Fight The Dawn
An Abstract Legacy

Before The Fall

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I feel their eyes bearing down on me
Assessing me, peering in to traverse
The maze I have erected to catch
A glimpse of what I hold inside.

Not out of judgement
Nor condemnation,
As much as I might wish it so, No
It is out of care
Out of love.

I don’t wish to be loved right now,
Except for the love I know
I cannot have.
My heart has left me
Given to another (to her)
Taken to a place I cannot travel to.
Solely left to feel everything,
Apart from her.

Lost and lonely
Out to sea again
Face pressed to the rising seafoam
Greeting my cheeks
With a forlorn kiss.

I once hailed ‘land ho’
But now greet my lifelong friend
The open sea.

Flight of the Phoenix

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I saw you rise and challenge the sun.
A radiant display of all you had done.
But then one day you fell,
And no matter how hard I cried
You could not once more rise.
For you were the Phoenix
Not I

I gathered your ashes to allow rebirth.
Buried them down to mix with the earth.
I watched as you arose
And came back to me again;
But you were different then.
For you were meant to fly
Not I

Storm of War

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I was beset on all sides by clouds engaged in war.
They clashed and fought, billowing forth more and more.
Lightning streaked across the skies, illuminating the battle score.
Thunder rolled from their clashing mass enlivening the air with a battle roar.

I was the lightning
I was the sky;
My voice was thunder
Come down from high.

A Year To Step Forward

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Out from the shadows and into the new,
I am on track towards what my heart pursues.

For my fourth year I asked myself to live and enjoy every moment. It took me about half the year until I could finally come around to that. The past year was filled with disillusionment and a feeling of being lost and restless. My plans evaporated and my dreams darkened.

Towards the end I did come to live and sit in the moment. To be thankful for that and not fill my thoughts with past or future; it was still a struggle. A lesson was learned throughout it all; a first step that I need to embark on to truly embrace each new moment. I have to let go.

I have to let go of the control I need over everything in my life. To let go of all ideas that I cling to in vain attempts to venerate myself and find validation. To let go of the child in me that has pulled me to the back of the shadows and step out into the light. To let go of being perfect and the worry that is produced by that in hitting failure.

I have to let go of everything I hold sacred and trust that I am enough. I have to let go of my ego. I have to let go of my heart. Sharing it with others and not demanding a certain way it be taken. I have to let go of all the fear that drives me. I have to let go of my dreams so that new ones can be made.

Only through that can I find my confidence. Can I find my inner strength and resolve; what I stand for. I feel as though I am stripping away the core of me but it is the lie. An infectious lie that has egregiously corrupted my soul. I must scrape the taint off the top to behold the hidden beauty swirling underneath.

It is long past time to define myself by who I truly am than the lie I’ve constructed. I have only hurt people with that lie not lifted them up. I secretly wrote that I was the bright and shining star and now it must break forth and spread its light. And it won’t be easy.

In various ways and in smaller chunks I have tried to do this before. I have to admit I have grown and I still have so much more work to do. There is a sense of clarity now. As well more force behind wanting to break forth than remaining behind my walled cage. It has already started and the more I step forth and let go and come forth anew the brighter the current moment is.

Seagull

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She was the seagull who became the Phoenix,
And all who beheld her beauty were glad to have seen it.

-Sir Winston Lear

From the melancholic mind sprout the machinations that were better off when undefined. I charted a course for the barren sea and in that voyage my new found visage came to form. I left behind everything beautiful I held inside to fade into the shifting colours with that sadly setting sun. The darkness drew me forth to toil among the frothy warring waves. Long sailed I with no light to guide my way—for I had killed my heart, which was my compass.

Adrift alone through the arctic dark I stood; a blinded lookout with no soul to spy. An unearthly vessel approached alongside, garbed in bleak blackness, its sails darker than the night. Charon called and I heeded his hail. The waves abated as I took his hand and stepped forth into that melancholy flood. We sailed together in pensive poise, until I could remember no other colour than the surrounding black.

The days coalesced as we sailed along; two lone bodies not fit for any form of partnership. As I reflected on a memory I had often visited I spied a raven circling above. Her obsidian feathers gleamed in the surrounding gloom. Our eyes found each other’s as she dove down to greet me. Landing on the bowsprit I took her in. Obsidian shifting into onyx, the blackness that she bore shifted and transfixed me, brightening the nothing that had encompassed me.

Lost in her eyes something burgeoned forth from deep within. She cawed and darted to my shoulder as clouds convened in the iridescent sky. My perilous neighbor stood unmoved, fading as the glinting colours of the newly rising sun shot forth to push back the nothingness. My eyes went white as the light swallowed me up.

I awoke washed up on shore, greeted by the gentle lapping of the waves as they caressed the stoic earth. I heard her before I spotted her and spied her farther down the beach, leading me to my washed up craft. Inside I found all the beauty I had left behind, long forgotten and abandoned, but fresh as the day I had left them. Deep within the pile shined my heart, beating in slow rhythmic fashion I held it in my hands and felt all the world again.

