The Bird of Hope

Sorrow fills me
I see such pain
To live and be
Without a stain
 
Without a life
With our eyes blind
Against the knife
Never to find
 
The hope I crave
Away from death
My soul to save
A lifesaving breath
 
Let the bombs fall
Let bullets fly
And break the wall
I’ll tell you why
 
During the blast
She flies away
Madness be cast
And rules the day
 
Carnage rolls on
Mankind doth weep
Yonder the dawn
Take hold and keep
 
Above the din
Hope reigns supreme
Always has been
The light to gleam
 
Take hold the gift
Clasp in your hand
Let spirits lift
There, life is grand
 
© January 2018
Duane Windell Phillips
 
Though she may flee when man’s destructiveness reigns, the bird of hope always returns and sings sweet melodies.  In spite of the darkness in this ember on which we live, there remain hope, faith and love. 

Man: A Game of Roulette

Playing the odds of Russian roulette.  Guaranteed loss as the days stretch on.  Combatants take careful aim and pray the other will miss as they stack a house of cards.  Hiding behind the parapet, enforcing the armor, steeling their nerve to rise and see no man’s land.  There is no flag to wave.  Another spin begins. 

Remember a thing called love?  Do you recall the sentiment that fills the souls of the naïve?  That curious emotion that exists only in the heart of mothers praying for their boys.  The ones who pray to heaven for miraculous protection of the forever child bonded to her core.  God cannot answer the prayers of all can He? 

Bullets fly and bombs blast.  Metal and fire are perfected to kill. Man, having attended school to perfect his barbarity, pulls up from within the means to obliterate one another in a cataclysm of madness.  Another spin and the game continues. 

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Living like nothing more than paper cut outs,  like tin men wandering the empty corridors of life, we seek escape from the hallow echos in our chests.  Programmed and executed, we pour through eons of fragments of inherited memories. All a haunting and dim reflection of forgotten promises.  Are you truly there?  

Why is this distance fixed?  Why does thirst continue, drop by drop, toward madness in an ever spinning whirlpool of discontent?  Why does hunger gnaw away at the souls of those who simply want fulfillment?  Nibbling, bite by bite in search of  morsels that sustain rather than catalyze discontent.  

With eyes so dim, could I recognize true life if it greeted me?  Should it approach me as a long lost, dear friend, would I not recoil with innate fear of yet another attack?  Can I not help but see another Trojan horse sent to infiltrate my soft underbelly?  This Pavlovian response long engrained in my character, I live but to subsist behind barriers, obstacles and impediments.  How ironic and maddening the continual roadblocks which cause my feet to stumble. 

Do you seek me?  Rumors sprinkle like rain of love that changes.  Will tenderness and warmth ever be granted to the barren?  To those who live life dead, could the rumored horizon of an ever rising sun be found?  Sweet charity and sympathy to be born anew in the breast of the dead. Be it fantasy or madness, we stagger toward hope. Magnetized and pulled, we drift on but inside our walled in souls, we are forbidden to dock.  

Endlessly, we wander, dawdle and bob.  Like tin men snipped from discarded sheets, we want to know why creation fashioned this shape.  Ever onward we slide.  Ever forward we follow the multitudinously worn path.  Always we trudge, until we collapse and tread no more.  

Vespertine

Those lovely walks vespertine

Side by side, your hand in mine
Lean on me, I’ll not proscribe
I’ll meet your lips and we’ll imbibe
 
© January 2018
Duane Windell Phillips

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Shadowing false gods

Welcomed within

Enticed by pretty eyes

Wholly burnt by sin

 

You are lost, duped soul

You thought you knew

Are brined to the full

Only blame is you

 

Simply lift up your eyes

And break the spell

Turn away from lies

Vacate your hell

Reposte

Every move you parry
And I feel so wary
Please begin to let me in
My purpose ancillary
 
I never see your heart
You only show a part
Don’t you know it hurts me so
Disengaging counterpart
 
Your openness a feint
And candidness did taint
Now let me be, so weary
So I leave, unconstraint

© January 2018

Duane Windell Phillips

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A thought not given

A new way of livin’

Until we see the light

Don’t give in to fright

 

Stay the course

Lead the way

Ride the horse

Have your say

 

A mind that is prone

To go it alone

May change fill your soul

Let it be whole

 

© January 2018

Duane Windell Phillips