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 May 29 Moncrieff
Cadmus
The worst isn’t death.
Death is honest.
It arrives, it ends.
Clean.

The worst is staying.
Breathing.
Functioning.
While everything that made you you
quietly rots beneath the skin.

When you watch your passions
starve to death
and can’t even bother
to grieve them.

When the people you loved
become background noise,
and you answer with nods
because words cost too much.

When nothing is worth arguing for,
and silence feels
like mercy.

This isn’t a fall.
It’s slow erasure
each day
another fingerprint gone
from the glass.

Until one morning,
you look in the mirror
and meet
a very polite stranger.
This poem explores emotional erosion - not dramatic collapse, but the quiet, daily loss of passion, purpose, and self. It reflects the darker side of psychological burnout, where apathy masquerades as peace, and survival becomes indistinguishable from surrender.
 May 26 Moncrieff
Cadmus
There’s something in her I won’t name
A hush of wind, a candle flame.
Not made for grasping, not to own,
She is the wild, the seed, the stone.

She doesn’t try to draw the eye,
Yet still, the world forgets the sky.
She moves as though the earth was told
To cradle life in curves of gold.

Her voice? It’s warmth in twilight air,
A lullaby, a whispered prayer.
Her smile? The sun through window panes,
That touches soul before it rains.

She doesn’t rule - and yet, she reigns.
She doesn’t fight - but breaks my chains.
She’s softness made by nature’s hand
To melt the steel in every man.

She speaks in silence, sees in shade,
And somehow knows what’s not yet said.
She tends, she weaves, she kneels to none,
Yet all I am revolves her sun.

I’ve seen her cry - and not from fear,
But from a strength too deep, too near.
A well of life, a boundless sea
That dares to bloom and still be free.

She is the reason poems start,
The gentle architect of heart.
The one who holds without a grip,
Who builds a world with fingertip.

And if the stars should all erase,
I’d find the universe in her face.
For she’s not mine - she’s something more:
The sacred I was made to adore
This poem is a hymn of reverence - an ode from a man who sees in his beloved not just beauty or affection, but the sacred architecture of life itself. She is not defined by roles or possessions, but by her elemental force: soft yet unyielding, nurturing yet untamed. In her, he perceives the mystery of creation, the poetry of emotion, and the quiet power nature entrusts to the feminine form. It is not submission she inspires, but devotion -  the kind born from awe, not ownership
 Apr 30 Moncrieff
Cadmus
Approach, dear dreamer, if you dare,
But know my skies are thin for air.
My steps are stitched in woven flame,
My name, too sharp for lips of shame.

You came with hands of dust and thread,
A crown of noise upon your head.
No sword, no gift, no golden key,
Yet thought to tame a storm like me.

Did Daedalus forget to warn his son?
Even Icarus soared closer than you’ve done.
You chase the sun but dread the cold,
A heart too timid, a hand too old.

I dance where only giants tread,
I feast where lesser men have fled.
I wear the stars, I breathe the skies,
I kiss the sun where eagles rise.

So take this truth I lay in rhyme:
A throne too high is not a crime.
It is a gift for those who soar
Not for the ones who beg at doors.
 Apr 30 Moncrieff
Cadmus
[Narrator:]
A bird once flew with joy, chasing the horizon.
But the sky grew heavy, and his wings grew tired.
One evening, he fell by the quiet sea.
A young girl found him, her hands full of dreams.

She knelt by his side and asked:

[The Girl:]
I found you trembling near the dreaming tide,
Your feathers torn as though the heavens cried.
Tell me, worn traveler, where have you flown?
What hunger drove you past the worlds you’ve known?

[The Bird:]
I chased the rim where fire and heavens kiss,
A line of gold no hand can ever miss.
I sang to suns, I danced where eagles dared,
I broke my heart on dreams that never cared.

I rose, I fell, I rose again and bled,
Until the winds unwove the life I led.
The sky, sweet child, is vast, but it forgets;
It makes no grave for those it once begets.

