint
Flippant in its intrusion
Natural in its creators..
Infinite Wire
Cursed land
Crippled by time
Scared and festering with wounds born by greed and anger.
The omnipresence looks on not a hand raised nor a finger lifted.
Inky darkness rules all.
A man hunches down on one knee
Cables stretch for miles
An endless tangle
Never-ending and never touching
In their parallel the man finds catharsis.
Freedom
Freedom sores above my head
An expanse so breathtaking language can't quite manage to articulate,
So awesome the world beneath lies in its shadow.
The earth strains itself reaching up toward that freedom
It never grasps what it seeks.
Rooted to itself
Seemingly all-powerful
Yet unable to obtain that which it desires most.
I lower my camera
Breath condenses as its heat melds with the cold felt around me.
I can feel it as I walk back towards my car
Each step hunching lower
Melting into the cement below.
The crushing desire of the world pulls me down
And the sky offers no wings to lift me up.
Nostalgia
Nostalgia
A wistful attention to the past
So human in its tragic originality
To seek something long gone
A feeling once had but no longer attainable
Words from a song
A show no longer what it used to be
When found the result is the death of something once held dear
A video game played one too many times
A movie now lacking in excitement
Yet time continues to move on.
In that crushing reality some refuse to move with it.
Blazing Rage
After the blazing rage of a fire.
There lies a blank slate.
The woods regrow, plants thrive, animals trickle back.
Scorched earth turns into fertile soil.
The once-scarred land now more beautiful than ever.
When we are hurt we are left empty.
Hallowed.
And yet we move on.
We must.
There is nothing else to do.
Experience nurtures.
It strengthens.
What sprouts from within becomes strong.
If we let it.
The Observer
A world full of observers.
Always watching as the planet spins around us.
Wars rage
Children starve
Countries burn to the ground
The plant chokes underneath humanity's crushing heel.
And yet we stand aloof.
A camera in hand.
Beauty spreads out before those lucky enough to witness it.
A man hunches over gnarled fingers trembling as he presses down.
A click of a button the only sign of action
I stare down at the picture in hand and stuff it into my pocket
In the future not long it will be treasured.
An ashen taste of the world long since lost to history.
Natural Flow
An elementary flow, beautiful in its nature.
Its simplicity.
Jarringly interrupted.
Natural manipulated into the unnatural.
As I sit here denim-covered knees sinking into the mud I ask.
Why?
Why must we always interfere?
Always “innovate”
Expand into the places never even meant to be discovered.
The answer rings out through the rusting pipe.
Because.
It's your nature.
The Cycle
Shielding canopy pierced by symmetrical incandescence.
Hyperboranth niche evaporates underneath.
Rebirth and death shackled to eternity.
Regoise! as warmth and life is restored.
Our Inevitability
In the ice-cold embrace, we wallow
The mind begins to erase
All that has come before
Lifeblood continues to flow yet
Inevitability is unavoidable.
To be alive is to be bound
To seek freedom is to chase after the very chains you run from.
In our truth there lies a certain adventure
There is an end to all things
The only escape is acceptance.
Ascension
Negative space rends at the pitch-black expanse
An all-seeing eye boring into those it seeks.
Smoke blown across the universe.
Clouds seem to glitch buzzing like a disconnected TV
A man lays spread eagle in the now.
His gnarled hand stretched toward the sky.
For an instant he believes he can ascend.
To Be Alone
In the cold I stand-
Feet planted at the center of an ice-covered wasteland-
One hand trembles and jitters-
The other tranquil and still-
One longs for the others warmth yet solace it will-
Never reform.
Our Truth
When you strive for greatness so extreme
Do not be surprised when eventually reality dashes your dreams.
When you charge forth with only progress in mind
An eye opener let it not be when mankind is ground underfoot
When you live as if in a tunnel with nothing but an end
Let you not feel consternation when your even visage is hated
As you soar high over the empires created
Remember history will always repeat
Understand that however grand and glorious world we sculpt
Will become nothing but a paper written-
by an old man scribing another rendition of an empire's fall.
Not even first and laughably not even last.
The Agonist
Some days the mind feels as if full of clouds
A foghorn across the bay does call warning of the encroaching shrouds
In the sky far above waits what you seek but not yet know
As the wind around you does yet blow
Look up and out past the blackness above
An abyss, empty and cold
Truly?
Is that what awaits me when I'm gone?
Dissociation
For some months now, the line between reality and fiction has blurred.
Consciousness seems to be as erratic as a bird
Here one moment gone the next
How can this be?
How can those around me not see
The lives we live
The mindless draugr we’ve become
Yet eventually I'm reminded
Of the true situation at hand, a brain-addled planet
There is no beginning and no end
That we live life in a perfect world is what we’ll always pretend
Rumination
Being judged is a fear I have
To raise my hand, a greater challenge there is not in this world
Every laugh I hear must be aimed at my back
One voice turns to a hundred
The world's eye is trained upon me
Every day
Every hour
Every second
I hide
I live life like a man walking on a frozen lake
I tiptoe
With each step, I flinch
Hunching over
Shrinking, folding to the pressure, to the fear
Yet the cracking beneath my feet is only in my mind
In the end, the only one in danger of drowning is me.
The Dream
At night, I long to dream
To escape the drab of the daily scheme
For to lie in bed and seek the place only my awakened soul dare roam
Is a long leap better than wherever my feet may carry me far from home
And so I sleep-
I fall deep into the infinite well
A realm so vast and beautiful to imagine it puts your mind under a spell.
Yet eventually
Like all things, this wonder must end
Awake again to face just one final day until I ascend.
Alone
City of steel and stone
Land brimful with mass
Void of life
A blightscape masked by the heavens' beauty
Hallowed of a soul's soft warmth
A husk wanders aimlessly through it all.
The crushing weight of vacuity eats at his soul
A parasite ripping at his mind
Tearing through the man, he once believed himself to be
even as the golden warmth of the sun's euphoria warms his face
beaconing him toward the light
Towards salvation
He crawls further into the shadows
The city isn't done with him yet
The Infinate Road
On an old, worn-down road, ravaged by time-
A man trudges, stuck in his own paradigm.
In one hand, he grips a notepad; in the other, a pen.
Finally, he believes that he sees the long-sought end.
But when he reaches the summit-
Before him stretches a thousand more paths
For miles and miles, they twist, bend, and flow.
He knows not where they'll take him nor where they'll go.
Yet he takes a deep breath-
Pen and paper in hand, his dreams guide his next step