“A Poet’s Lamentation”
© 2025 by Michael L. Utley

pardon my sorrow
and forgive my weeping soul
my humble supplication
loosed into the void on raven’s wings
to fall on deafened ears of fickle gods

there is no recourse but to hemorrhage
wring my bleeding heart of every drop
of my wretched existence
rend the sinews from my bones
and flay me naked

in this bleakest night
‘neath the bitter howling stars
my armature gleams ghastly
pale, my dynamo has stripped its gears
my lidless eyes see all and naught at once

as galaxies cavort and novae scream
tunes atonal to eternity
and singularities gorge
on time itself, I writhe in
insignificance

what of sacrifice
what of tears that stain the path
to heaven or hell, what of
all the shattered promises, edicts
proposed to bridge sepulchral crevasses

to heal humanity, to proffer hope
all I hear is silence, all I see
are forsaken blasted lands
smoking ruins, open graves
all I feel is dread

words in lieu of souls
that is all the poets have
to lay upon the chantry
of contrition, penitence conveyed
through lifetimes etched in stone and signed in blood

a universal verse, an astral dirge
seeking meaning in obscurity
the great myst’ry locked away
far beyond my lexicon
all words have failed me