Original Poems 2024

Road to Malthena 6

I think we all build Floyd's wall,

mine more pit than confining isolation.
You reached across Malthena's prison
and pulled me out of mine.

By Hypnos's hex I missed your bridge
and slept in a land beyond time.
I met your echo in Abendell's foul illusion
and at last digested nobble wisdom
to learn the name of my heart's spurning
and break the walls of my psyche's prison.

I knew at last the truth I denied.
Out that pit, I climbed the summit
and cried tears of a heart
saved by your twilight.

Yet for all my anguish my growth could not start.
Like the bird who knew only a cage I stayed
in that pit where my wall gave a space to crawl
cause my psyche thought love a fancy born
from all the disgust churning in my forlorn burn.
I had no salve or an ephemeral lamp to shine
my despair was mine, finely crafted to never
once be adapted into something I might sever.

So in my ignorance, I spoke freely of a life unwished
by the scathing defenses I built to reject love's
advances, because it wasn't sex I feared but violation
of my right by those I trusted with my vulnerability.
What treasons I suffered I neither conceptualized
nor were memories criticized, for I was blind
to the betrayal by my deal with Hypnos. You follow?

That hollow depth in my chest
was finally waking from its death.
In Abendell, I caught a drop
of that hydration that promised
to jolt my my heart's clock;
for my spirit wasn't wannest.

I looked to love not with fear but with hope and wonder
cause the joy others shared might by mine to savor.
No more did I labor under the specter of a sweaty day.
I saw my future shared with another like that kind shade.
But my training was debilitating, sapping me of mind's great
gift: to imagine what could be where there isn't. Consequently,
though I searched for her memory, I didn't see you. Honest.

Lo,
in waking life,
I could not find
the mirror of your splendor.
Lo,
in dreams divine
precious experiences, my time
was wasted on stubborn yearning.

The time that passed,
I'm sure you'd laugh,
was the same three
months I lost drifting
in Abendell's foul illusion.
With no conclusion,
no sign of your echo,
I spent a ride with you.

We were in the back,
both tired and baked
from a sun happy,
and a friendship
half strained by
withering jealousy-
for one I envied
and one I thought,
in all honesty, that
you probably had
feelings you secreted,
in that half spoken
argument's odor,
where I tried to push
your feelings to candor,
in the dusty sunset,
beside your earthy
seneschal--I trusted,
with no awareness,
I laid my palms up
and expected slaps.

Instead
you took
my hand

dragging
me out
of that
pit by
jumpstarting
a heart that
was never dead but full of a life
brimming with passion for you.

As our fingers intertwined I died inside
and phoenixed into a myth that felt right.
I would've at least been prepared to reject
a simple kiss, but that was so intimate
that nothing in my worries prepared me
for a love that swallowed every protest.

It was love
undeniably
and I was
gripped by
sharp silence.