Absolue 
Released under the creative commons Deed Found at 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
Copyright May 18, 2006 By Joshua herman

January Twenty-Second

The streetlights flickered and faded,
with the steady beat of Harlem,
as we walked down 125th Street.

We had come for the theater;
My mother, still frugal, paid our way.
Our laughter echoes

As the jazzy music still rattles
In our step, in our minds
We hum the syncopated beat

On her giddy moment of play,
A young passerby stood on a dirty street corner
Twirling a balloon.

As I watch I slowly realize
The yearning within me
And how I am torn between two ideals

At eighteen, I am too old
To enjoy a single balloon,
Too young to enjoy drinks with my mother.

I stood there watching the cars go by,
The horns refusing to stay silent,
Loud as a thunderstorm.

White Office Sestina

In the white office sits a chair
Safe from the rain
Some company if given by a mouse
Who lives inside an old brown shoe
With a table made from, and eraser
A thimble as the mouse's hat

The mouse goes out looking for a new hat
Beyond his boundaries marked by the chair
Then he is startled by a falling eraser
From the sky like the rain
He wishes he was back in his shoe
Then he meets another mouse

This new friend a lost mouse
Far away from his house (a hat)
They both venture back to the shoe
In the white office with the chair
As you look outside the window there is rain
When they reach the shoe they sit at a eraser

They plan where they will go next, beside the eraser
They will find the home of the other mouse
Their pitter patter of their feet sounds like the rain
As they both travel with thimbles on their heads used as hats
Moving past the various office chairs
They can barely make out he shoe

As they depart in the distance stands the old brown shoe
They pass by an eraser
And come up to a chair.
Both of them rejoice like baby mouses
They finally reach their destination, a fedora hat
That has been barely touched by the rain

This dreary office lets in the rain
Unlike the white office with the shoe
The office does protect the fedora hat
That has many erasers
Both of them wish each other well (like a good mouse)
As the mouse departs for the old brown shoe near the chair

As we end this tale of chairs and mice
One lives in a shoe while the other a hat
We should all wish to be safe from the rain and to stay free from our erasures.

Thought Villanelle
I open my eyes and fight with my head
As my thoughts attempt to destroy me
Sometimes I wish that the world would end

I know if I could just mend
My wayward thoughts that twist and turn
I could open my eyes and not figtht with my head

But my thoughts go their on way instead
Thoughts which make no sense, I can't agree
Sometimes I wish that the wold would end

I want to flee the thoughts that I dread
To a time when life was full of glee
But I must open my eyes and fight with my head

At times I scream until my ears ring
Or wish I was a lime tree
Sometimes I wish that the world would end

Is life just a means to an end?
I need my mind true and free
I open my eyes and still fight with my heads
Always wishing that the world would end

Piercing Ring
The piercing ring of the cell phone destroys the silence
Nonstop chatter picks away at my peace
As I yearn for a quieter time
When I could read this battered book in peace

A silent moment is something to cherish
Like the echo of your own laughter
It calms, it relives, and it can inspire
Like a warm summer breeze

I wish to grab the next phone I see
And rip it apart pieced by piece
As vicious as a pack of wolves
There will be no more remains

Then I will have my peace;
(tranquility that is all my own) 
Enjoying the sound of silence

Perception

Perception is a powerful thing
It is in perception that we see ourselves,
and what we see in the world.
(it is in this that we base our lives)

Like a feeling that we hold onto,
when times aren't as fair.
Or the meaning of words on a page.
(secrets that we shall never tell)

Our perception reflects what we believe
What we know and what we value.
Truths that we hold dear to ourselves
and outlooks on what life means.

Experiences determine our perception
(like picking flowers on a warm day)
With the breeze carrying the petals away
As you sit beneath a fern tree

Our own unique personal look
On how we should live our lives
(what our dreams our made of
and how we feel inside)

Perception is a powerful thing
(Either seeing the day like a bright open morning
or a gloomy day filled with washed out clouds)

Composed of the interpretation from our sences,
with the values that we hold dear.
Perceptions is what makes us who we truely are,
and what determines what we can become.

Walking Across the Shores

Have you walked across the shores?
In the moonlight, while holding a gaze
That no one could break
Because you had that something
The thoughts of a plan of a life you might lead
And places you will go
The things you will do
Did you still remember them?
When heartbreak comes
And your judgment is clouded
While you carry regret and anger
Fury begotten from unbreakable feelings
Because of things you couldn‚Äôt control
And the tempest rose and destroyed those shores.
While time seemed to slow down
For your life almost escaped you
As you were washed away by the crashing waves 
But you survived it all
And the storm was gone when a calm begot the new land
And the only thing you had left
The only thing you carried with you were your dreams.

