Be as You will

Life was given.
In its birth dreams, hopes, and promises formed.
Yet the act of living impedes.
Time slips freely away while everyday planning is made.
Bystanders cast their stones.
The path walked feels ever alone.
Intent falls victim to pain by false judgement.
Who dare estimate the cost of a load they do not bare? Compassion long gone.
Like the door to home.
Stolen memories nothing more.
Yet the gift is still given.
Will be forever.
The foundation to live a life worth more.
All life is precious yet so rarely valued.
The world pushes down those who struggle to carry on. Where do you stand when the long night is drawn?
Are you helping to achieve dreams or ripping them from someone's arms?
Be as you will.
Be careful as you are.
Empathy is a dying breed in a world lost to greed and war. (C) R.M.Brandon 2012

Around the Corner

Beneath the city skyline two old men watched the world walk past on the stoop of an apartment building. "You are so lucky. I wish I could still hear the sweet call of the birds as they frolick on the lawn." Said the old man to his mate.
His mate turned in astonishment, "What I wouldn't give to see the glisten of a black birds feathers or watch the sun as it falls from the sky, just one more time." His voice was a shout to accommodate the old the man's hearing defecit. Tears welled beneath his darkened glasses at the corners of his cloudy eyes.
While the old men sat talking a buisness man walked by. His gait hurried, he shuffled his brief case from one arm to next while holding a cell phone to his ear and chewing an apple between "Yes "and "sure". With a nod he passed the men a look of envy on his face. Whimiscally he uttered, "What I wouldn't give to spend my day just watching the world pass by."
The buisness man rounded the corner, the apple he half heartedly chewed slipped from his hand into a trash reseptacle as he fumbled between phone calls and files. Between the buildings he briskly passed a young woman in tattered clothes eyed his discarded treat. She rushed to the trash reseptacle on his passing and plucked the half eaten apple into her heavily dinge covered hands. Retreating to the darkness of the alleyway she pressed the juicy red to her lips with a far off look in her eyes, " What I wouldn't give to have enough food to waste half an apple."
From an adjecent building an old woman peered from her window watching the young girl chew a delicious red apple. A low hum filled the air in the room around. Faint electronic whirls and beeps of the machines that kept her alive. Trapped inside four walls with only a birds eyed view of the world walking by she thought to herself, "What I wouldn't give to be able to feel the wind on my face, the dirt beneath my feet, taste food once again. Even being a beggar would be better than the life I'm in."
Just up the block the sound of sirens filled the air. The static filled chirp of a first responders radio, " MVA vs bicyclist corner of Broadway and Pine. DOA." Shaking his head he placed a sheet over the remains of a tiny body. Pink Barbie handlebars jetted from the tire of a sideways sedan. He looked from the apartment buildings in the area where onlookers emptied into the streets. The Sedan's driver stumbled drunkenly around the roadway towards the EMT's oblivious to the severity of the scene around him.
The Medic spoke quietly to his partner wiping tears from his eyes with blood soaked hands, "She couldn't have been more than four. Will people ever realize how precious life is?"
Life is but a fleeting moment in time. Don't let it pass you by.
(C) R.M. Brandon 2012

Beast in the Bedsheets

It is an odd comfort, knowing those I have admired the longest in my life were little known before their demise. Apparent now in retrospect, word must travel slowly if it is to have any length to its stay.

"Fifteen minutes of fame" commonplace. The in, the here, the now. Those are the faces and names that rise quickly, then stiffle without a second thought.
Yet, the names who live in eternity, the sweet words that comfort generation upon generation, never experienced fifteen minutes while breathing.
So what then of aspirations? Is there comfort in the future even if it is not lived?

But writing is a torturous beast. It is not to seek fame. Nor is it truely to be heard. Those are things of second thought. Writing is an outlet, an escape from the pictures, sounds, faces, that fill the waking mind. It is the pressure valve that segregates sanity from ridicule.
The nature of the beast is all consuming. Tiny snippets stored through out the day that flash in the mind's eye at sunset begging their tale be told.

It is the whisper of the wind amongst the trees, the light cascading on a pile of fallen leaves. It is the tenderness in a mothers eye, the look of a father with pride. It is life in its light, and even more so in darkness. The tales of those long forgotten.

The beast consumes me, or do I it?
Never dance with the Devil if you value your soul but what if by the making your soul if pure coal? What if by design you created your own undoing? What is life but the process of dying?

Yet into the light once again life is far more than breathing in. So writing too must be more than mechanics, more than grammar and schematics.
For a house to stand it must have a foundation. For a story to sell it must weave a tale worth saying.
The story never ends, merely begins again. For life with the beast is a merciless journey.

The line between sanity and insanity is occasionaly drawn by those without imagination. In a world of walls why barricade the mind?  Only within the pages of a book can one travel the worlds beyond in any form.
The beast is a beautiful friend.
~After the release~ R.M.Brandon 2012

One Moment

Silence

The silence
Deafening
The shadow of a memory

Watching as the wheels turn
My heart
Drives away from me

What is loss
But the ending of a time
The parting of a smile
Even  if but for a small while

Silence consumes
Where laughter once rang
The skies once blue
Now darkened grey

Like the bitterness of winter
Cold, stagnant times
Awaiting spring’s sweet revival
Flowers and sunshine

My heart drives away
Tears stream  down my face
Yet it is only for a moment

Sacrifice one
That many more may come
Even after winter
The sun warms the earth again

The shadow of their memory
Clings tightly to my mind
Like the ringing  of their laughter
Promises for better times.

R.M.Brandon 8/13/12