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“Divided - No tides of time or distance will wash away your step. It does not fleet as they do, those gladiators and their mighty spears or the beasts that howl into the dark for release.
Our story carves deeper, pitilessly, infinitely. A wound that bleeds the ink that stained your palm and the tears of an impossible tomorrow.”
― RJ Arkhipov

“The Offing - And if the sky itself, no matter its hue, were to fracture... What then? Would I then know freedom's name?

In my wake lies the shore—a past where I had been happy—refusing to yield to the tide. Before me, upon the horizon, is the sun... hesitant... inert... A new day cannot rise if its ancestor does not fall. Am I but a pawn in this game? I cannot command the sun to set, nor will the moon to take its place and wash the shore away. That power belongs to kings.

To drown in the offing.
Such sovereign beauty. Such exquisite pain.”
― RJ Arkhipov

“What Will Linger/Hollow of Him - They crept so quietly back. Mere hints of words, at first, then whispers in the loud echoing a winter past. In this place, hollow of Him, his poetry resounded. I could almost taste the fragments of the worlds he had discovered. I remember the ache in his words; you could see each syllable smoulder in his gaze.”
― RJ Arkhipov

“The 32 Society by Stewart Stafford

Fight to the last piece, they said,
Icons of state bring up the rear,
Grunt pawn's first blood duty,
Let the board's body count commence.

Equine knight in dog-legged battle,
Warrior bishop's angular support,
Scorpion's claw pincer movement,
Then, the trap slams mercilessly shut.

The field wiped clean of combatants,
The aristocracy's barren playground,
Royals tour their chequered court,
Pieces reassembled as war restarts.

© Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford