The Eden We Unmade

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The morning wears a burnished crown,
That slips to silver, then dusk’s dark gown;
Empires ascend, ablaze in brief acclaim,
Then wither, falling, to the final flame.

Each age inscribes its fragile line—
Stone and song, both lost to time;
Yet now the furrow’s broad and deep,
Unleashing monsters from their sleep.

Of forests felled and rivers changed,
A shadow gathers—grim, estranged;
Never has such darkness reigned—
A world undone by what we made.

What gold we grasped, Nature reclaims;
What fervor’d blaze now cools in chains.
Fields lie barren, gray as bone—
Nature requites what we have sown.

Along the path we carved in pride,
Regret still smolders where dreams died;
The silence tolls, a dirge grown vast—
Our borrowed wonders returned to ash.

Seeds of Dawn

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Morning unfolds in silken gold,
A breath of promise, bright and bold.
Each dewdrop cradles worlds entire,
Then dissolves to mist, the sun’s desire.

A child’s laughter rings pure and clear,
But thins to quiet as night draws near.
The meadow shimmers, autumn-spun,
Then cools to grey as wonder’s done.

What seemed eternal in our hands
Falls swiftly to surrendered lands.
We vow, we forge, yet seasons fold
Our monuments in leaf and mold.

For loss itself unveils a grace,
A rarer beauty fills its place.
Each ending bares unopened ground,
Where secret seeds of dawn are found.

Author’s note: Poem inspired by Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay”
– considered by some to be one of the greatest poems ever written.

Endless the Night

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The sun is an omen, burnt yellow and mean,
It tiptoes on rooftops, searing grass once green.
The world cowers ‘neath shade that frays into lace,
And stares at a predator’s unblinking face.

In cities where pavement melts under the feet,
The air is a furnace no shadow can cheat.
The ice in the glass sweats, confessing its crime—
A toast to the weather, a prayer for decline.

Children recall how the soft rain once played,
While wildfires grow where wheat fields once swayed.
Air conditioners chatter in desperate tongues,
Competing with sirens and ash-choked lungs.

A lone crow collapses near blistering car doors—
Wings limp and forlorn on the heat-shattered floor.
Last night, newsmen joked of the tropical air;
This morning, their laughter drips slow in despair.

Old men recall when the seasons would turn—
But now, all is scalded with nothing to burn.
We dreamed of our summers as endless delight—
Now endless they come, and endless the night.

The Gilded Beast

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“What men crown in gold, time strips in silence.”

They tallied gold to prove their worth,
Bribed the scales of heaven and earth;
Each coin a prayer, each deed a price,
To purchase grace and varnish vice.

They built a wing for God to see,
A theater of philanthropy;
Yet gilded arches cannot shield the soul,
When roots reclaim what riches stole.

The laugh was sharp, the handshake cold,
A lesson bartered, bought, and sold;
For kindness was a cost too great,
Its mercy stricken from the ledger’s weight.

That hunger grew with every feast,
A gaunt, relentless, sleepless beast;
It fed on power, praise, and fear,
And whispered “More” each passing year.

And in the end, the vault was full,
The spirit hollowed, cold, and cruel;
They owned the world, a gilded tomb,
And starved within a golden room.

━━━━━━━ ✦ ━━━━━━━

Ten pentacles were carved in stone,
A lineage raised, then overthrown;
Inheritance lost to turning years—
Gold glitters bright, then stains with tears.

Blight and Benediction

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I sought redemption in a holy book,
But each false shepherd wore a polished look.
Their gilded words turned ashen on my tongue,
So I walked outdoors where wild truth sung.

The sky was bruised with a fading fire,
The sun sank low like a spent desire.
No choir sang—just the crow’s cracked scream,
And it rang more true than the holiest dream.

A dandelion pierced through the graveyard stone,
Its roots drank deep from the marrow of bone.
Is this salvation—a feral ancestral rite,
Life mocking death with a merciless bite?

