Dynasty

Born on some faraway rugged shore
You cried and
harmonized with the shrieking birds
Fled to a tower monolith, locked in dark for a crime you couldn't explain with toys
And flourished there as you began to understand
Thanked your father on bended knee when he showed you
the deceit and lies and threatening flirtation
Shattering the innocence you never could have had anyway
You grew with an empire built on splintered principles and trying to be more
Grew into the glory and fanfare that was your inheritance
Took ahold
(when the leader could no longer stand that fateful morning)
Grasped the strength and power and bloodstained steel of your birthright
And rode,
Always forward
To satisfy the need for those things you never really understood
Looking for approval from some
god you didn't know how to believe in
And fulfilling a craving,
                   not your own
to keep the lines strong

Falls

Tired autumn clouds lie 

Underscoring the too-vibrant, don't-waste-a-minute sky 

As breezes with a familiar tang crumple another leaf corpse into 

Cracked asphalt, 

Suspended in auburn 

                              A wine-colored, brusque syrup of 

Waiting hunched in a halfway 

For the last piano key up-down fanfare of frost 

And no more of the matte-finished summer farewell 

We wait here, a poised kind of stable

Would you refute the irrefutable? 

Try to rebuild as the original Rome, stressed and stretched, finally falls? 

But as we wait for our empire-kingdom-russet

to drift to the ground and for the painters to retire to craving vibrancy once again 

Feast your eyes on this gleam, this harvest, this splendor,

and look out at how blue the ocean is