The July Featured Poet is Nathan Rowark
Please feel free to email Nathan at: nathan.rowark@live.co.uk
SANCTIMONIOUS SAINT AT THE SINNERS BALL
Sanctimonious saint at the sinners ball
and my ticket’s turned to dust.
As the tumultuous drums drown the vodka and rum
flowing over the bodies of lust,
Through the rose-tinted scry of my twisted mind’s eye
stands a poet and beggar aghast,
As the dwarfed brigade of the preaching concave
are consumed in the fires of their past.
Making my way to the bar, seeing hope from afar,
I pass by a fashion’s high sin.
As she tilts down her head her eyes roll up in red
and thick diamante garrotes neck and limb.
In a moment of shock, running demons amok
in a last ditch attempt for the door;
A man stops me in threads and what descends
from his lips are the reasons, what whys and what fors.
Said he, "This place that you mar is living proof that we are
all the deepest desires yet to come.
"And if you continue this fashionable song, you will stay here,
and damned be every one."
Unknowingly eloped in the thoughts of my hope,
he did not see the truth fly his way,
And with fire in my heart and courageous art,
I dispensed my own song for display.
Said I, "The devils you speak are not just old and effete
but their manners are portrayed in your words,
"All the people I know this way fight to not go,
for none of this can be real anyway."
In mid note of the rhyme, I found frozen in time
the devil's party-night sign on the wall,
And asleep in my glass, I fathomed the crass
revelers above looming tall.
I passed out on wine, in mid-flow of a good time,
and a taxi was called for my home.
Yet with blurry eyes fixed on the bar spirits mixed
I could swear I saw shadows still roam.
In the back of the cab facing the evening’s tab,
I recalled the dark sight of dreams,
Because it often relates that subconscious warnings do state
that the path is not all that it seems.
UNENDING BATTLE OF SELF
Under fire and in chaos wrought the battle for my soul is fought.
Within my mind, self untaught takes arms against the dark onslaught.
A final stand becomes too large as dogma flashes the fields to charge.
Casualties are doubts homage to the fall of vanities’ entourage.
Rising up with a fearsome sigh, the bowman’s anger fills the sky.
With shields smashed and hopes goodbye, my conscience is the last to die.
The victors speech fill gaps unsaid and gloats upon the bleak now wed
amongst the blades; by river bled I rise up and leave the dead.
The war for self is rarely lost and budgeted in acceptable cost.
If spirit powers down too soft then apathy’s the coin not tossed.
The wage is bad; the nights are long to solidify in this peculiar song.
Once more to take the highroad strong? And stand against the rights of wrong?
The field turns to ash and dust in empathic view of my foe’s dark lust.
Reflection mirrored of nighttime rust that struggles for this world to bust.
Our blackened side fulfilled by hate, to balance out the neutral weight.
Tipping scales for either bait endangers self and mental state.
Mead moon shines with silvery light to witness self’s gargantuan fight.
Neuroses troops poised in flight, the battle royale now far from sight.
The winning move deployed in zest is how the wretch can cheat this test,
And as karma blows in from the west, I dispatch his form at my behest.
Job mentally done for now, at least I commit to the truth of the unending beast.
The dual of humanities’ pie as meat, forever to plague it’s soulful seat.
CROSS BUT SHAN’T
The bridge that I should cross but shan’t is that of which I could but can’t.
Cold metal structures lay to lead but going there will make me bleed.
I sit upon the bank and gaze at the unfolding of the plans she’s laid.
Knowing damage yet to come, if I followed her dreams undone.
No longer one that wants to save, I leave her side to watch her cave.
It fills me with the depths of dread to watch unfurl what’s in her head.
A beauty that to me resides the hopes of two that well in eyes,
Yet effective pull of darkest strife now takes her down as nighttime’s wife.
Nathan Jonathan David Lee Rowark was born in the pagan county of Hertfordshire, England. Nathan has been writing since he was six years old and he wrote his first novel at the age of twelve when he moved to Essex.
Nathan currently writes screenplays and splits his time between running his own business and directing short horror movies. At thirty-two years young, Nathan's hopes are to follow his first love, which is poetry.
Nathan is Wiccan which he feels, along with life experiences, has helped to form ideas for his poetry. His family's surname was originally Warlock and it means, according to Norse sailors, "to bind with words," or "spell singer." Therefore, words are in his blood.
If he were asked to sum up his love of poetry, it would be the way a poet can convey situations, emotions and physical environments with just a few words and is the only medium he has ever found that can have such power. Nathan is an eclectic human being and has discovered that an open mind is the passage to the divine.