~ 10pm ~

 

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For my cheerleader, my confidant and the only person who keeps me sane some days.

This is a old poem, and still just as relevant today.

Cigars and cider help the words flow

Easy from my mouth to his

We draw in fast, let out slow –

Drink the smoke to breathe the fire

And we’ll ask the gods what they require.

I lean back and grasp the air

Watch it passing though my hand

As fleeting as a teenage care

We are no Romeo and Juliet –

Yet it feels like us against each threat.

He talks of travel, I of pain

We both want to run away

“Would you ever try cocaine?”

Then he relights, puffs into the flame

The ash at our feet like our family name.

Our child rests and so do we

Awake, sleeping on our own

Wishing for times always this carefree

“I can’t stand any people, except you –

Because you are me, through and through.”

He leans in close to tell another’s joke –

Knowing we are the punch line –

I laugh, like a dragon puffing smoke.

“Don’t be bitter darling, they don’t know what they say –

‘Live quiet, do well’, and now, pass me the ashtray.”

The Harrowing of Hell

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Into Sheol He strode, dauntless

Though blood was thick upon His brow

The brass gates behind lying twisted

Like His crown of thorny boughs.

Screaming foul fury and terror 

Legions fled before His bleeding tread

For this one moving strong among them

Was God of the living, and not the dead.

From the bosom of Abraham He took

And turned once more into the night

In the darkness of cold Earth above 

He would be the first resurrected light.

The firstborn of the dead led them forth

Triumphant, Hades was harrowed for New Zion

And who could ever dare stand against Him?

For this Aslan was never a tame lion.

S.K.Downes