By Paul F. Kisak

The Scent of Heaven

When shadows of soldiers
Fill the muster’s last hall.
The muse will replace
The sad bugler’s frail call.

This is the peace of dreams
For both young and old.
Let no one feel pain,
Go without or feel cold.

’Tis not a condition that
Must wait post ’pocalypse.
It is within our grasp
As common ground enlightens wit.

Struggle as we must
To see through the fog.
The light’s worth the journey
The past but a cog.

Symbol Over Substance

Symbolism takes a shortcut through thought
and attempts to provoke premature action.
Trilemmas fester and stagnate
while dogma and propaganda stir the pot;
revealing a holy war as the ultimate oxymoron.

’Tis best to look away and reserve glia
for better things that tend to vivify free and original thought.

What separates ritual from motive?
Is not ritual to placate and still the mystery in our soul;

the constant yearning to understand or appeal
to that which is greater than ourselves.

Communication and understanding succumb
to the diurnal onslaught of mind numbing symbols
as if to seduce the actors to that of a bureaucratic crop.

And if a crop we be;
then there is a harvest.

Tempus Semper Fugit

I once traveled faster than light.
It felt like stillness, ’twas dark as night.
I saw no angels or holy glow;
No passage of time that I could show.
But when I arrived before I left.
Déjà vu kept my mind, completely bereft.
This confused and confounded my reality so;
That I did it again to undo the woe