Rain Before

It‚Äôs the rain that you have felt from a day long past
Remembering the rhythm of a somber melody
You hear as the droplets caress your face
Blown by the cool autumn breeze
That whispers of a sadness not seen
For this is the day when love expressed itself in sacrifice
And now you lament the fate that she now holds
For the last bell has rung
And her part in your life has closed
Although her heart has stopped beating
She still has yours
And now with the flowers in hand
Her favorite bouquet a dark rose...
You use them to remember 
The only thing you can still love
Its her memory in your heart
Making you still go on
While she still holds a part of your soul

Sitting here on my laurels
Lamenting on my monotone days
Where each one seems like the other
I look back on the days I left behind
And wish I had done more
Instead of the bare minimum I did
When I let the Hours waste away
The broken dreams I left behind
I try to revive them
To give them life that they didn't have before
And I look back on those days
Not with sorrow but instead looking forward
Trying to catch up with my dreams
And stop wasting the days that may come

Walking Across the Shores
Have you walked across the shores?
In the moonlight, while holding a gaze
That no one could break
Because you had that something
The thoughts of a plan of a life you might lead
And places you will go
The things you will do
Did you still remember them?
When heartbreak comes
And your judgment is clouded
While you carry regret and anger
Fury begotten from unbreakable feelings
Because of things you couldn‚Äôt control
And the tempest rose and destroyed those shores.
While time seemed to slow down
For your life almost escaped you
As you were washed away by the crashing waves 
But you survived it all
And the storm was gone when a calm begot the new land
And the only thing you had left
The only thing you carried with you were your dreams.

Looking for a muse
Looking down a bygone time
Remebering that sweet burgundy rose 
That beckoned me back to find my muse
She is a calliope of wonderful places
Stories to be told to the people I see
Wherever I go I always will remain
In her heart, in our gaze
I thought in my bad memories
My sight would be lost of her
But that day has not come
Since I have known her
She stops the sorrowful days
By letting me venture forward
With the memories I keep
And the imagination in her heart
I ventured forth with her
And I found I was in a dream
Imagined and yet still known
On a path I still walk down
Searching for the long lost verse

Dead Romantic
In this mind beats the heart of a dead romantic
Summer time won’t bloom for him
But his words still speak through time
And I know what he thinks is true
Rediscovering his thoughts I saw what I lacked
How to judge what is beauty in the realm of the real 
It’s not in the complexity of it all
With lies that leave you empty
But in the simplicity of what we hold dear
That is where beauty lies
To seek it is to love, and to deny it hate
And single thought that truth is beauty
And that is all you need to know 
To change reality into a extension of the imagination
Using your heart to sow the seeds 
To see what dreams may come
Maybe it was an old romantic ideal
That made me realize what I was lacking
And what I could become.

La Belle Dame Avec Verite Absolue  
(Beautiful Women with absolute truth)

It isn't black roses on my cheek
Or the fear that I may cease to be
Or cold that I have been left out in
Like a lonely flower chilled in winter -
But to lose a simple game 
That war for my own mind.

For that is where my thougts reside
And this is a fight with the odds against me.
For I am always with my demons;
Their darkness rights upon my brain.
I was led into their halls
With mirrors of my dreams
And I saw what they wanted me to see.

They used the ailment,
A double-sided curse,
That wounds inside the dream.
I was always a knight with emerald armor
That takes up arms against his foes.
I cry out, La Belle Dame Avec Verite Absolue
And throw down my armor,
Used only to quell my fears.

I strive to find the balance,
To settle the devil in the details -
So my mind shall be calm;
To finally feel the wind,
The gaze that she holds within -
That makes me want to be

A Finite Amount of Time

A Finite Amount of Time
When our posessions break, our beauty fades, 
When our health is a fond memory, 
We realize money is meaningless.

And the seconds tick by
Like a testament to mortality,
We realize what we really need and want is time -
A moment to confess our love,
Minutes to write the verse.

Or a day to walk through the forest
With the trees all fading into colors
Waiting lazily for the end of the day
To watch the stars dance in the sky.

We realize the implicit beauty of creation:
That we only have a finite time -
But the things we can do
Are infinite.

