Into the Darkness [Lyric]

Photograph taken in the "Tunnel of Nine Turns" (九曲洞) in Taroko Gorge (太鲁阁.)
Shadow-striped --
Juxtaposing day with night,
And wrong with right,
And never with always --
Down the long striped
Hallway...
Until it ends in darkness.

“Autumn Within” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [w/ Audio]

It is autumn; not without,
But within me is the cold.
Youth and spring are all about;
It is I that have grown old.

Birds are darting through the air,
Singing, building without rest;
Life is stirring everywhere,
Save within my lonely breast.

There is silence: the dead leaves
Fall and rustle and are still;
Beats no flail upon the sheaves
Comes no murmur from the mill.

Let it Float [Lyric Poem]

Sans fear of dying,
The angst of trying
Is felt and left
To float.

PROMPT: For a Day

Daily writing prompt
If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?

A Buddha / Bodhisattva (if there’s one about these days.) Why? To feel how his (or her) subjective experience compares to my own.

Slipknot [Free Verse]

As I walk through the woods,
I flow through something
As it flows around & against me...

-- Like a slipknot --

I don't know what it is.
I just feel the slightest of drags
As I feel the greatest of exhilarations.

The drag is subtle...

-- Like a slipknot --

What it is in me that slips past
Whatever it is in nature --
I don't know.

But I know there is an interaction,
Of sorts,
Like a free end through a noose...

-- Like a slipknot --

Winter Malaise [Lyric Poem]

One bitter winter afternoon --
Locked under skies so low and gray --
The city slowed in cold cocoon
As what verve remained slid away.

And then the clouds, they broke apart,
And frozen souls began to thaw.
But some needed not the sun's kickstart
To free themselves of winter's maw.

What was their secret? I wish I knew.
To be happy sans the skies of blue.

Queen of Slaves [Lyric Poem]

Of all the masters & all the slaves,
   I find that mind fire burns in waves.
 And sometimes the emotions derail
   too quickly to lengthen the exhale. 

 Trees falling in the forest, unheard,
   can still crush a nest of baby birds.
 Turns out it's not the sound that matters,
    but what the destruction leaves in tatters.

The phrase “Queen of Slaves” comes from a Percy Bysshe Shelley poem (Canto 4, No. 24)

Ghosted [Free Verse]

What passes through me?
   I can't say.

But I feel it move,
   causing bone reverberation
    of a subtle kind.

I feel it deep within,
   but it fades quickly.

I'm moved, but to what,
   I can't say. 

All I know is that something
   has passed through me,
    and made me feel like a ghost.