Winter holds high court,
All that dank and dangerous,
Legal structure held in fortitude,
All those brave and courageous,
Arresting this and that,
Sorting emotions and actions into fractions,
Factions don't fret,
They'll bleed you,
They'll toss you over the edge,
Remember me as I was,
Not as I am,
For I have given up all hope,
Balancing on the apocalyptic precipice,
Knowing every box canyon ends the same,
Entrenched by towering castle walls,
Created treachery at its best,
Winsome folk need not apply,
These are airy elevations,
More than rare,
That very thin atmosphere,
Scratching the stratified ionosphere,
Attempting to see beyond the blazing stars,
Atomic eruptions blinking back at us,
Like we are a crowd of starstruck fools,
Too cool to care.

Scantily clad summer with its heady perfume,
Fragrance adopting that scented forum,
Still winter court comes to order,
Snow white elements arduously selected,
Showy jurors with their stealth and limber,
Citing additions and multiplications,
Rounding down a fine line,
Sums of frozen speeches and rancid cream,
Sentences of deprivation and even death,
Probabilities will never equal reality,
Only lightning can save us now,
Hurricanes are not enough,
I am tattooed with angst,
Branded by that cur called love,
I surrender to the converse universe,
Realizing there are no imparted givens,
Slipping artfully past all those happy endings,
Radical shadows mock those that partisan love has convicted.

Courtroom walls loom,
Dank air fills that stolid room,
Dark and stale in that solid din,
Searching for a rare black pearl,
Hidden deep in roiling sin,
Finding cold unhappiness,
Nothing truly ranks first,
Cruelly it's all or nothing,
One and one,
Two by two,
All in all,
Majority rules,
Something enumerated then found,
Something numerically lost,
Only empty pods,
No peas or pearls,
Appeasement is creased,
Those seedy jurors condescend,
Rescinding all of love's God given rights,
Time shall be the final judge,
Even courtrooms must abide,
Seconds and minutes and hours and days,
Months into years and decades,
Life sentences,
Blocking the stairway to heaven,
Wrenched here and then there,
Sensibility seems only a dream,
Each hour a xenophobe nightmare,
Every day a calamitous scene.

Bigotry has strangled the beloved,
Crazed sprites dance wildly,
Watching Rumpelstiltskin rejoice,
Spinning chaff into riff-raff,
Burning justice at the righteous stake,
Only cinders and ash remain in the end,
Rash words into sentences,
Penalties leaving wounds and scars,
So winter court is finally adjourned,
Each juror inclined t'wards their own make-believe peace,
Reclined temperance the true culprit,
Skewered love on a spit,
Brashly braised and publicly roasted,
Cannibal chauvinism devours life,
Every bigot cowers then drowns,
Smothered by lower life in the end,
Only compassionate warriors can survive,
Love retreats to another foreign camp,
Creating fire and shelter like in the old days,
New reality in this overwhelming vamp,
Escaping high court and its dim flickering lamp.