a note*

Everything I post here I have previously published on the many other blogs I have had. This is a place for my favourites to rest. These are the wings that taught me i could fly and that there is life waiting, far beyond the ridge.

If you care to comment, just drop me an email at grayhawk77@yahoo.com

rick

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

My Old Foe, Death





Death is a cagey bastard. It rarely comes right at you and if it does, it does so at lightning speed. It has a way of showing disinterest until it creeps from the shadows and coddles you into it’s clutches. I choose to search it out, keeping my enemy close, the better to keep an eye on it. It has a need to be in control and that is the battle I choose.




I walk through fields of amber and grey
boot heavy and heart full
all jangle and beat
in search of one who feigns
and waves along
with nonchalance

a foe I wish to draw near.

my life falls heavy
upon my chest
in anchored breath
of heated sorrow
and wasted want

He
bare and Poseidon-like,
a back of brass and iron.
banded arms in lock formation
jeweled in blood and blight
as emerald and ruby
these eyes of hardened deceit.

echo this,
echo I
hollow made thus
erringly so
you of yesteryear and forever.

but yet, I call
approach
challenge
yea,
even demand
to one who flicks
the ash of man
across the chessboard
of who dare?
I dare

I search you
yes,
in hunt of red October
and dip my fingers
to the depth
of your despair
in beleaguered plea
of selfish surrender.

I spy not
the whiskers of your age
nor the grain
of your youth
but the stench of your choice
I discern
in these fields
of inglorious restitution

and my eyes glint
as my tongue clears the scabbard
of notched forlorn

but you whisper goodbye
and trace
to the whisper of your
disappearance
the magic
in the chicanery
of your choosing

and once more, you have greased my grasp
with your laughter.

sheath full
of dull worn edge
boot heavy
with rusted jangle
and heart weary
yet alert,
watching
narrow eyed
to the shadows
that chase
along the edge
I plod on

knowing

when cease I to hunt you
your cutlass shall claim my blood
in chains
of sullen embrace.

~rick