I never belonged
In your world,
So I seek
Another.
I've seen what
I needed to see,
Said what
I needed to say,
Except... (I'm sorry)
It's my turn
To be selfish,
To leave without
Saying goodbye.
Let my fellow
Wanderers
Comfort you,
Too late.
© 2025 Edward P. Morgan III
Every silence
Has a quality.
Anxious,
Cautious,
Conspiratorial,
Contentment.
Ominous,
Anticipatory,
Smoldering,
Stillness.
If every silence
Asks a question,
Then each also
Provides an answer,
Casting the long
Shadow of elusive
Truth, or lies,
You must embrace.
© 2025 Edward P. Morgan III
A friendship frozen in memory,
Drowned by resinous trauma,
Fossilized to golden crystal,
Agelessly preserved,
A yellowed relic of the past.
If only I could strip away
The ossified layers,
The friend within might
Re-emerge, hale and whole,
Ready to renew our time together.
© 2025 Edward P. Morgan III
When I was young, I focused
More on my companions
Than on my calling.
Older now, I fixate
More on that calling
Than those companions.
At each point, I thought
The one more important
Than the other.
At each point,
I was wrong.
Now, my life runs backwards,
Reassembled in the wrong order
For the wrong reasons.
Like a mirror, once broken
The past can be rearranged
But never fully restored.
Deep cracks remain,
Shattering the image
Of who I thought I was,
Of who I thought
I would be.
Afraid to wake,
Afraid to sleep,
I will never rest comfortably
In that frame again.
© 2025 Edward P. Morgan III
I was born beneath the stars
Of Pisces. When I was young,
I swam like a fish underwater.
But before I crawled ashore,
I lost my twin in the stormy sea
Of our mother’s womb,
Which may be why I
Can no longer drink like one.
My family gave us each a spirit animal,
Mostly for convenience at Christmas.
My grandmother’s was an elephant,
My mother’s a whale,
My cousin’s an owl.
If we didn’t choose,
One would be assigned.
I eventually received a wolf.
Years later, I was admonished
By a prospective girlfriend
To drop the lone wolf attitude.
That made me smile. Or maybe
It’s just my nature to bare my teeth.
Besides, if I had two wolves within me,
They wouldn’t fight;
They’d form a pack.
Earlier, my family had tried to give me a dragon,
But my dragons are fierce, not cute like theirs.
Later I returned to that mythological beast
As my screen name on a Taoist forum.
As Chinese luck would have it, the year
Of my birth is their Green Wood Dragon.
Which resonated like a personal koan:
Who would craft a dragon from green wood?
But were I to stain my skin with signs or spirit animals,
On one shoulder would perch a griffin rampant,
The heraldic symbol of my line and my brand,
On the other, a simple house cat
Gazing skyward in shadowed profile,
Felicia, Nyala, Smoke or Samarra,
Any of Bast’s Chosen I’ve been honored
To serve in the temple where I rent space.
I’ve always longed to be marked by something special,
Some tribe, some clan, some band of brotherhood.
Instead, I am destined to die alone and unadorned,
An imperfectly heard chord in this life’s ballad.
© 2025 Edward P. Morgan III
Betwixt the episodes of dull exhaustion,
Between the gleaming shards of an imaginary life,
Beneath the spiderwebbed mirror of memory,
Before each dream cut like naked glass
Befallen from the gloaming of the underworld,
Beyond the glimmering cavern of illusion,
Bespoken by legion tongues of daemons
Belongs this poisoned curse,
I still believe,
In the one,
In the two,
In the ten thousand glittering things,
Beholden only to the frame
Of its shattered existence.
© 2024 Edward P. Morgan III
I liked you better
Before I knew you
Were a pedophile,
A murderer,
A rapist,
A thief.
Homophobic,
Antisemitic,
Sexist,
A bigot.
Liked is really
The wrong word.
Tolerated?
Accepted?
Admired?
Loved?
Or was I just
Mistaking
Attention,
Attraction,
Intrigue,
Or lust?
We reveal ourselves slowly,
Cautiously, seductively,
A shadow dance in seven veils,
Each slips or stripped away
Until all that remains is
An unrepentant scar,
Malignant as cancer,
Ugly as truth.
I no longer want to
Hang out with you,
Get to know you,
See you naked.
I just want to cover my eyes,
Hide from my misjudgment,
My shame at not seeing
Beyond your mask.
And yet, sometimes
I still miss the person
I thought might linger
Behind that illusion.
© 2024 Edward P. Morgan III
