1. ARCTIC SUMMER

It falls upon me, the fever
At the frozen heart of summer
Crested with sweat, I shiver
While the callous sun commits murder

Only I know how to feel the cold
Alone in repose with the temperature
It knows me too, that glacial gloom
Entombed with my frigid, wistful shadow

Oh, I feel my heart slow
The sludge in my veins, the color
Of a blighted rose
Flighted with snow
That misbegotten flower
Seeded in spring with blind hope
By a longing, lustful gardener

This is the way of things:
Any season can be cruel
The winds may flay me in July
The ice of August knows no rule
When in mourning’s climes I lie
A frost shall set upon
This lonely, bitter fool


2. EMPTY VESSEL HYMN

You heard the gears winding down
Observed the sands running out
Knew that your chance
Would but once come round
You gathered your power
Your voice rang loud

And you were drained dry
An empty vessel
Spent beneath the sky

And you knew you would die
That the work would burn you alive
No hesitation, no batted eye
You said: “To give is all there is in this life”

So you were drained dry
An empty vessel
Spent beneath the sky
No one remembers, nobody cried
O empty vessel
No thanks were required;
You awaited no reply


3. SPRAWL IN THE CITY OF SORROW

Dread threads of razor wire
Weave through the fabric of days
And the twilight lamplight’s caustic quiet
Scours your mind like a lathe

In this district, this weighted precinct
Your debts know where your head lays
The streets teem with your weaknesses
In alleys lurk your worst mistakes
You dwell inside your pain

Flee, prisoner, flee
From those cursed moments’ internment
Shed your yoke; quit your burden
Run free, run free

Seek the speaking winds
Where knived peaks benight the trees
By their blast be washed clean
Hear your howling past fall silent

The world is wider than you know
Tarry not in the city of sorrow
Find where the sprawl runs thin


4. PLEADING FOR THE SCYTHE

A fallow shell
A wretched geist
You summoned this anamnesis
Remains of your disgrace

Still haunting your doorway
That sniveling mockery
Recounts your memories
Slips inside your guard

You sigh and let it bind you
In its vacant embrace
Entwined, you cannot pass through
The past; you cannot leave this place

It knows you well
Your will enforced
A poet’s penitence
The lustration you crave

In whispers fell
Its ravaged voice
Recounts with reverence
The cold grace of the grave

O, how long will you sustain its shame?
What weakness locks your grip upon this shade?
Remembrance is no virtue
When it preserves so much pain

So long as you enshrine
It, this sorrow cannot die
Your patience is no mercy
It is pleading for the scythe


5. THE CONVALESCENCE AGONIES

Newborn light knifes inside the blinds
Silent, pitiless from the east
To pierce the dregs of my dream
And drain me from the womb of sleep
So I rise and set forth to heal

My ritual pains come ‘round again
No benediction, no reprieve to obtain
Tolling the dawn with a tithe, a refrain

Another recovery to embody faithfully
I am become a landscape of scars
A patchwork province of fibrous memories
Hardening beneath the hostile stars

Whose weight just waits for me to fade
For days to lay their fated waste
For strengths reclaimed to slip away
For flesh to wither in its haste
Even decayed, still I aim to heal

The mending is agony
I flee to my punctured dream
Of mindless stillness, of infinite sleep
Where no woes rend me
And all labors cease

In yearning, suffer every downturn patiently
I am become a friend to defeat
Emeritus wounds, still aching, wait for me
My spurned work, still incomplete

Such is the body’s offering
Its seasons turn, relentless and swift
Its pain which teaches nothing
No lesson to learn; no wisdom, no gift
But the passion of transfiguration
With each convalescence
I am reborn, I cease to exist