Sacrifice Play [Common Meter]

A prayer was made at the altar --
a prayer no one could hear.
A sacrifice had been promised
of someone all held dear.

But not one soul would take the knife,
and do the wicked deed:
to take that life, an unearned life
and speak the evil creed.

They dragged the victim to the rim
of an old volcano.
Just one kick would be all it took;
still, they all said, "Hell no!"

What kind of beastly deity
could fault them for failing?
The kind whose sense of right and wrong
is fucked beyond ailing.

Nordic Summer [Kyōka]

nordic summer.
the wee hours look like either
sunrise or sunset
is upon us, and
either way, it's true

Avalanche [Free Verse]

One false footing
erases the screeched blackboard
writing that'd formed in my mind
& 
everything becomes a blank, white
emptiness --

Not a good empty.
Not a good quiet.
The emptiness of blinding pain.

That's the slow, cold death
of falling into a drift
and then cascading,
tumbling,
tumbling,
in an avalanche.

Wrenched asunder -
or so it feels -
and left to go numb in a
silence so total 
that i know 
it's my first experience 
with true silence. 

We all fall down?
That's what the plague rhyme says,
isn't it? --

Madmen & Holymen,
and those who take this fall
and are twisted into a 
grotesque blend of both.

Which way is up?
Tiny seedlings can tell,
but I cannot.

I'm lost --
50/50, I dig myself deeper
into my own doom.

My life trickles in a file of hours,
dripping into that dim distance 
of non-time. 

I'll stay lost until the spring thaw
when I'll ride the glacial runoff
to complete my tumble
as a gray and bloated thing.

The Internet [Verse in Tetrameter]

We've reached the place where screams aren't heard.
You'd think they'd build into a din,
but one can't grasp a single word.
It has become silent as sin.

The angry words are shot to black -
that inky void that's unpatrolled,
It's silent, yet all're struck by flak.
Still, no one admits being sold.

But each life 's a product consumed.
They wail away the night and day,
pretending they're not rightly doomed.
Some will say that it's here to stay...

True, but are we?

Bright Heights [Haiku]

sun-warmed rooftop,
clouds down in the valley --
i breathe in bright heights

Haunted Forest [Tanka]

trees stand straight
in the woods they call "haunted;"
all i see are trees,
but maybe they're ghost trees
and I see nothing at all

Color Town [Lai]

a colorful town -
no beige, gray, or brown -
flows wide

flows river-like down 
that soft, rolling moun-
tain side

watching sun go down
from the old playground,
i slide