Chalice
			An Illusion to the Temporary Real
			

	The jesters banquet

One must be remiss when their prospects of bliss
Will abandon all reason to blend with decay
A banquet of fools in the lunatic season
The cards that I've dealt are so vulgar today

Enchanted with the flow
I swim these streams
Of tears
Once torn apart
That meet as one
To dwell beneath the eye in realms of dreams
And thrive within the shadows of the sun

It is through this I will drift empty handed
With a destiny sailing half mast
This sun, may it set on obscurity yet
And arise when the now is the past

I cannot recall why I'm taking a fall
I'm abandoning reason
This blend is decay
I dine with the fools in the lunatic season
The cards I've been dealt are the cards that I play

Enchanted with the flow
I swam these streams
Of tears
Once torn apart
That met as one
And dwelt beneath the eye in realms of dreams
But dried beyond the shadows of the sun


	An illusion to the temporary real
	
Chagrined, I lie ensconced between the dreaming and the dead 
Let my eyes perceive degrees and not directions 
For the sanguine expectations that embellished prior years 
Are the fervent hopes now lost in imperfections 

The emaciated soul seeks to conceptualize itself 
In an illusion to the temporary real 
Within, thus beyond, we segregate our spirits 
From the probing hands that touch but cannot feel 

Through cognitive dysfunction aspirations stay utopian 
Like dying leaves that to their branch still hold 
Unaware their will may yet delineate futility 
They agitate a flame already cold 

Plagued with trepidation through the volatile states 
Foreordination links me to the now 
For even if I sought escape I'd only leave despair 
And my death would be one final awkward bow
 

	Vista
	
Never shall I love another earthborn face
And I (the knave,the fool) will stay inept
Condemned to forge a barren hell
To deify and then dispel
That summers' love....... in winters' rain I wept

At the vista on the edge of forever
Where the party is culminating thus
Iago deals a hand again
That I have not the wit to comprehend

Above all else our birthright to be shackled will remain
And paths we choose can only be so wide
To greener pastures hence?
(Who knows?)
The joker rocks the fence
But in pastures, green or barren, we abide

At this vista on the edge of forever
Where the party has culminated thus
The deified can now ascend
To where I've not the wit to comprehend

With the currency of damnation
On whom do we spend our sorrow?
 

	Catalepsy in staccato rain
	
My better self was always born tomorrow
Though the wings of failed seraphs I would borrow
As nights became obsessed with introspection
The days a contravention of reflection
Within the id a stranger did I form
A lily on the waters of a storm
I always searched the mountain for the chasm
The catalepsy caught within the spasm
I can feel no more as this empty shell
I can feel no more as this empty shell
Delusions in the grandeur of the dawn
My better self , in essence, was stillborn


	To death betrothed
	
Her mind engulfed with loathsome thoughts,the devil and dismay
The burden of lifes' theatre and the stage on which we play
Autumnal sun, no peace upon that burning, pale skin
Frustration writhes around her yet the pain, it writhes within

Amidst the roaming clouds her seething feelings slowly burn
In knowing that he placed above all others shan't return
For time will pass and never shall he come again to grace
The wondrous glow he once professed to see upon her face

To death betrothed
Her union now a myriad of lies
As dry in every way as burning sands
In midnights' cover he covets another
The all alluring vesper lover
Left every grain to filter through her hands

Alone again to reminisce of when her eyes were privy
To the grandeur that is morn of every day
Resplendent still, she walks in ghostly mists of those betrayed
To mourn encroaching dusk and self decay
To fade as light into the night, forever incomplete
Alone to watch the spectrum turning gray
 

	Abyss
	
Immutable, in mists of gold beyond this Acheron
How grandiose the touch must be when each caress is gone
How bitter rests bereavement on the souls of those bereaved
Funereal is love and in eternity conceived

This grim façade of misery we never chose to share
Do not the spineless crumble when their backbone isn't there?
The singular amalgam that I found in none but you
Scatters in the dissipating remnants on the dew

The dawn shall bring what lay beyond
The shadows of your dreams
A crescent of tranquillity
A diamond's final gleam
Alone you strive to greet the skies as fate's benign embrace
Seduces from a sanctuary beyond the life we face
A love to curse this loveless earth
Forever is your portal
To humankind your last retreat 
Fleeting and immortal


	The stigma of an age
	
As one we will embrace the dusk 
Of times we all lament 
For every aspiration lost 
And every fortune spent 
Such hellish thoughts relinquished 
In the nightmares heaven sent 

Reflecting on the obsolescent 
Moments that we gauge 
Embody what is life 
Is just the stigma of an age 
A monkey is the king 
Of every kingdom in a cage 

Exquisite is the maya 
That pervades in every way 
As life, the subtle prelude 
To a posthumous display 
Embraces like a lover, as a thief 
It walks away 

As babes we thread dimensions 
Of an aged infinity 
From a past bereft of vision 
To the darkness do we flee 
The monkey may be caged but tell me 
Which of us is free?