Rob Rutledge

Rob Rutledge Nov 2023

The Fly

It's a slippery *****,
I hope you know.
Said the Solipsist
To The Fly.

Who was itself
A somewhat suspicious
Deliciously conspicuous,
Most likely maleficent,
Manifestation of a mind.

A specimen meant just to define,
A shade that shall not live,
A shadow that shall not fly.
Designed to be a metaphor,
To make its point and then to die.

Invested only to be digested
By imagination and an eye.
Where within it lingers lonely,
Solely stoic for a while,
For a time.
A casualty of entropy
Out of place,
Left behind.
Or maybe out in front,
Depending on your point of view,
However long thought takes to stew.

The Fly nodded sagely,
Behaved as if it knew.
Nonchalant with confidence,
The epitome of cool.
Giving all the right impressions
These digressions were understood.
As it landed ever closer
To sit upon the madman's shoulder
To show this silly, pseudo ******
How little he really knew.

That being said,
If all that is lives only in your head.
Could I trouble you for some of that stew?

Rob Rutledge Jun 2023

Death of a Butterfly

Under a sullen, unloving sky,
Caught off guard by the searching rain,
She flees to shieldlike canopies.
A pilgrim on the path of shadow
Ever tethered to the flame.
Enslaved to the way of fire
Sycophant of the eternal blaze.
Condemned to spend the end of days
Wandering wastelands of the Sun,
Forever exiled from the shade.

In the darkness she would remain,
If only she would have her way.
Cocooned in shells of memory
Fogs of war,
Ill explained.
Though the forest chatter
Never quite sounds the same,
The pitter patter
Pauses,
Secrets encoded in the rain.
Her frail wings lay broken
Breath comes barely when spoken,
Offspring away upon the wind.
Though they took no time to notice
The darkness roars forth and shows us

We have our own fires to attend.

Rob Rutledge Jun 2023

Rest

You can rest now,
Sooner than you think.
For your legs are tired
Mind is mired
By past events.

It has not all gone your way
Nor has it gone too far astray

You may walk that corridor
Past haunted portraits
Hung skewed upon the wall.
Each one faded,
Canvas scratched
By the history of memories attached.

It took years to build these walls
From the remnant of a childhoods fall
The first and last line of defence
To halt invasions and consequence.

You can rest now,
Sooner than you thought
You fought the battle,
You lost the war.

Rob Rutledge May 2023

Nature and the Wild

Come,
Walk with me.
Through nature and the wild.
To the precipice of shadows
Where no mortal has defiled.
Past the last bastion of light
Death throes of the civilised.
No remnants of sentiment
To the trees, we shall confide.

So we will journey, we shall go.
Travel to where the maps won't show.
Embark to where here dragons lie
Neck stiff,
Head tilts toward the sky.
Each pinprick becomes a question,
The void another lesson,
Constellations, a reason why.
Then as those final embers mellow,
Residual engraving on our eyes.
We turn away, heads high and bellow,
That which lives will never die.

Rob Rutledge Apr 2023

Uncharted

Tell me then how to face this day,
As the coward that would avert his gaze?
Untold days spent lost and slaved to sand,
Hand in hand with the chains of time.
Or should we grasp it as would a man?
By throat and pain and circumstance,
Each rage at our command.

For promised lands are paved with pride.
The consequence of shifting tides
Once known and a matter of course.
But these seas lay uncharted
Horizon bleak and endarkened
By the shadow of a brewing storm.

#ocean #nature #metaphor #pensive

Rob Rutledge Nov 2022

Dusk

When this mortal frame does falter,
If there be left a body still to burn
Cast my ash from the cliffs of Dover
For on the winds I shall return.
Though my soul may be lost to water,
Bones bleached and turned to dust
My heart will soar across the forests
Climbing mountains in the dusk.
Then as the daylight rises
And darkness gives way to light
I will cast these eyes, one last time,
Across the shores of life.

Rob Rutledge Jun 2022

Universe to Dream

The words were never ours,
Sentiments and sentences
Sediment from fallen stars.
Spoken once upon the start
Before concepts were a concept
When all was nothing,
All was dark.
Before dark was a thing,
Or no thing,
Before meaning had meaning,
Or a universe to dream.

Suddenly.

Like an almighty sneeze,
Came space and time and similes,
Metaphors, mistakes, and mystery
Supernovas, hangovers, hyperbole
All within the blink of an eye.
(Yet to be created)
The words were solid, stoic, patient
Content to spend eternity waiting
Forever fated to play the patron
Of a thousand dying worlds.
Until such time you called its name,
Until the first time it was heard.