Silver Dust

They carted you off to the Poseidon Society
without one last goodbye, desperate coping 
allays any doubt of misery and pain you’ve withstood, 
hung my moorings upon some passing cloud of remembrance,
that undisclosed final door, that one exit of no return;
the plight of reason that’ll never reach me in a million
light years, now will have become one dim and dying star of 
inconsolable regret, you have no idea what an unlimited 
significance your tutelage doted upon this meandering 
valiant soul, you were never invidious or insidious to 
anyone, just one graceful, loving, and venerable rugged 
soul, you hung your crest with dignity, wore your fate 
like some noble hero, no one reached your nephesh, there
wasn’t any dissuading or menticide angling, you were your 
own king, you scathed and checked all trouble,
yet, came to me always when I was in need; now, misery flings
her arrows in perfect arc, rarely she misses with her grief, 
I weep like some gelded young lamb for your return, yet, knowing
you’ve ridden far from the perimeter of any reunion, desperation
now girds me with desertion, I wallow in neck-deep tears just to
hear your laughter again, and drown in the deepest sea of sorrow just 
to hear your voice one last time. Adieu my dearest cousin, until the 
silver dust rises again. 

©️ 4/17/2020

-  John Hardesty 

Syllabus Of Silliness

The quack of a despondent duck
Slips unconsciously into the muck
When the farmer pummeled the duck with his truck
One can only speculate the grimace of the amuck
And all the glorious gasping clucks
As the flailing plumes being plucked
‘Twas havoc and thunderstruck, 
When all that ends well in a potluck. 

©️ 3/23/2020

-  John Hardesty 

The Darkness Hides Away The Light

This disparage falls upon me through the 
long night, seizing discomfort in me, controlling 
me, gripping me, and alluding me to the past; I find
no desire to retread into the gossamers of the savaged
forgone years, yet hopeful this inconsolable passage has
piqued this commandeering captive and will move along 
accordingly, there are no colors within this collaboration of
judicious preemption only black, this strangulation wrangles
and scrambles all uprooted and untethered thoughts of sadness,
though, never pleasant ones, the usual death of a friend evokes this
cruelty, then heedlessly and methodically interrogations ensure the
insomniac night, a cold drink of water will aid the consternation but
hollowness overcomes all, the silent interjections within the lonely 
night is an interlude of my despair, I reject any help and counsel,
I travel lightly within these dying bones, I guess payback is the 
grandfather of misery, intemperance finds refuge all alone, 
where love was abundant now cometh sparingly, but I’ll never 
bend or give up my world for yours. 

- John Hardesty
©️2/22/2020

Anamnesis

The dredge of recollection
haunts with every facet of melancholy,
sleuths of heroic memory slumber past

cavalierly the crepuscular of youth, there
time stands still and blunts the recoil of
mementos, this storage is vast in riches, 
beyond notable thickets of flaneur, tiny 
trinkets of twiddling tribulations seize 
every sensation, this godhead of sorting 
and lament hurls this weaponry with complete 
control, provincial yet effective in collaboration,
collared by my own imprisonment, helpless
and yet cold-hearted these memories for whom
prey upon my self-reliant, self-willed, and 
self-disciplined conscience, sense-datum 
beseech every sentient esthetic reverie. Why
must they attack and kill at night when I’m 
most vulnerable? This drawbridge of memorial
recoups every drop of misery without regard for
reconciliation, there recounting the salvage of 
lost loved ones who are silently weeping. Are
they trying to reach me, or am I just alone in this 
madcap of recovery? 

- John Hardesty

©️ 2/28/2020

Reclusive Tendencies

The boketto begins, no one is to blame.
Your meraki has fallen from your work.
You’ve traveled in silence to keep from
screaming, this fanaa eats away like cancer. 
You’ve never reached out for a hand or any smile,  yet

your frustration glares back in gruesome 
hollowness. Life’s become something more than
you’ve bargained for, you’ve squandered away all
your hopes, and your last dream, vacated by grief.

Once an oriflamme of misery now the only

embrace of comfort is sunshine. This adoxography 
placates your need to be heard or to be accepted. Still, 
this Orphic is all you desire, you’re seldom
enthusiastic about some fancy mention of trivial 
wares, for your eudaimonia cannot be bought or 
secured by some shallow penchant. This genie 
won’t return her gift; one must first recognize 
one’s despair to begin to love and what keeps you
willfully alive. Death owes no promise to you, 
but living in this imperishable hope of retrieving 
lost legitimacy is all that is required of this loathsome 

penance. You’ve lengthened your mind to vast 
catharsis, and worrying about death only shortened 

your life. 

- John Hardesty 

©️1/23/2020

Self-Defeat

I implode within my conscience, the
unenviable purge, to consort with this 
ghost who never obeys my pleas, wants,
and desires, yet, this grandiloquent lie
suppresses and grapples the faithful and
the unmoving soul stays bound, this fading 
trust isn’t weakness, but the lack of empirical 
proof allays all doubt, no stone tablet of 
soft lyrical psalms confirms anything, 
there’s been great writers in every century,
and an alcove of fiction are what myths are 
made of, no inner voice speaks to me from 
some abundant cloud cover, no guilt-laden
apologies, no romancing some diverting fable
to appease the musings of others, what I do 
find gratifying in this life is the multitude of
creatures that survive without myths, or the 
gray on a goose that matches their fated gloom; the
saddest and most immaculate lie of all is to
keep the immersion of this ignominious fabliau 
alive with hope, but without hope man would 
believe he’s an inferior god. 

Hollowness

Embrace this gird that holds you captive
and helpless, we have no souls only dying 
bones and scarred flesh, we are abject mortals
and hope is an ancient curse written by no god,
heretical nonsense to believe any fairytale, alas, 
this trying interminable personal interrogation 
believing you’re special and privileged to an 
eternal flight with some god who refutably created
you from mud, beneath this speculum of submission 
where sinister after ominous preacher peculates your
bank account through some binding loophole of guilt
in the form of obligatory tithes, you’re an useful obligee 
who bows to superiority and who’s eviscerated and
emasculated by your own weakness, take ownership 
in your vestigial inferiority, become your own god on
this rapacious earth, ravens come not with welcoming
hymnal matins of praise, they come to peck out your
eyes and pockets, fall away from idiocy and ignorance
and idolize no one but yourself, for you were born to rot
and to be forsaken by death, you will die, you will be 
forgotten, only poets, inventors, and evil live forever. 
Immerse yourself for now, clothe your mind with 
knowledge, live for today, and stop all wickedness that 
invokes and provokes religious ideology, if you kill 
another in the name of some god, you have drawn 
Cain’s sword through your own heart. 

- John Hardesty 

 ©️Copyrighted 11/26/2019