hope

Eternity Bides

Where hearts and souls meet
Whence the world would see us part –
Eternity bides

written in response to this week’s Ronovan Writes Weekly Haiku Poetry Prompt Challenge #318 “Meet” and “Part”

Life is…

Life’s looping script begun to dull –
time to read what may follow next;
moving on, mortally perplexed –
self-loathing’s self-directed cull.

Chapters never lived to the full,
Stifled text, no pace to the plot
prompting the page-turn, phrasing not
teasing with syntax nor sentence;
no Third Act testing my patience.
Last page: The End. (life is the dot…)

Written following Ronovan’s Decima Challenge on RonovanWrites – “Next”/a>

Cast the Lies to the Fire

Cast the fool’s lies into the fire –
Burn, O pyre of public disdain!
May truth’s bright light never once wane,
Untruth-fuell’d flames lick ever high’r,
Fed by each word spoke by the Liar.
Each falsehood stoked, tinder’d and torch’d,
His vile fork’d tongue seared and scorch’d;
As each foul breath uttered ignites,
Deception melts, judgement alights –
Truth triumphant; the Liar scourged!

Written following Ronovan’s Weekly Decima Challenge on RonovanWrites – #08 “Fire”

I Have a Dream

I have a deeply rooted dream:
Of freedom and justice as food
at the table of brotherhood,
closer, closer than it may seem
to be today; I have a dream.
In the fiery streets of those states
where oppressive injustice weights
despair’s yoke upon all others,
lifted by my faithful brothers,
we grasp the dream our hope creates

Written following Ronovan’s Weekly Decima Challenge on RonovanWrites – #07 “Dream”RonovanWrites – #07 “Dream”RonovanWrites – #07 “Dream”

inspired by Dr Martin Luther King’s public speech delivered during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States.

Maelstrom of Fire

Is this desperation’s last breath
Or surrender’s first fatal sigh,
Looking the firestorm in the eye?
Seeing its heart, its depth and breadth,
Its maelstrom flames embracing death;
Pain remains the last sensation,
Smoke-seared final desolation;
Leaving no charring dream unscorched –
Embers turned to cinders, a torched
Future… lost in immolation

Written following Ronovan’s Weekly Decima Challenge on RonovanWrites – #05 “Eye”

Judgement Day

A time will come called Judgement Day,
Too late to turn toward the Light;
Realise then you’ve lost the fight,
Too late to sink to knees and pray,
As yokes of sin on those left weigh
Darkest evil -terrible, great –
Will enslave, cast down… decimate…
None may know the hour, none know when –
Be warned, be wise, for until then
It’s not yet writ… there is no fate.

Written following Ronovan’s Weekly Decima Challenge on RonovanWrites – #05 “Mate”

Come the Fall

“My people, hear the words I say:
Do not fear that throaty itch;
Sure unemployment’s just a glitch;
Come my Fall it can go away…

Batting two thousand ev’ry day,
Bad things don’t stop each perfect call –
It’s never me who drops the ball;
All the problems people fear
Could magically disappear…”
Come bring on the November Fall

Written following Ronovan’s Weekly Decima Challenge on RonovanWrites – #4 “Itch”

“any man’s death diminishes me” – John Donne

“No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were:
any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind,
and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls;
it tolls for thee.”

― John Donne, No man is an island – A selection from the prose

The Elephant in the Room

Initially made me mad
Don’t believe a word ever said
Indistinguished, morally dead,
Oblivious, ignorant, sad;
Trolling any outing the bad,
In a country riddled with lies,
No guilt by those feeding the cries;
The dumb elephant in the room –
His base chanting the ballots’ doom,
Even as the flag sags, hope tries…

White wrinkles around vacant eyes,
His head a ridiculous plume
In truth’s spotlight will squirm and fume;
The bruised ego of absurd size
Ever fooled “love” not money buys
House sub-let by some guy named ‘Vlad’
Overseeing each faked attack ad;
Underhand and avarice-led,
So before democracy’s dead,
Elect Dumbo? You must be mad…

Written following Ronovan’s Weekly Decima Challenge on RonovanWrites – #3 “Mad” – a gymnastic variation double decima with a reverse and a twist.