The horse you never rode in on

While you have been riding off in the distance
Trying to find those golden cherubs
Your gallop seems to echo
Your pace tells of the sorrow that follows
But hope is on your face
And yet you still are lost
You listen to the sound 
The wind always had 
That you have never heard
It dissolves into a quiet forest
And then you hear a blue birds song
With blackbirds singing the bass line
Where you stand seems to strike a chord
That melts the tissues in your mind
You stare at the oak where the gig was
West the sun sets with red yellow dance
With the white knights that drop slowly on the day
It clears by its absence  and the singers fly off
Something Reminds of  feelings that catch up
Dove's that fly away linger in your mind
Remembering that sweet rhapsody that lingers still
The melody made of that something inconcievable
You stopped when the chords went wrong
And yet you still stand

Free Radical 
In the struggle we find ourselves in pain 
Being washed away by the tempest
And we can never break its spell

And then we find ourselves changed
An adaptation made during the battle
But we still are alone

But then someone gives us
Their hope from their heart
A sweetness unseen a melody not heard

Thats in your mind that I have seen
Which took my heart away
Listen to the sound of silence

Can you hear my heart that beats?
Did it dissolve the void within?
Listen to the oracles whim

Its the destiny that shall come to pass
But sometimes our lives have other paths
Do your lingering feelings still stand?

Something of you will always linger in my mind
Don't feel sorrow for me
When I almost let you slip threw

My grasp that was longing
And yet I found you
To fix the hole inside me

And my sorrow started to end
For the pain just stopped
When I saw what you had

Rain only falls once
It's the rain that you have felt
That you remember from a day long past
The rhythm of a somber melody
You hear as the droplets caress your face
The cool autumn breeze
Whispers of a sadness you hear
For this is the day
When love expressed itself in sacrifice
And now you lament
The fate she now holds
Her last bell has rung
And the song you shared has ended
Although her heart has stopped beating
She still has yours
Now with the flowers in your hand
Her favorite bouquet
The rainbow of roses that shown of her
Purity her beauty her grace
You use them to remember
The only thing you still can love
Its that something
That makes you go on
While she will always have a part of you
She gave you her spirit in her final hour

Fractures in the void
It seems a fractured life 
To walk it all alone
To fly without a friend
And cry without a shoulder
A fear of most it seems
But who asks us to change the song
To change the minor key
We think a knight in shimmering armor 
Shall come to save us 
But when we do find them
We either fear them
Or don't even persue them
Even when we know we should
Reach out to them
And try to change our lives
To make something out of
The void that is

Reality's Reflections
Sweet dreams child
May you awaken to them
The sights you shall see
Where the poets dream the muses dance
And the faery's kiss you in the distance
Or those long walks with your lover
That you would kiss in front of all
Under a cherub tree of lavendar
Or a fall tree of amber
For it is the dreams inside
That make the reality we see

Sweet Destiny
Sometimes my broken heart
Makes me feel like a lonely rose

Out in an autumn rain
Hoping that winter never comes

For it is that season
That breaks the rose

I feel the wind howling
And it seems like snow will fall

But you have been kindness
The sweet Indian summer

Where the rose basks in the sunlight
And prepairs for the next season

You revive my hope
To pull me out of sorrow

And I will always see you
As the rainbow after the storm

Lost sunshine
We all have glass hearts
With smooth curves that never lose the shine
That can be stolen and shattered
For who mends the pieces that cut
That we can lose the heart
And the shine is broken 
For it is love , that lavendar haze
Which mends and breaks our hearts
That binds us and seperates us
For you can drive miles and miles
And never find love that sits beside you
It sometimes is beauty
That you just can't see

Mirror of quicksilver
Mercury rising when we see ourselves
Impossible the choices we face
When all trials seem to fail
You look to the waters of life
And try to find the flow
It is then when you decide
To smell the roses while you run
And try paint your the sky
Its never where we want to go
Its where we truely are
And the struggle that realizes
That we must change our world
To get anywhere in life
And that is what makes up our lives

The knights tour
And this was my tour
On the board of life and death
Bloodshed that you could smell
For the sacrifices were equal
But my forces were prime
I pulled out a pin from my fair lady
And sacrificed the knight for a tall tower
For I have taken his options away
And the day ended with mate in the last rank

