Rome fell,
the Mongols & Ottomans, too.
Great powers fall
often sans much ado.
[Psst! someday yours will, too.]
They can't help but crumble;
the foundations get rot.
And there's too much weight
to bear, without spurring plots.
Plots and schemes and pandering,
all throughout the State.
Forget those Barbarians, the threat 's
inside the gates.
The Slow Traveller: An intentional path to mindful adventures by Jo Tinsley
Wandering through a new city,
I come upon a bridge:
its rails loaded with locks.
They call them "love locks."
It gets me wondering how many locks
long outlived the love they memorialized?
How many were lust locks --
linked to the bridge before
the couple really knew each other's
vexing peccadillos?
How many were like ill-advised back tattoos,
a lover's name - someone one met in Vegas -
and whose name one wouldn't
otherwise remember,
were it not inked across one's spine
in a 120-point flame-festooned font?
boulders in a pond become the stone monolith islands in a sea.
What is the legacy you want to leave behind?
When my body dies, I see no reason to not let my ego die as well. Trying to do otherwise just seems like a futile plot to keep my snowman upright through July.
in the scrublands, each step raises a dust puff, but rain is coming.
a tiny chapel in the middle of nowhere -- built to last eons.
Do you know how deep the darkness goes? No. Chiaroscuro black conceals all but what's divulged by echoes, and figments spastic minds reveal.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 