An Epic Poem, in progress.
Hey,
I rarely get to show anyone works in progress, because I tend to slave away at things until they're done, without stopping, or simply do fast, one shot poems that I refuse to go back and "work on." Currently, however, I'm working on an epic piece, so you can all see what happens when I write something in pieces, and how I fit them together and play with the order...etc. I can feel that there's more of this to come, but here's what I've got so far, stanzas in no particular order, and will get changed around almost certainly for the final text. Enjoy.
The Nine Lives of the Emperor Sorrow
Spools of fire spin, lift on wings, on edges,
My head gets set straight on your eyes,
There is only one struggle spent,
Rent in two, a muscle stripped, split,
Unkind, unkempt, bled to death,
And you, with seconds left to face moment
By moment are borne in the arms of admiration,
Tasted by licks of wind and sinned,
With a grin, fully won,
I wish,
But twist beneath that goal.
A bladed cage of bone imprisons
Suns of stone
The edge a twist of moonlight
I bid the blades contain my rage
And sup upon the nightmares caged within,
And from the movements spirits shift and raise
Aloft a weapon,
Grace
And wield mercy like a sword
I’m sworn to whisper “love.”
Each step one more down
A taste
Left empty and a song sits in the lungs
Of some sweet bird of some soft word
Had its throat stopped, had its heart caught
By loss, by swift dismissal, by curses from
The lips of lovers, forgetting how to sing.
Night falls on cityscapes
Every frame of light a shot at
Redemption
Every deep breath a sigh, relief in crimson
Peace breathed in. But this is not salvation,
The teeth and claws of processed chemicals
Laudanum wings, alcohol tears.
From the thunder of nighttime,
I suck in the exhaust and the neon,
I drink up the mercy of the evening,
Evening.
The calming is like a sweet fall into a soft bed
But in the dead of winter with no heat
To warm your bones
You swim in and out of freezing
And in time slide under the ice of the divide,
The barriers raised in the name of loyalty
In the name of space.
Night after night you curse the moon
Ever-present and yet never usable
Useful for words never written
For its depth, not worth the breath
It takes to get it out you wait
In the gutter
Looking up, wild
Waiting for it to show you,
Some new way to say
What it means.
Ears open, listen, listen,
Lungs expel their air in lies, she cries again
Breeding the whispers of gossips
Tossed curses over the walls of the boundaries
You fought to hold on to. Fought to preserve
Your-nerves-are-shot.
There is a soft morning waiting,
A honey coated sunrise through windows
The sin goes like that sun,
Softened by the hopes of a new day,
Like the tide that washed away sandcastles
The constructions frailly made to suit
A day at the beach and nothing more
Looking forward to a night you can’t run from
A darkness that swallows your pride.
The queer, the eerie echo of
Your voices in my ear,
The pace got quicker and I lost my place,
And wondered, wet and wandering, in sweet nightmare,
The seven spirits of truths whisper to me
Greatest fears, when did I become you?
Confide in me, my love, my sweet princess,
You left me with a kiss, I wish
I could return
And blessed me with this title and the arms to carry
Empty not a spot of ammunition,
No one’s heart to hold.
And when I took this up, the faces changed,
The places I’m from rearranged into a foreign field,
Conquests to be king were left
On sunny days concealed from fear and risk by you
Who stood beside me this September,
Fell, like leaves.
That moment as it touched down, as I stood up
As the weakness came, and met an unrelenting force,
A flood of coursing waves a breath and blood and tears,
That moment you were stopped inside an everlasting frost
A cost that even death can’t pay.
Meekest insecurity, foreign to my heart intrudes,
A spy, so crudely wrought
And classless in its execution and in mine
No time can make mature the soul that loves in youth
The cage that holds a vengeful god
And hell, though fiery in its blaze
Knows not the fury of those days I lived
In fear of you.
I hope you liked that. Comments are both welcome and encouraged. Let me know what you think, ok?
