With heavy influence from “The Hollow Men” and “MacBeth,” and with all due respect to T.S. Eliot and William Shakespeare (please don’t haunt me!)

———————————————————————————————————————————————
                                                             
                                                              The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
-Omar Khayyám

 

We are the wounded men

We are the haunted men
Standing apart we keep it all together

Hearts filled with anger. Alas!
Our thoughts when
They find us alone
Are hot and agitated
As a spark in dry grass
or memories cutting glass
And diamonds

Mass without frame, sound without noise,
Pent up force, motion without intention;

Those who are also chased
With hungry eyes, by life’s tempting vices
Consider us – if at all – as fevered
Angry souls, and
As the wounded men
The haunted men.

Double double toil and trouble

Passion burn and fire bubble

Bitter herbs make fevers cool

We soak them in the deepest pool

         She kneels beside her fire glow
         Hair blowing in the wind, there is no
         Sound but the crackle in the heat

         She boils the water in the stone
         And mixes into paste her own
         Concoction of the bitter, and the sweet

         He’s lying close beside so she can see him
         in his fever dream he cries

         “Get back you fiend, or you’ll be beat!”

         She puts the potion in his hand
         His agitation stirs but then
         He drinks it, a necessary feat.

         His brow bursts into sweat he finds
         His paper once again and takes to     
         writing. The magic is complete

“Hope is the thing with Feathers
Hope is the thing
Hope is
Hope is the

Avoiding the trouble that craves us
Hope is a dream that enslaves us
This is how poetry saves us
Not with a burst, but a glimmer.”

________

Hope is the thing with Feathers – Emily Dickinson