Disorder

No god of war it seems to me
Only a goddess playing with Olives
For we see in times gone by
A waltz of leaders of those times
Revolution the rebirth from ashes
Peace a sublime lack of action
For whom does the sorid bell toll
Eris's delight With discord at hand
While soldiers stand for their doctrines at hand
One finds that without war no peace would come
And that a clear conflict may never come

Mortal Melody

Sometimes roses speak to me
A sweet song never heard by mortals like me
Crimson tells of matters inside
Beauty that is merely free

Velvets majesty leads to castles
Floating in the clear blue sky
Azure's imagination in bloom
Cultivating its own path into the day

A mortal melody 
A thought they hold
That lets them live
That gives them soul

For the emerald rose know's only
The truth at hand
Nothing ventured means nothing gained
One must find the exit door

The Tint of life
Maybe its that tinted skin
That hints of foreign lands not seen
Or a body you could drown in
That you can plainly see

Its that something I can't tell
That makes her what she is
For she carves ripples in my mind
Smooth as silk and clear as the sky

Her kindness like a warm touch
Thats soothing to the soul
Its this memory of her
That is wind at my back

And the friend at my side
It is merely that something
The thoughts I hold of her
That no one sees, that I desire
(Model: Erica Magda)

Flown the Coup
Her love has flown like the falcon
Threw the tree's and above the moon
After those last pink petals fell
You still didn't know what she was
What she meant to you
Now your left standing there
You feel naked without her
As night falls 
You weep a bed full of tears
As just another isolated pawn
Left there by a dominating queen
Tomorrow will never occur 
At least that is what you believe
And yet you still play the game

Echo's from the ocean
Eyes as blue as the ocean
Hair of flaxen music past
An echo of an atlantean dream
Majestic as the night sky

For she wants to learn the language of love
A foreign tougue of the Sun King
Their song still stands
As beautys manifest destiny

Its something in her eyes
Looking at me like a fey
Her stare is to me
As windows looking out at a rainbow

Eyes like the wildflower
That line the path to where it stood
Where mortals dare not tred
A velvet paradise of Eden 

Not perfection I have sought
For I would have found my goddess
But a queen I found
And I was seeking you
(Model: Alex Polly)

Broken flower
You see remnants of roses
Their flutter sounds like whispers
Of borrowed dreams that you have
Or fondness not spoken of

Their color reminds one of
A fury's heat once known
Passions flowering into a muse
With fire's warm touch

They rustle at your feet
Like petals that you picked
Falling remnants of love
Attempting to find the one

You wait at an imaginary place
Somewhere between the den of the real
And the garden of eden
Where your heart runs free

Searching with your soul
It found exactly what it sought
That something that just is
The one you just can't leave

Ethernal blade
Knight with ethernal blade
Who was your Vally Hi
Sight unseen can not redress
The mystery at umpton grace
For have you seen the sand's there
The bumglo's drop their flowers
Eternal on those journey men sands
"Calloo malay" They shout at you
As you find their star crossed women
A greeting in verse 
From an archaic ancient tougue
And yet you know what happened
For you were there; it was revealed to you
Now tell me now what you have seen

Lavender Haze
When your lost in that lavender haze
A phase that you might see opaque
Do you see yourself in it?
For you think you lost your muse
Inside the glass onion
Listen to your blue rose
To find where the emerald crystal lies
So your muse can be free
You find yourself in a forest
A autumn day of a yellow green wood
St Jude shows you the path 
And you find yourself where you started
Since you never really lost your muse
You merely lost yourself

What is weakness?
Is that pain weakness that makes us human?
For we live for the struggle
We die for the cause
And yet sometimes
Its not the pain that you feel
The one inside hurts much more
When it isn't weakness but merely lack of strength
You must make it leave
And find the strength within
To fight it and to win
Your friends can only show you the path
But it is only you that will be saved by you

False truth
And yet they said
For the pieces of culture were pure
Its faded glory still stood
Once they said that its destruction 
Would bring us to eden
Saving us from purgatories lingering spirit
On their last breath
When they belived replacement 
Would give salvation
We knew their affliction
Of the artifical utopia
And the truth of the real
That the converse satisifies
But the utopia never does

Forgotten Tune
When you hum a tune
Or play it
Someone hears it

When you remember a tune
That I have forgot
I'll smile at you if you play it back to me

When I have forgotten a song
Which was very dear to me
I'll thank you when I hear it from you

And yet someone has sung a tune
That was that tune you never forget
When I have forgotten it

