Joy and stillness both as one
Together fill my living soul.
I wish to leap and then to run,
Yet carefully to mull:
To ponder what this life is for –
Watching planets turn in time.
Each day learning further more;
Each tall precipice to climb
So, joy and stillness fill my heart
And guide me through my search.
Until at last I fill my part
And pass on though the lurch.
11.2.19
Each path I take throughout this life
Is gilded thick with thorns of strife.
They tear, they shred, they scratch at me,
They rip my flesh, my blood runs free.
Each path grows higher where I walk:
My blood dries thick and covers up
The crusted mess of those before;
Each drop adding, slowly, more.
Each path is slick with human slime,
The thorns are all I have to climb;
Though striving is a painful tread,
To stop my crawl would leave me dead.
Each path leads on, I know not where,
The effort all-consumes my care,
My straining mind directs each step;
My straining will is barely left.
Each path through never-ending grey,
Is intertwined in mass array;
As though the coiled muscles tight
Across my frame: a twisted blight.
Each path has left my body worse,
Behold me now: a living corpse.
I wish to rest, but can’t escape
These paths which I forever scrape.
04.11.19
When Night upon the grass doth sit and chill
The earth with thoughts of grief and frozen death,
When ghosts come forth to haunt and make to kill
The joy we had with sharp and frozen breath.
All roads run straight before unto the end.
For down the paths below our mortal dust
All hope is torn and none shall mend,
For living, none can come below the crust.
Shall mem’ry pass and love of you forget?
As age and war the Halls of Mandos feed.
Shall time move on as if we’d never met?
As shades, we toss and break as withered reed.
But lo! This fleeting fear of mine is vain!
For sure as spring, the King must come again.
03.23.17
I spent my chaos in exchange
For empty space to sit and be.
My strange new place of respite gained,
I turned my thoughts away from me.
This moment still – a simple joy –
Allows my soul to find a stream
To think and trace with careful ploy,
How best to quench my thirst so deep.
When ‘round the bend my conscience plods
And finds there what I’d come to seek,
Then I perceive my own facade,
And from this cage I am set free.
07.25.19
Meetings, greetings, follow me,
Upward, downward, soon you’ll see
Worlds below with dark untouched;
Skies above, their laughter rushed.
Each of us must find a way,
Onward, backward, course to stay.
Some escape and lose their mind,
Others, peace, in journeys find.
Creature simple, complex soul,
Inward, outward, come up whole.
Search the paths you know so well,
Question, answer, ponder, dwell.
7.19.19
I search among the shadows great,
But I am all too filled with hate
To see beyond the striking black.
This path of doom, this lonely fate,
Is filled with those of rot and wrack,
And with them now I take this track.
I only wish to see some light,
But finding none to left or right
I stumble on through slimy air.
So long ago I lost my fight
All thought or any shred of care
Has left me now, alone and bare.
This pain I feel, the grief of loss,
Has caused my inner thoughts to toss,
And in my heaviness and shame
I realize that this weighty cross
Is greater than my weakened frame.
Someone else must take my blame.
12.14.18
Waking up this morning,
Climbing out of bed;
Staring in the mirror
At my sleepy head.
Going through the motions,
Packing up my stuff;
Trusting in the notion
That I can be enough.
Enough all on my own,
Enough to do my tasks,
Enough while all alone,
Enough! Enough! Enough with all the masks.
Crushed by all the sadness,
Pushed beyond my strength;
Caused by my own selfish
Need to self-sustain.
04.09.19
Anytime I’m anywhere
I find myself a-searching there
With longing for my lady fair,
And wishing maybe she were here.
03.22.17
Computers surround me here in my head,
I can’t keep this up anymore.
I want to go home and climb into bed,
What am I doing this for?
Is there a reason beyond my own will
For me to keep going like this?
For days to go by with life sitting still;
Where is the joy that I miss?
Forward they tell us, we cogs in the wheel,
So moment by moment we grind.
So slowly each day we can’t really feel
When our souls have left us behind.
Serious thoughts and wrinkled up faces
Are all that I see when I dare.
Are we just here to fill these blank spaces?
Why do I bother to care?
Albiet these thoughts are not really present;
Creeping below out of reach.
Creeping my conscience away from the question:
“Who was I fashioned to be?”
07.03.19
Nathaniel West Clark 