I didn’t ask for a photo,
For that moment to remain,
Though, captured, it is an emblem,
Of my rainy mood, and when
I look on the stones, and
Of their green moss wet,
As the rain falls now and yet,
While most see dreadful weather,
I find my heart full, a-tether
To dark times, always
Under dark skies.
© SXT 2023
An impossible omen, bright,
The red cardinal in the rime and frost
Of this iced morning. What symbol do I take?
Of my viewing, what sign is importuned?
When such bloody banners rise stark,
In the thickets of dead-grass gray,
They are not subtle hues, but floods
To vision. No, it cannot be just chance,
Surely more than circumstance’s dance.
© SXT 2023
Sun on wings, flutter, flee,
Off away behind the shading shed,
You may return, yet, having fled,
Why not stay away awhile gone,
I’ve no worry, no great need to smile again,
At our chance meeting today, perhaps tomorrow a want
To encounter your flying, fleeting jaunt,
As midmorning hushes the grassland growth.
© SXT 2023
Black limbs against the cobalt daybreak,
Turning toward gray on muted grey,
The tree tips bend and sway, not break,
And dance there high off in the cold,
Tempus Fugit, growing old.
© SXT 2023
Any flame in biting cold,
Any light in shadow black,
Any pill for dread so deep,
Any tincture just to sleep.
Any fuel to start the car,
No thought for an engine’s health,
Let it smoke, exhaust it’s fumes,
She must move, I’ve things to do
While warm, a-lit and unafraid,
And rested in this cavalcade,
A road of crux-lined-colonnades,
All these things I’ve bought, I’ve paid,
As my time and mind do fade.
© SXT 2023
High up caw the crows,
Beneath overcast smothered sun,
On this dreary warm-in-winter day.
Unsure why they sway this way,
A cool refrain is offered you,
“We are black in gray, in blue,
And wading through your time,
Sad and pressed, no need to lie,
Tell us, listener low,
How fares your sky?”
© SXT 2023
A ravening year, all
On a hunt, looking for
Peace and Prosperity, yet
Denying that they do not lay in isolation,
Dreaming they are from Pain, apart.
If one finds them alone, together,
In that stormy-clear, weirding weather,
There, surely is a clever devil’s art.
Say then, beg, “Come now fiend, give us
Your tricks and spells,
I’ll sooner sign forsaken pacts, than
Persist again and again,
In such a year’s suffering swells.”
© SXT 2022
A fog upon my thoughts,
And misty middays without end.
Send, please send the sun,
Nix delay, let wait be done.
Do not so wend, in haste be stark.
As we who soak in winter’s dark,
And seize the cold, we wait in pain,
For birdsong morning’s light again.
© SXT 2022
Nothing in the deep night to fear,
Except the low light, my dearest to me,
My favorite who married me in this dark.
Know that I still feel the empty
Space, constantly. It gnaws away even
Now, joined with you, it is an awful pang,
Bitter regret. It is the same fret as my last
Fret. So please, stay, hold my hand
As the cold comes on further,
With every rising dawn.
© SXT 2022
Well off and up into the cold,
Snowy white falls in my mind,
And safe inside a cobbled cabin, with
What I always leave behind, behind. Away
From fear of what I cannot find, here
I stay still in soaked silence, insulated
Against wailing, whistling winds outside, just
To be alone, just
To hide.
© SXT 2022
I write stuff when something begs to me to write. The goal is to write ten-thousand things before I die. I tend to be morbid, reflective and personal.
