How I came to meet the phoenix:
I must look upon a book with yellowed pages,
ripped and torn, damp and dirty, it survived the rusted clock,
the cold, dark clock � for now.
In the beginning, I took the lives of many others for one man
that I had kissed the ring of and buckled my knees.
�You owe your duty to your country,� they would say.
This was why I found myself travelling the scorched plains,
travelling with men that I did not like, nor them to me,
wading through rivers of deep red blood � a body here, a body there.
leaving them in the shadows behind - we were primitive, barbaric animals.
One day I found myself alone, left to die like the ones I had left behind before.
there was an old man I encountered in the shadows,
he drew a sword to me � I acted first � I drew mine unto him,
he lay dead, giving his contribution to the river he now lay in.
Around came all his friends of the game, men of age and shape,
they glanced upon the bloody mess; the light shone upon their eyes,
and with fire burning their hearts, performed vigilante justice unto me.
I should have left that world behind, departing on a white ship overseas,
but the elderly ladies in black, fighting for their hold on the sphere,
insisted I remain in the space of mortal men, for I had taken the white life
from their wrinkled, old hands � it was theirs to take, their possession.
I was cast into a metal box, living in a world without the sickle on a staff,
I could be staring into the cold, red eyes of the cloaked man,
and still I would see each passing sun.
each day was now dark, and I was a traveller of night.
I stumbled upon a house without a host �
just a bird that was yellow and croaked sad melodies;
flames would take its body, old and grey, and then explode in fireworks, new life.
A majestic swan would rise from cinders and ashes
but never would he cross the fires of hell, nor the gates of heaven,
nor swim in the basin of life.
He is the mirror that the ladies placed in the house, long before,
that I would look into and glimpse only myself,
And I would pivot my feet, look behind me, and see the phoenix perched in the ashes.
The flaming red feathers shall rest in the attic, as the
clock continues to rust
And spins to an unreachable horizon.