I rarely get to show anyone works in progress, because I tend to slave away at things until they're done, without stopping, or simply do fast, one shot poems that I refuse to go back and "work on." Currently, however, I'm working on an epic piece, so you can all see what happens when I write something in pieces, and how I fit them together and play with the order...etc. I can feel that there's more of this to come, but here's what I've got so far, stanzas in no particular order, and will get changed around almost certainly for the final text. Enjoy.
The Nine Lives of the Emperor Sorrow
Spools of fire spin, lift on wings, on edges,
My head gets set straight on your eyes,
There is only one struggle spent,
Rent in two, a muscle stripped, split,
Unkind, unkempt, bled to death,
And you, with seconds left to face moment
By moment are borne in the arms of admiration,
Tasted by licks of wind and sinned,
With a grin, fully won,
I wish,
But twist beneath that goal.
A bladed cage of bone imprisons
Suns of stone
The edge a twist of moonlight
I bid the blades contain my rage
And sup upon the nightmares caged within,
And from the movements spirits shift and raise
Aloft a weapon,
Grace
And wield mercy like a sword
I’m sworn to whisper “love.”
Each step one more down
A taste
Left empty and a song sits in the lungs
Of some sweet bird of some soft word
Had its throat stopped, had its heart caught
By loss, by swift dismissal, by curses from
The lips of lovers, forgetting how to sing.
Night falls on cityscapes
Every frame of light a shot at
Redemption
Every deep breath a sigh, relief in crimson
Peace breathed in. But this is not salvation,
The teeth and claws of processed chemicals
Laudanum wings, alcohol tears.
From the thunder of nighttime,
I suck in the exhaust and the neon,
I drink up the mercy of the evening,
Evening.
The calming is like a sweet fall into a soft bed
But in the dead of winter with no heat
To warm your bones
You swim in and out of freezing
And in time slide under the ice of the divide,
The barriers raised in the name of loyalty
In the name of space.
Night after night you curse the moon
Ever-present and yet never usable
Useful for words never written
For its depth, not worth the breath
It takes to get it out you wait
In the gutter
Looking up, wild
Waiting for it to show you,
Some new way to say
What it means.
Ears open, listen, listen,
Lungs expel their air in lies, she cries again
Breeding the whispers of gossips
Tossed curses over the walls of the boundaries
You fought to hold on to. Fought to preserve
Your-nerves-are-shot.
There is a soft morning waiting,
A honey coated sunrise through windows
The sin goes like that sun,
Softened by the hopes of a new day,
Like the tide that washed away sandcastles
The constructions frailly made to suit
A day at the beach and nothing more
Looking forward to a night you can’t run from
A darkness that swallows your pride.
The queer, the eerie echo of
Your voices in my ear,
The pace got quicker and I lost my place,
And wondered, wet and wandering, in sweet nightmare,
The seven spirits of truths whisper to me
Greatest fears, when did I become you?
Confide in me, my love, my sweet princess,
You left me with a kiss, I wish
I could return
And blessed me with this title and the arms to carry
Empty not a spot of ammunition,
No one’s heart to hold.
And when I took this up, the faces changed,
The places I’m from rearranged into a foreign field,
Conquests to be king were left
On sunny days concealed from fear and risk by you
Who stood beside me this September,
Fell, like leaves.
That moment as it touched down, as I stood up
As the weakness came, and met an unrelenting force,
A flood of coursing waves a breath and blood and tears,
That moment you were stopped inside an everlasting frost
A cost that even death can’t pay.
Meekest insecurity, foreign to my heart intrudes,
A spy, so crudely wrought
And classless in its execution and in mine
No time can make mature the soul that loves in youth
The cage that holds a vengeful god
And hell, though fiery in its blaze
Knows not the fury of those days I lived
In fear of you.
I hope you liked that. Comments are both welcome and encouraged. Let me know what you think, ok?