For I have loved you as a man insane,
Sound reason lost amidst a crazed desire;
A single-mindedness past praise or shame,
Raw brazen lust consuming like a fire.
I close my eyes and all I see is you,
Your voice calls to me in the still of night;
Your countenance adorns both sun and moon,
Your smile alone still blinding in sweet light.
So drawn, I yet still fear your loving touch,
And in asylum I do love afar;
For love like this is clear a burdened trust—
My essence crushed, should such a love bear scorn.
Still in my mind, I lavish you with care,
My love remains—a dream of glad despair.

© Loubert S Suddaby. All Rights Reserved.

Black waves, white-tipped with rage, lash at the shore,
Exploding shrapnel spume on crags of grey;
Tall, stalwart stones still silent—moist with tears—
Saturnine, strong, with nothing left to say.
Yet still the waves mete out unbridled pain,
As if persistence might soon breach that wall;
Wroth tantrum tortured, seething, spite sustained,
Glass fists smite granite, shatter—and then fall.
O life! O love! O hope! O destiny!
What might I yet have done to have prevailed?
What pride abides in such futility?
What providence should stand here unassailed?
So with pure might, ‘gainst savage stone I stand,
Till sweat and blood and tears grind stone to sand.

© Loubert S Suddaby. All Rights Reserved.

From heaven’s palette, beauty’s brush bestowed
In tints and tones and lights and darks most rare—
The finest blush of hues sweet Nature knows;
No earthly sylph could match, nor hope to wear.
A masterpiece of many favored strokes:
Pastels of pink, of lavender and blue—
A symphony of sight that can evoke
Surrender in stout hearts with but a view.
So was I smitten when your gaze met mine,
My proud, stern singledom there razed to ruin;
A soul transformed, suspended there in time,
A knight now sworn to fealty anew.
Beauty most fair, now suddenly my queen;
Brought to my knees by sight—and force unseen.

© Loubert S Suddaby. All Rights Reserved.

As I am now, so too you yet shall be—
Child of life and vigor that knows no bounds;
Time is mendacious and all eyes shall see,
That beauty is a gift that time confounds.
So make the most of your brief given span
Before that covetous userer calls his loan;
Wring from each day, all sweetness that you can-
The deathbed is the place we should atone.
Then look upon each morning as a gift,
Whether it dawns in brilliance or in gloom;
Each breath, the air that gives your wings their lift,
On sliver pinions, o’er wide worlds to roam;
And when returned to search these aging eyes,
Look for those truths that jealous Time has tried.

© Loubert S Suddaby. All Rights Reserved.

No truth of he and she can be more sure
Than Nature’s law inscribed in sands of time;
No fact more constant hearts of clay endure,
Than bonds unseen that Nature’s threads entwine.
The proof is woven through all living things—
In every form that feels her shaping hand;
Fresh acts of life new chronospecies bring,
From forms now mortared deep in stones of sand;
Though human lust may clothe a naked truth
And darkened hearts profane her primal light,
No fevered rantings here could ever move
The edict that four billion years proves right—
For Nature judges not—as time has shown,
Her story bound in leaves of grit and stone.

© Loubert S Suddaby. All Rights Reserved.

What wisdom have we salvaged from the cross
Whose blood-stained wood did scour the sins of man?
Did ghastly suffering simple faith emboss
Gaunt images to haunt us for time’s span?
Do words of heaven stay the savage beast?
Does golden gaze instill civility?
Do promises of paradise decrease
The specter of man’s inhumanity?
When evanescent scriptural smoke is gone,
That scarecrow, soon all doubting eyes will see,
As but crossed staves that slender limbs lay on—
Not truth but falsehood practiced to deceive.
Thus, of these thoughts, and two millennia in,
The scarecrows’ clothes grow ragged in the wind.

© Loubert S Suddaby. All Rights Reserved.

Dark tree tops tousled by an angry wind,
The seething sky a drab and doomful grey;
While in the distance roiling clouds ride in,
With piercing raindrops leading up the fray.
A cannon flash does crack the waxing gloom,
Soon followed by the roll of distant drums;
The line approaching like some fierce dragoons,
Grim specters of the strife that surely comes.
But you are gone—I welcome frenzied might;
Would that some dreadful god now strike me down,
Or yet some warrior’s sabre forged of light,
Now run me through that all my pain be done;
Then love bereft, I meet my Waterloo—
With my last breaths still singing songs of you.

© Loubert S Suddaby. All Rights Reserved.

Then cloud me not with rumor or romance
When I gaze in your deep and savage eyes,
For I distill, with but a single glance
The ardent truth your beauty’s smile belies.
Am I a sailor sworn to sirens songs,
Branded by fate—a legend writ in brine?
Content to love embrace ‘til hope is gone,
And rocky shores my sun-bleached bones enshrine?
Why must I importune my love is true—
Why must I bleed to prove that blood is red?
Do not pure tears and kisses sweet construe
My purpose here, that you have naught to dread?
Oh that these salt-stained orbs could see your soul,
And your dark eyes, in turn, my truth behold.

© Loubert S Suddaby. All Rights Reserved.