Poetry

  Dragon   

Great beast,

Serpent of the west.

With a hide as thick as steel,

Blinding white, and icy,

Glistening.

Make your bed in caverns and coves,

A mossy tomb

Hidden in ruins.

Line it with gems, trinkets and gold,

Greedy.

Magnificent creature!

Graceful demon.

You parry with the wind

And soar the skies.

Child born in flame,

Curiously came to be,

Freest of us all,

Solitary in company.

Feared and revered,

You turn kingdoms to ash

And bone.

Destruction is your nature,

Friendly to fire.

  Mortality  

From excess to restriction,

We give ourselves too much or too little.

With all our vices, rituals, habits and addictions,

The day we begin a consistency,

We are designing our own graves

Every choice we make,

Every path we wander down,

Another sacrifice.

As we edge closer to mortality,

Only building our conclusion.

Over-clocking, overworking

Over eating, over sleeping,

Not enough toil, too much fun,

Adrenaline junkie, over exposure to the sun.

Each leading to fatality.

Our lives are nothing more

Than a prolonged obituary,

Trying so hard to leave a memory.

It’s always just a means to an end,

Everybody chooses to die.

  Middle Earth  

A world torn by war and crisis,

Plains stained bloody and cold.

Barren depths of old crumbled keeps,

Immortalised in bardic song,

Thought to be impenetrable.

Forests once green, garden of Yavanna.

Now black in the chokehold of sickness,

A snaring trap to unwary travelers.

Darkness has spread across the lands, never lifting

All that was green is lost.

Demons buried beneath strongholds of Durin,

Embodiments of flame.

Engulfing foes with axes, whips

And gaping maws,

Lieutenant to Morgoth.

Snow glowing white over jagged peaks,

Callous mountains, echoing battles of giants

And the cries of a sorcerer,

Bitter as the icy winds, reverberating,

And beneath the mountain, a frostbitten tomb.

In the grasslands, warriors ride;

Equestrian heroes, defenders of the free.

To the east, the simple folk dwell,

Blind to the corrupt, comfortably ignorant

And blissful they dwell, in holes under hill.

Ivory towers, elegantly fortified,

They lay hidden in the trees.

A king plagued with pride,

A witch of psychic prowess,

Beautifully immortal and ever the wise.

A world war-torn, bloody and cold,

Darkness has its hold.

But beauty, comfort and freedom

Still remain to fight

And defend all that is good.

  Quintessence  

Beauty un-parried,

Encapsulating without drawing a breath.

Just one glimpse and you know,

Some see it as life, some call it death.

Subject to change,

And individual perception.

An encryption of our minds,

An embodiment of recollection.

From minimal to extravagant,

The epitome of the epitome,

A bigger picture of everything,

Emanating euphoria and misery.

Divine, or grounded, a testament to time,

Unrivalled is quintessence, eternal, sublime.

  Berlin  

Red brick city, towering.

I remember walking 6 ft tall,

I could see the chimneys above the charcoal walls,

Stained with the sordid history,

Though it never felt threatening to me.

Everything was always grey,

Still struggling to resuscitate

The colour that was drained away,

With the blood of the fallen.

I repeat the same path we walked down,

The window frames of shops, black lacquer,

Blanketed in bright white snow,

An icy cusp to cleanse the city’s sins.

My third year alive, holding your hand.

Crunching the autumn skin underfoot,

Enjoying the sound, and the power I felt,

This city has seen enough death.

A childhood playground,

Cheerful and cherished memories

In a capital responsible for genocide,

It all seemed so innocent to me.

  What is love?  

What is love? They say,

I see it in our haunted eyes,

It is my willingness to take your hand

And stand strong by your quivering side

As we face your abyss and mine.

What is love?

I have wondered before.

It is the strength we embody

When the blood runs cold and voices rise

To bury our pride and become us, not I.

The warm place between your arms,

Feeling the steady breath and beat,

It is that song that sings me to sleep,

This safe place.

What is love, it is right here with me.

The quintessence to our lives

The antagonist of many,

What is love but the beginning and end?

It is something we can pretend

To know,

But never truly comprehend, and so

What is love

But what you give and are given,

Not a prize but a mutual exchange.

Accepting our demons, our devils and every sin,

Loving all our parts outside and in.