Ars Brevis

Critique?
I 'aven't got the 'art to do it.

Come, padre

Elevate, intoxicate:
"This act decides your final fate."
With your wafer and your wine,
I see you've finally lost your shine.

Like the stained glass window pane glass,
And the glass that is the Chalice,
You conceal a dubious spirit:
Not cruel, but slightly callous.

Sing your songs in archaic tongues:
Wagging tongues suppress the weak.
Do you say your evening prayers
With your tongue pressed to your cheek?

Come, padre, the time is nigh,
And if our Lord should yet return,
He'll find his congregation high,
But much will have to be unlearned.

Impasse

And we sit beneath the evening trees,

amongst leaves,

that have lived their days in captivity:

Never allowed to be free.

Held to their branches,

from daylight to dark.

Until they die,

and then are - almost cruelly -

cast aside.

How apt, I think -

and gently smile.

To myself of course.

Humour like that could

end with us

shouting ourselves hoarse.

We pause to sit a while,

and then we move, like seasons

through a weathered groove:

Repeating cycles of love and hate:

But perhaps this is how we relate.

We are too old now to drift apart,

it's youth that follows a reckless heart.

We cannot leave, and this we know

For we have nowhere else to go.

And nowhere else we'd rather be,

and so my love, you're stuck with me.

Finding Faults

You try so hard to be different,
But yet you're all the same:
Happy, faceless people,
playing a happy faceless game.

I see through all your different acts,
Your many imperfections,
You might just say I have a knack:
but alas! - through introspection.

Hurt to Hurt

They twist and flail in air once uttered.
Words half spoken: half muttered.
As if by some devious intent,
They change their meanings once they're sent.

And as we sit to talk our hearts,
Our minds are reeling:
Should words really separate us from
each other's feelings?

Schadenfreude

I do know I should do my bit,
To ease the suffering in the world.
But still as long as you're in it,
I might as well neglect my part;
With you, misery is an art:
Your sadness never quite gets old.

Epitaph

Come with me:
Let us be
the gentle evening
that fades to dusk.

And when at last
our days have passed,
and we lie
side by side -
"God with us Abide":

Let us find they passed
as all things must.
And left us both
in peace, at peace at last.