Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Conscripted Heart


This is my most recent poem...


Conscripted Heart

Hard fight, to keep love’s death apart. 
Wearied warrior, armored full,   
I vanquish any lights that start, 
which dare disturb the brittle night.                                     
And meeting heat with ice,  
I protect my meager heart.  

Within this thickly brambled lair     
unwary trav’ler, scraped and scratched,  
will  always soon emerge for air  
and feel no reason to return.  
I, curled and crouching low 
cry “Good riddance!” and “Beware!”   

Cold solace is this vow of ‘one’; 
the nettled nest holds no recourse.
No tendrilled green, no ray of sun   
finds purchase here.  No flowers bloom;    
absent of all color,    
save the sallow shade of dun.  

I stay here that I might forget 
that once I dared to venture out--    
the garden where my heart was met,   
embraced, by fire which burned me through;   
leaving ache and ashes,  
and all wanting, gone.   And yet…   

Yet…  No!  No doubt!  There is no space.
This battened bog, that sinks and stings
can bear no other in this place,
can not withstand the loss again.
Enfeebled by the fear,
l must leave my self encased.

Conscripted heart, forced to defend
such wounded ravage of the soul
becomes but one more battlement
unyielding, whether friend or foe.
Unmoving and unmoved.
Solitary, to the end.

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