HALF / LIGHT

In esse

In youth, my words were fair and bright,

though I had not the life to know

how darkness gives its way to light

and life to death, and warmth to woe,

and with this wisdom now I fight

to find at all reason, although

reason reacts with fatal bite

and oft I wish for deadly blow.

Instead I seek a lover’s curse,

a doomed affair, a soldier’s end

though I am left with only verse,

and far above my make I spend

to revel in excess, or worse:

to lose my days playing pretend

as in routine, I still coerce

my tale into what I have penned.

I do not grasp soul or belief,

nor the sound of my beating heart

but I am told that in love’s grief

one hears its blood burning apart,

or wilting, as is our motif

to imitate near every art

and that, to my deepest relief,

it is impossible to chart.

Thrown between each ebb and flow, yet

stingy, stubborn, and all too wild;

drowning in dirges, or deep-set

guilt, yet unbothered as a child;

in lulls conscious of each regret,

in frenzy anything but mild;

lively, witty, Venus’ vignette–

whilst caged in sorry self-exile.

To love and hate one’s lawless flair,

to wish for the death of Jeanne d'Arc–

a noble or shameful affair?

I shan’t deny what gives me spark:

crying out with fated despair,

from Hades’ grasp do I embark

and with a playful smile swear:

Orpheus rises with his dark.

Aug. 08, 2025

The path into the light seems dark,
the path forward seems to go back,
the direct path seems long,
true power seems weak,
true purity seems tarnished,
true steadfastness seems changeable,
true clarity seems obscure,
the greatest art seems unsophisticated,
the greatest love seems indifferent,
the greatest wisdom seems childish.