You gave me back all that I did once lose,
This heart of mine I freely give to you.

Rose Sonnet

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Long have I toiled in the endless dark
In search of something I could not define,
And finding nothing worthy of remark
I did my soul to loneliness consign.

I let the fog enshroud and block the light
And turned my steps to solemn solace face.
Not ready for those eyes that shone so bright,
A gleaming visage full of gorgeous grace.

O! How her radiance cut through so deep
Dispersing from my mind the stifling grey
Quick’ning my heart to take another beat;
A torrent of beauty before me lay.

Possessing a true touch that eases strife,
You gave these dead and fading eyes new life.

Stop After the Quote

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All self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously. 

Tom Robbins

The familiar saccharine smell greets my nose
A slight sharp sting as I receive the dose.
An old memory that always floods forth
To change my heading as I veer off course.

 What did you expect from me?
I am a scavenger of hearts.

Here lies a Flower so sweet and divine
Offering that which I can’t return in kind.
The lone survivor growing in a field
Burnt down to ash by that which is not healed.

I spent a lifespan with no cellmate.
Why can't they just look the other way?

The Questions I never wanted to know
Impart in my mind things that should not grow.
I board this ship to take my final leave
Alone, bereft of all, so I can grieve.

How are things on the west coast?
Today my heart roams the empty beaches.
No, I don't want a taste of victory.
No, I don't want to feel the wind.
I just want to be buried among the waves.

Curtain Call

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Six years gone by; been awhile. A group dispersed across the globe; lost a little. A door left open; desolate in the desert. No path direct ahead in which to bear my barren steps. A heart left gazing towards the open sea. I feel as though the hour glass of my soul lies in detainment. Anxiously awaiting my hand to turn its hyperbolic cage; resuscitating it from its stagnant state.

Facing in detached reverence the reflection of my dreams and current reality, I stand here fighting every urge to flee. I’ve cheated time and it has finally caught up to me—now tearing at my eyes to claim all that I stole so long ago. Forcing me to see the wasteful wake I have thus forged, and the despondency of my life’s dereliction. Surveying the solemn cells of my past memories knits together a discordant tapestry of tragedy.

The hope I’ve long longed for listlessly lies in between the cracks that run through this fractured form.

I was never meant to stay here.
I’m afraid to move forward into the unknown.
I’ve sat still in this stagnant theatre of my soul. Each burgeoning breath growing wearier as I struggle to keep open my weighty eyes to the growing dim that shrouds my heart.

I just want to know that in the end, when the gauntlet was thrown down, I reached out to take hold. That when my lip split open on the first punch thrown, I sucked it in and put my hands back up. That when the ground greeted my broken cheek as a pillow, my eyes still splayed wide. That I gritted my loosening teeth and sweetly sucked in one more nasally breath, to push myself up to my full height for one last go. That I let loose a final roar from the aphotic abyss within—shaking the foundations of my own soul before the curtain of the melancholy flood comes forth to claim these lifeless eyes.

Orion’s Arrow

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The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

Joseph Campbell

I’ve watched the stars pass overhead through four different seasons now. It seems as though just last night I spied Orion’s silver bow gleaming far above me in this knowing night sky. His eye twinkling as though winking at me to tell me that his arrow will light the way ahead. Four years and still I have not found where it lays. And as night draws near the more dim the dark I descend into.

Have I wandered off the path again?
Have I lost the great light within?
Who shines down on me now?

I fear the night’s bright lights have been obscured by the convalescing clouds of my mind. Everything was so clear when arriving here. The path was straight and laid bare; well lit and full of promise. Now I’m surrounded by winding wilderness. Where this forest ends I have no clue: no guide above to see me through.

The brambles bristle across my skin; breaking through to brandish blood, as I slowly forward bore. My skin alights with fire as searing sores turn to scars. Layering on top of each other with each new daunting day. I know not what I toil towards, but fear to stop to never start again.

What was the reason why I started this journey?
I seem to have forgotten.
Who was I when I started down this path?
I seem to have forgotten.

But then I see, coming through this midnight mist, the formidable form of my partner in this craft. We dance and skip and move through a moment that withers not away. And standing there in quiescent time I see the light of that arrow shot, glinting in the eyes of my partner. Thus am I transported out of this trepidation and returned home: back to the craft I know and love.

For whenever I lose myself amidst the amorphous rabble that raucously roars through this laborious life, I have but only to look in my fellow artist’s eyes and the path I lost is once again exposed before me. I will always fail to tread this path alone; for the artist’s soul craves collaboration.

A Katelog

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I’ve seen this beauty only twice before;
A radiant splendor greatly Divine.
A fresh vitality that can restore
This Heart anew and bring it forth in line.

To see such beauty twice is rare indeed
And so I never thought to count a third.
Confined to Darkness I did thus concede,
To never more for Beauty write a word.

But then I happened on your eager eyes
Reflecting back the most enchanted Light,
That ever did come down from God’s great sky.
Enlivening my own with fresh new sight.

For where tonight I was a waning glow
On sight of you my heart began to grow.