I knelt by the river where bottles caught the sun,
Their green glass glared—wounds shining, undone.
The water ran sullied, yet still ran clean—
A paradox radiant, raw, obscene.

The wind absolved me without a word,
No doctrine spoken, no sermon heard.
It scattered my guilt like fallen leaves,
And I laughed at a grace the earth still weaves.

So if redemption comes, it won’t wear white—
It slips through the branches, it hides in blight.
In the weeds, in the ruin, in all things flawed,
I found the face of a broken god.

Infernal Affection

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She glimpsed his shadow in moonlight’s cold beam,
Too flawless yet feral to be what he seemed—
With eyes like embers that threatened to burn,
He pledged her his love for the world he would spurn.

“I’ve wandered through centuries,” whispered he,
“Yet none wore their ruin as lovely as thee.”
His touch was ice-cold, his kiss was a spark;
She knew she should run—but stepped into the dark.

For mortal men had lied before,
Left her wrecked on longing’s black shore,
But here stood one with unvarnished truth:
“I’ll steal your soul—corrupt your youth.”

At least he’s honest, her heart declared,
No false pretense, no soul to be spared—
While human lovers feign and deceive,
Her demon reveals what he dares to achieve.

“Take me,” she breathed, “I’m yours to claim,”
For heaven’s illusions all end just the same.
Each lover before left her scorched to the core—
At least in this hell, she knows the score.

He laughed, a sound like breaking glass:
“Sweet child, you think all love won’t pass?
I am corruption, vice, torment and sin—”
She quipped, “So were the last three I let in.”

Now lost in rapture and bound in chains,
She’s never felt such exquisite pains—
For better the devil you know by name
Than angels who play the same weary game.

Extinction’s Final Knell

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We mark the day the Earth runs out of breath,
And toast our genius for perfecting death.
Free markets feast while nature’s strongholds fall—
And from our blood-forged tower, we revel in it all.

We gorge on forests, strip the seas to bone,
Steal Earth’s last gasp and claim it as our own.
Her lifeblood drained and minted for plunder,
We’ll bleed the last vein as the skies split asunder.

We draw on credit from a well running dry,
And twist her dying flesh into assets we’ll buy.
Through forests felled, life flayed open for gain,
We crown collapse as the market’s final domain.

Father Time scowls as the reckoning nears,
We mortgage tomorrow and pillage the coming years.
We burn the womb from which all life was born,
We ordain kingdoms of hollow wealth while Earth mourns.

Hope dims in the shadow of all we take,
The hands that would craft now conspire to break.
Amid the ruins, we polish a comforting lie,
Enshrining denial at the world’s last sigh.

So mark the day of extinction’s knell,
When Gaia’s vault lies looted and kingdoms fall,
The Earth’s clock tolls its final waning days,
As Overshoot wrests what no ransom can raise.

When only ashes whisper of kingdoms overthrown,
And barbarism haunts the waste, gnawing marrow from the bone,
When the last deceit lies rotting and the last true light has flown,
Earth draws her dying breath—and endless night ascends the throne.

Blood in the Shadows

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The porch sags under heat and history’s weight,
Faded columns clutch the stains the years can’t abate.
In the night’s dark reign, old blood remains—
Over sun-bleached bones, on rusted chains.

Magnolias wilt by the locked iron gate,
The stifling air turns sour with hate.
Peeling paint, as pale as ancestral skins,
Masks the mold of unspeakable sins.

Under the porch’s veil, they rock and jeer,
Repeating the lies they’ve nursed for years.
The shade hides the chains their stories have made,
Binding the present to crimes never paid.

The town’s sharp tongue hisses venom in prayer,
Doused in bourbon and stagnant air.
Deacons pass the charity plate,
While bruised knuckles pound on judgment’s gate.

In the scalded fields, the sharecropper’s son
Dreams of running—shackles undone.
But past and present knot together tight:
A rope, a badge—both claim their right.