The sky is not a temple, but a field of knives.
The stars you seek will teach you how hope dies.
To fly is to wager all you are and own,
And to be forgotten even by the stone.

Freedom is a flame that eats its own,
A summit where the winds strip flesh from bone.
Dreams build their monuments from broken wings;
Songs leave behind the silence that they bring.

[The Girl:]
I hear the hollow echo in your song,
The mourning stitched between the bright and wrong.
Your wings are altars where the old prayers bled;
Your eyes, a ledger of the tears you’ve shed.

Yet if this is the price that freedom claims,
If every flight must carve itself in flames,
Then I will pay with all I have and more.
Better to burn than to be chained ashore.

[The Bird:]
Bold soul, you walk the edge where light falls blind;
You court the storm that cracks the clearest mind.
I too once roared against the tethered clay,
Believing wings could tear the night away.

But listen:
Not every fall redeems the climb.
Not every song survives the mouth of time.
To dream is to accept both birth and grave,
To build, to lose, to give what none can save.

[The Girl:]
Still would I leap, though cliffs erase my name;
Still would I sing, though silence be my claim.
Let it be said: she lived, and she was free
And when the end came, she did not flee.

If dreams devour, let them feast on me whole;
If stars betray, still shall I bless my soul.
Better to vanish in a sky of flame,
Than bear a life untouched by any name.

[The Bird:]
Then fly, fierce child, into the ruthless blue;
Let winds unmake you, they will make you true.
The sky is cruel but it remembers one:
The heart that dares to burn brighter than the sun.
This poem is a metaphorical tale about a young woman challenging the weight of social traditions and limitations, choosing the perilous beauty of freedom over the safety of conformity.
 Jan 27 Moncrieff
Nemusa
Submerged beneath the lake’s golden iris,
her body drifted in surrender,
listening to the music of the universe
spilling its secrets into her veins.
The bird of paradise rose in silhouette,
its plumage a fleeting memory,
like the faces of past lovers
blurring into the haze of confusion.

The hills, black and steady,
stood watch over her solitude.
Their silence mocked her shame,
woven like a spider’s web,
each thread a detail she could not undo.
The lacework of her thoughts—delicate,
but broken—
postponed the weight of reality
for another breath,
another ripple of escape.

This was her last resort,
a refuge abandoned to the wind,
to the flight of birds
and the courage of stillness.
She swam deeper,
chasing the reflection she longed to become,
never wanting to be found.
To a prosperous week ahead ❣️
From bristly foliage
you fell
complete, polished wood, gleaming mahogany,
as perfect
as a violin newly
born of the treetops,
that falling
offers its sealed-in gifts,
the hidden sweetness
that grew in secret
amid birds and leaves,
a model of form,
kin to wood and flour,
an oval instrument
that holds within it
intact delight, an edible rose.
In the heights you abandoned
the sea-urchin burr
that parted its spines
in the light of the chestnut tree;
through that slit
you glimpsed the world,
birds
bursting with syllables,
starry
dew
below,
the heads of boys
and girls,
grasses stirring restlessly,
smoke rising, rising.
You made your decision,
chestnut, and leaped to earth,
burnished and ready,
firm and smooth
as the small *******
of the islands of America.
You fell,
you struck
the ground,
but
nothing happened,
the grass
still stirred, the old
chestnut sighed with the mouths
of a forest of trees,
a red leaf of autumn fell,
resolutely, the hours marched on
across the earth.
Because you are
only
a seed,
chestnut tree, autumn, earth,
water, heights, silence
prepared the germ,
the floury density,
the maternal eyelids
that buried will again
open toward the heights
the simple majesty of foliage,
the dark damp plan
of new roots,
the ancient but new dimensions
of another chestnut tree in the earth.
 Jan 25 Moncrieff
Boris
Kissed
 Jan 25 Moncrieff
Boris
On the mountain
I am the last kissed goodbye
by the sun
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