Youthful Naivety Leads to Horrors a Young Man Didn’t Bargain For.

Historical Performance Monologue — Written and Performed by Gregory Cade at the Historic Avoca Museum, during Night at the Museum Lantern Tours, in Celebration of the 100 Year Anniversary of the Ending of WW 1.

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Good evening — Ladies, Gentlemen, young ones. …

Stream of Consciousness Prose Poetry

Traveling through this tunnel of despair, distraught by thoughts of loss — of grip, of self, of sight of what’s ahead. Existential Dread of what awaits at the end of the line. So fine a line of demarcation, between days of exultation and painful sublimation of all I thought I knew of who I was. Who am I if I don’t recognize myself? Is it who I believe me to be or who you see? What if what I believe is a lie, and what you see is a mask? What then?

Enduring an Emotional Prison

I suffocate in this darkness, this lingering sorrow that lays over me like a blanket I can’t push back. Mistakes and shame and regrets that latch onto me like the chain that holds the dog to his tree. The ground beneath me worn bare, like the rawness of my soul. Exhausted I crawl, to and fro, on hand and knee. Dust turned to mud by the river of my tears. My mind burns like a fire that can’t be quenched. Weight bears down upon my chest. Breath struggles to escape, trapped, like the memories of yesterday…

“There Is a Garden in Her Face”

There is a garden in her face
Where roses and white lilies grow;
A heavenly paradise is that place
Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow.
— There cherries grow which none may buy,
— Till “Cheery ripe” themselves do cry.

Those cherries fairly do enclose
Of orient pearl a double row,
Which when her lovely laughter shows,
They look like rosebuds filled with snow;
— Yet them nor peer nor prince can buy,
— Till “Cherry ripe” themselves do cry.

Her eyes like angels watch them still,
Her brows like bended bows do stand,
Threatening…

A brief poem on emotional entanglement.

Encompassing

Epiphanic

Ecstasy
and
Melancholy

Caught inside
The inscrutable

You
and
Me

The enigmatic
Cast astride

Felicity
and
Misery

Elegiac

Enveloping

Navigating a gulf of uncertainty.

I’m miles removed from the main roads now, on this deepening journey down rural lanes, this well-worn path of remembrance, though empty for its loss. The loss of those who no more travel these winding byways at my side. Childhood memories come flooding back. The laughter and endless hours of exploring the wide-open countryside, a treasured escape from the prison-like schools and cramped neighborhoods back home; my first taste of true freedom.