A whitewashed statue scowls from the square,
Casting long shadows over those who dare
Remember the lynchings, the crosses ablaze,
The lawmen whose justice still stalks these days.

They sit in God’s shade with their cold gin glass,
Tongues dripping scripture on every pass.
The shade guards the creed their fathers made,
Where sin sits cleansed and the guilty are praised.

In every haunted glance, each muttered name,
The blood-soaked soil denies any blame.
So sip your sweet tea, drown the lament,
While the darkness feasts on the innocent.

And when night, heavy, presses the frame,
You’ll hear the house whisper who must bear shame—
For here, in God’s country, the soil still bleeds,
And the earth cradles the nameless lost to unpunished deeds.

The Gentleman in Red

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I met a man in midnight tailored thread,
Whose eyes like embers turned hope to dread.
He tipped his hat—so polished, so sly—
And murmured, “I possess what none may buy.”

I offer joy without restraint,
A bargain struck with wayward fate.
No saintly vow, no prayers to recite—
Just sign your soul in blood tonight.

His voice was molten, like velvet wine,
Each syllable a sin refined.
And though cold sweat traced my every trembling shake,
I laughed, well knowing what the flames would take.

“The soul,” he grinned, “is overrated—
It’s only baggage, to the furnace fated.
Why drag it through a mortal life,
When I could free you from all earthly strife?”

And in that truth, both strange and sweet,
I felt the chains wrap ’round my feet.
The scent of ash curled through the air,
A whispered hymn of grim despair.

Years slipped like footsteps—faint and fleet,
My gilded joys turned bittersweet.
For every smile, a shadow grew,
And each desire split my heart in two.

One day I wept to end the game,
He only grinned and spoke my name;
“We shook on this—and well you knew—
The Devil keeps his word… do you?”

I learned it all—too late to flee,
No mercy waits for souls like me.
The darkness bent to sanguine flame,
As hell’s lost chorus sang my name.

The damned rose forth from the obsidian abyss
To seal my fate with one final searing kiss.
With infernal delight, he bowed his head—
The perfect Gentleman in red.

The Enemy Within and the Death of Truth

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In marble halls where power dwells, soft whispers weave their lies,
The gravest threat wears no disguise—yet lurks behind our very eyes.
While legions march on far-flung shores with banners raised to the sky,
The deadliest foe grins patient here, as patriots are led to die.

He speaks our tongue, knows well our fears, our dreams, our secret shame,
He quotes our fathers’ noblest words, yet cloaks his greed in freedom’s name.
From boardroom glare to shadowed booths, his venom threads the dark,
Through glowing screens and gilded lies, he snuffs out reason’s spark.

“The system’s rigged,” he murmurs low, “your neighbors are your foes,
The truth is mine to grant you now—forsake what once you chose.”
He twists the ties of blood and trust into coils of razored wire,
Turns hearths once warm with common cause to ash upon a funeral pyre.

Shared prayers turn into battlefields, old songs sow seeds of strife,
Familiar streets grow strange and cold, as if they’ve lost their life.
The traitor grins, his coffers swell, while freedom withers within his reach,
And chaos swallows sacred truths we once thought none could breach.

No foreign army could achieve what he has conspired to seize:
To make a people doubt themselves, bring nations to their knees.
When eyes distrust the truths they’ve seen, and minds the facts they know,
Then pillars crack, and empires fall — thus every republic goes.

The murderer may claim one life, his tally grim but clear,
Yet he who slays our common ground leaves millions gripped by fear.
And while we rail at shadows far and cast our blame about,
The deadliest danger walks within, spinning endless threads of doubt.

The final light of reason dims, no truth left to defend,
The halls once echoing with debate now grow silent to their end.
Where justice wears a traitor’s smile, and lies hold proud domain,
Truth rests beneath a tattered flag, its final honor slain.