Corday's Blush

The severed head of Charlotte, freshly shorn,
Still burned with crimson heat beneath the slap,
A sudden spark to close the violent gap
Between the iron blade and quiet morn.
The sneering rogue who struck the cooling cheek
Awoke a silent fire, fierce and bleak,
Before the fading mind could die reborn.

Across the scaffold, blood and marble blend,
As dark directives urge the final leap,
Where sovereign voices guide the soul to sleep,
And draw the weary martyr to her end.
This hidden master calls from shadowed halls,
Where every whisper breaks as darkness falls,
And bids the broken spirit to descend.

Shared Elixir

A tide rises, white and thick,
sliding between trembling lips,
and they catch it, taste it, pass it along
like liquid fire, sacredly obscene.

Drinking Through the Days

Retroactive adjustment: 

Was drinking non-stop for almost twenty days. Thankfully I didn't die.

End of August

For a while, I have been having trouble at work. Small mistakes, again and again. Things I ordinarily knew how to do have acquired the peculiar difficulty of a foreign language. Stress magnifies everything, and the medication I was taking seems to complicate matters further. I was struggling in vain to find the right chemical arrangement for a mind increasingly difficult to inhabit.

Eventually, I had what might politely be called a psychological break. Work became frightening. Ordinary failures assumed the proportions of omens. I was exhausted, ashamed, and increasingly unable to distinguish the immediate problem from everything I imagined it meant.

I have since recovered... somewhat.

The circumstances have improved. I have found a little more stability, a little more distance from the wreckage, and some sense that a bad season need not become a permanent geography.

So I am going to try again.

Chord of the Flower Calling

In the night, a string I hear,
A whisper faint, yet always near.
It winds the mind with tone so low,
Sonic where reason cannot go.
The bloom it speaks of, petals black,
A flower's song that calls me back.

It draws me to the edge of thought,
Where sense and sanity are fraught.
I listen close, yet dread to know
The secrets whispered soft and slow.
For in that tune, a terror deep,
A path where shadows ever creep.

It sings of skies, forever dark,
Of fears that leave their haunting mark.
The melody, both sweet and grim,
A hymn that pulls me to the rim.
I fear the truth its voice may bring,
Yet still, I feel the urge to cling.

Everything Rolls Downward Again

In the Sisyphean cycle of the boulder’s ascent and its inevitable fall, we observe the very essence of human endeavor: an endless pursuit of dreams as fleeting as the morning mist. Such is the nature of our ambition, forever reaching towards ideals that slip through our fingers like wisps of vapor.

The End

Thinking a lot about ending things. 

Words ring hollow. 

The wind whistles through the reeds. The tide pulls back, leaving only salt and stones.