KesnerLines

when roses where too much

Folder: 
reworked vintage

 

 

There you are,

trading small graces;

cups & saucers

like treaties of peace.

 

I sit back,

half‑skeptic, half‑believer,

watching this fragile pact

hold for a moment—

 

an apparition

of simple bliss.

 

Strange, how it failed

when roses bloomed

too brightly in the garden.

 
 
 
 
 
 
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Author's Notes/Comments: 

A reworking of "when roses bloomed"

when roses bloomed | PostPoems

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sunflowers

Folder: 
Period Personages

 

“sunflowers”

 

These heads of fire,
decapitated suns,
rot in their vases like prophets unspeaking.


Gold is not glory but fever,
a pollen of madness
that stains the hands of the painter,
and the mouth of the poet.

 

 

 

 

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Author's Notes/Comments: 

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the missing scroll

Folder: 
Scrollworks

 

 

The Missing Scroll

 

They said: is it not written…
but the page is torn away.
We search the silence,
finger the seam where ink once lived.

 

Faith begins here—
not in triumph,
but in the ache of absence,
the wound of a vanished word.

 

 

 

 

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soliloquy (richard ii)

Folder: 
Period Personages

 

O brittle circlet, forged of gold yet hollow,  

Thou weigh’st upon my brow like leaden sin.  

I wore thee once as heaven’s chosen shadow,  

Now find thee but a mask that mocks within.  

 

Sweet Anne, my gentle star, thou art departed,  

And Sheen lies broken, as my heart lies too.  

Thy breath once stayed my wrath when I was parted  

From reason’s hand; now rage is all I woo.  

 

What is a king, when love and faith are fled?  

A painted saint, enthroned yet powerless.  

The sceptre shakes, the crown bows down its head,  

And majesty dissolves in emptiness.  

 

Thus falls the dream that I alone could keep:  

A throne of visions, buried deep in sleep.  

 
 
 
 
 
 
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the king who dreamed too far

Folder: 
Period Personages

 

 

The King Who Dreamed Too Far


He dreamt a throne of light, not steel,
 a sceptre raised to bless, not bind.
He thought the crown a covenant,
 a flame of heaven, not a coin of men.

 

But lords weighed land, not visions;
 they counted swords, not stars.
His voice, a psalm in marble halls,
 fell hollow where the market roared.

 

He spoke of majesty as sacrament,
 while others bartered power like grain.
He built a palace of glass ideals,
 and wondered why stones broke it.

 

Misread, mistrusted, misaligned,
 he stood apart, a figure out of season.
Not tyrant only, nor saint entire,
 but a man who dreamed the wrong dream
 in the wrong room,
 at the wrong time.

 

 

 

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a misread vision

Folder: 
Period Personages

 

 

Why do they mock the dream that crowns my brow?  

I thought a king might rule by sacred breath,  

That majesty, like altar‑flame, should bow  

All hearts to awe, not bind their hands in death.  

 

Yet lords would weigh their acres, count their swords,  

And barter England’s soul for fleeting gain.  

I spoke in psalms, they answered me in hoards,  

My visions fell like rain on roofs of disdain.  

 

O crown, thou hollow prophet of my fall,  

I read the stars, but not the room of men.  

They sought a steward, I a priestly hall,  

And so I lost the realm I could not ken.  

 

Thus stands my ghost, a dreamer out of season,  

Undone by faith, and not by want of reason.  

 
 
 
 
 
 
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incense

Folder: 
Period Personages

 

Incense


The boy kneels, the air thick with incense,
 his lips moving through half‑learned prayers.
The crown waits on a cushion of velvet,
 gold glinting like sunlight on water.

 

The lords murmur, the bishop lifts his hand,
 the boy’s eyes follow the drifting smoke.
It curls upward, soft, unthreatening,
 a scent of sanctity, a promise of peace.

 

Years later, in a stone‑cold cell,
 he breathes the same smoke —
not incense now,
 but the dust of his crumbling crown.

 

 

 

 

 

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the child who bowed to soon

Folder: 
Period Personages

 

 

The Child Who Bowed Too Soon

 

He knelt as if the floor were altar stone,
 palms pressed, lips shaping psalms half‑learned.
The candlelight made halos of his hair,
 a novice heart rehearsing grace.

 

Yet outside, banners cracked in wind,
 lords weighed their swords, not prayers.
The boy was bound not for the cloister’s bell,
 but for the hollow clang of crown.

 

Innocence bent beneath inevitability,
 a child who might have prayed,
 but was compelled to reign.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Author's Notes/Comments: 

A poetic meditation on the life and tragedy of Richard II (1367-1400)

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bridge of unsending

Folder: 
reworked vintage

 


"Bridge of the Unsent"


Every word is a bridge half—

built across distance,

 

I fold the silence into paper,     

address it to your absence,    

and let the ink wander

where my voice could not.

 

collapsing into the river

before you ever arrive.






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