everything I once knew

Everything I once knew

Grows apart and forgotten

Like some dull stick

Scarred and mutilated.

The need to believe in – hope

Hopeless

Hazy eyed and blind

Ignorance

Eats the young

Eats the old

Fear sweeps to the floor

Grows bold to the danger

Man’s desire to be honoured

A flame and a reflection

What’s constantly being said

Is transitory as an unmade bed

Where the flower of youth lays its head

Calls back a time

When tenderness began to crack

The goodness in your eyes closed over

Head down

You stumbled from success to success

Bowed down by victory

Locked inside with a sadness

What you could have done

If green tenderness was intact

If you exchanged the combat of the torturer

For compassion

Listened to the presence inside

In silence

The private hints

You could have been so much more

Rich and fully fed

A life intact and unspent.