I shall thank you not in words
Or pictures that you will interpret
But in another song you may remember

Foreground, Backound
We see the petals fall
The breeze carrys wind around
Petals of a pastel pink
That foreground of a major key
With a lucid flow of melody
The scene reminds you
Of dreams that may come
And yet you still see
Whats behind it all

The scheme
For when I found the holy lisp
So pure the curves that are parens
With a report merely one short text
Of beauty's simplicty

I knew that lisp was for me
But then there was a choice
Of thousand page lisp's
That is when I prayed for mercy

My goddess answered my call
With the flowers of recursion
And the lexical wildflower of scope
All around the syntax tree

I heard "Scheme shall show you the path
To beauty through simplicity
Not a thousand page tower of babel
But merely the essential fraction"

And I rejoiced and heeded her call
Found the purple tome of wizard's
The structure of the spells
And their interpretation

My eyes have been opened
To the spells of functions
And the beauty that lies
In the scheme that is

The wind of change
The storm has ended
A sweet nothing fills your senses
Yet I still smell the change

Patterns you can find
In the choices you make
But not all patterns are true

Some might be true others are dead ends
But you can still hold onto one
Sometimes you must let them go

With information thats forced down our throats
Patterns we must see
But are there ones we may not recognize?

But some you will never see
Even though beauty may fade
You still hold on to it

For even a catepillar changes
Into a butterfly and
That is the power of change

Can either cause a tempest

Or quell a storm
But it is the butterflies choice
Even if it doesn't realize
Its true power

Even if its broken
It can be mended
But it will never be like it was

For it will find the path
That will still save it even
If its a fundamental fault

You can still see your dreams
And survive when your breath is almost gone
Will you die with no means to an end

Or create anew 
To live without fear
And then you shall see

That even the broken arrow
Can stil hit the mark in the sky
It just takes time

It is when you see yourself
The wonders that may pass
You shall still see what is in front of you

An Discord To Eris
She always knew where her towel was
For has ridden with hell's angel's
And sung better than any choir
And her answer to all is written in the texts
But she has saved me
Giving me meaning where there was nothing

I have seen her in the times of light
Or in my darkess hour
Telling me how to pull through
She had the smell of fairy dust
But I could never comprehend her 
For she is like the unknown aleph
Her infinite nature that is undecidable

When I looked into her eyes of amber
There was a coolness unseen
Like the grace she has
When you see her afar
You could hear her sing her sweet song
As she strolled on by not even looking at me

Her dress was provocative at best
At worst it left nothing to the imagination
All golden like the apple she had
The inscription I saw
But you could see the dagger she hid
And fear was in my brow
But I was shaken not by her
Instead by what she said

A speech of discord
I am within you and without you
If you try to oppose me it will be in vain
You cannot fight the disorder
For in any closed system I exist

But if you follow my lead
If you are my subject and use me
I can make your dreams into destiny
For I will be your imaginations limits

And the only thing that is keeping you
Is the psychic armor that you hold dear
Throw that away and awaken 
To the wonders that your mind holds

A negative Delta
And then my armor waned 
It slipped off suddenly

Into a mental morphism 
When the world started to become 

Somewhere in between reality
And voices of the surreal in the distance

I had to find the balance within
I held the remmnants of the armor I had

And I realized I still had my armor
But It had changed 

And I could use the blade of the delta
To find where I stood

My world of dreams had ended
Instead the world of implementation awaited

And all I had to do
Was not be afraid

Wishing for Forgetting
And yet I was faced with the burden
Of wanting to forget
To wish away the darkness
And one pill could make it true to welcome the new day
When I opened my new mind
As Calm as the waters on the bay
I raced to fill it with new memories
But as I awoke the next day
I started to miss the things I never knew
The places I never saw
Things I thought I could wish away
But now I wanted back
As the day turned to dusk
I wish I could hold a candle
And see through the darkness
To find what I wished away
In hastened thoughts
Not thinking of the consequences
Of losing what I cherished most
For I couldn't remember the memories
Of the life I once had

Laurels
Sitting here on my laurels
Lamenting on my monotone days
Where each one seems like the other
I look back on the days I left behind
And wish I had done more
Instead of the bare minimum I did
When I let the Hours waste away
The broken dreams I left behind
I try to revive them
To give them life that they didn't have before
And I look back on those days
Not with sorrow but instead looking forward
Trying to catch up with my dreams
And stop wasting the days that may come