Inheritance

His very first cry

Was in the in the name of his mother,
Who died before seeing
The son that she bore.
A child of desire
Lacking sister or brother,
An anonymous father –
The son of a whore.

His very first words

Were the words of his father
Who died before living
Beneath his own hand.
A man of the past
And a child of the future
With the need for affection
Yet a death wish on man.

His very first crime

Made him king of existence
By challenging life
With a death of his own.
Escaping the law
With a murderous persistence,
He lived the same life
His father had known.

After killing young whores

Who sold sex to the aged,
He stole his own life
Like his father before him.
What cruel legacy
Our parents left
That we must grow
In the image of them.

Blue Skies Above

In skies of blue are birds of steel

That chase the wind blown clouds
In a hopeless effort to conceal
The fate that they enshroud.

And we who give the boys our praise

Don’t see the death they make.
And yet we too have numbered days –
Retaliation in death’s wake.

The bodies scattered on the ground

That someone loved and knew,
In silent cities freed from sound
Though the sky above’s still blue.

Valentine

When used to playing the hurting game.

To find a man who deserves no pain.
One day of love and love anon
Appears too soon and soon is gone.

The silent words and empty pages

Romanticise the war love wages.
And secret admirers are left unknown,
Never hurting the one that they’ll never own.

Yet it’s so hard to leave unsigned

The only chance at love you’ll find.
So we are left, in vain, to dream
Of everything that might have been.

And when alone in later years

You’ll call a name and hope he hears.
By then perhaps it is too late
To put the experience down to fate.

If only lovers when they loved

Had courage and admitted such.
For then each year when hearts do pine
You’ll go on loving your Valentine.

Reflections

When living in crowds

Yet feeling alone,
To suddenly remember
The hell you called home.
To dream of the future
Yet play with the past,
And answer the questions
You once meant to ask.

To think of rejection

When love’s on your mind,
And try to bring back
The life left behind.
To see through the smiles
To the crying within,
And wish you didn’t know now
What you didn’t know then.