Hoarfrost

My heart was rimed
by the chill of your spite,
leaving me frostbitten
and dying of lost love.

Primary

Two people,
their worlds combined,
even with other loves
that become aligned,
still the reality
of all that is
for the truth lies within.
The others have a flirtation,
a romance drifting free,
while you and I
have something more,
even if sometimes it lacks
that sheer elemental rush
of the lovers waltz,
because they have a page
a chapter in this story,
but you and I have a world,
made of pain and joy,
loss and longing.
They are a portion,
we are the world.

(c) Tortured Cyclone 2015

Thanksgiving

True Thanksgiving
comes from the acceptance of
the grace we're given.

November's Prophecy

November sleet chills,
providing a grim foretaste
of bitter winter.

(c) 2015 Tortured Cyclone

Je Suis Desolee

There are moments
that stand out
from the crush
of life's passage.
Moments that define
a generation,
a society,
an entire world.
Yesterday,
the forces of intolerance
struck a blow
against people
whose only crime
was being
at a certain place
and time
in the City of Lights.
To my grief,
again our world
is being defined
by people who choose
to stand against
a way of life
foreign to their own,
instead of following
the Way of Peace,
as their own scriptures
tell them they should.

(c) 2015 Tortured Cyclone

Dorian

What price did you pay,
that your life, your soul,
is bound to this painting?
The ravages of the years
hidden from casual view
behind a velvet curtain,
disfiguring your portrait
in your stead...
but trapped you are,
for he who controls
the painting you inhabit,
owns you absolutely.

@ 2015 Tortured Cyclone

Rain of Hopelessness

It falls,
trickling
like the failing
pulse
of heaven,
the weeping
armies
of Glory
grieving
mankind's fall,
the last drops
of hope's
life blood
bleeding out,
leaving
a barren,
dry sky,
filled
with despair,
the personification,
seasonal affecting,
of the wasteland
that is my soul.

Gotye's Prophecy

As time goes on,
it is a confusing paradox
of relief and sorrow
that all I've become
is somebody
that you used to know.

Review of Dan Brown's "Inferno"

What is it about Dan Brown?

Few authors in this decade are as polarizing. Every time Dan Brown's next book is announced, it piles up pre-orders through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other sellers. Bolstered by pre-sales, each book about Brown's tenacious and resourceful symbologist lands atop the best-sellers' charts for weeks or even months.

The criticisms of Brown's writing are legion, and it is not the aim of the reviewer to reflect on the storyteller's shortcomings, but rather to look at the reasons why his books remain the commercial juggernauts they are, by examining his recent bestseller, Inferno.

From the very beginning, Brown grabs the reader, opening in a Florentine hospital, where Robert Langdon awakens from a horrific, surreal dream, only to discover he cannot remember anything, a particularly traumatic injury for a symbologist who has eidetic, or so-called photographic, memory. Before Langdon has a chance to do anything about his physical and mental injuries, he is attacked by a killer. He narrowly escapes through the intervention of a mysterious and beautiful woman.

From that tense start, Brown keeps things moving very quickly, keeping the reader interested with little letdown in the action. This pacing, just a hairsbreadth shy of a pell-mell run, results in the pages flying past in a blur. With little effort, the reader has become invested in 150-200 pages of story before coming up for air. Like the previous novels in the series, it is an almost compulsively page-turning read, ideal for the beach, poolside, or airplane cabin.

One of the author's particular flashes of genius comes from his choice of subjects. From the arcane research at CERN into antimatter and the political maneuverings of the Cardinals of the Catholic Church during deliberations on selecting a new Pope, to the mysteries of the Knights Templar and the Freemasons, to one of the most quoted and influential pieces of poetry in the Western World, Brown chooses subjects to hang his plot on that capture the reader's imagination. Brown builds his suspense tales, using these fascinating and even controversial subjects as tentpoles for his plots.

Brown also chooses locales that fascinate, from Washington D.C. and London to Paris . His especial focus has been on some of the beautiful cities of Italy, like Rome, Venice and Florence. In his quick-moving prose, Brown succeeds in evoking these settings in a way that satisfies both the world traveler who has actually been there, as well as the armchair voyager who has never seen them. Brown succeeds in making the reader feel they are really there, a payoff from the extensive research Brown does on his settings.

Through the adventures of Robert Langdon, Dan Brown has succeeded in capturing the attention of a nation of readers. As long as he continues to evoke setting as effectively as he has thus far, continues to select topics that meld the public's fascination with controversy, and keeps grabbing his readers quickly and then keeping their interest until they are invested in his yarns, Dan Brown will continue his mammoth success, in spite of the shellacking he takes from the critics.

Why Do You Hate Me?

I don't know how it came to be
that I deserved your enmity,
however it's plain for any to see
that it is rancor that you feel towards me.

Did I say something that hurt your pride?
Did I cause you to look inside
and be disappointed with who you are
because I dared to follow my heart's star?

Did I commit the cardinal sin
of saying you weren't the best in
the field of artistic expressions
that you use to extol your transgressions?

Did I get in your way
from possessing someone yesterday
that you felt certain would give all?
That, to your lusts, she would fall?

Did I cause you to feel you fell
from the code of honor you tell
all and sundry you live by,
showing your words to be a lie?

Did I spurn you when you were sure
that all others I would abjure,
and turn to your arms to sin,
your lover only, your possession?

Did I illuminate truths about love
that challenged your illusions of
how certain relationships were meant to be,
making your choices far less saintly?

Or were you merely filled with envy
that I had blessings, gifts, popularity
you felt should be yours for all to see
instead of some other person like me?

The reasons don't matter, I will yield
to you this electronic battlefield,
because I have more important things to do
than waste my time with someone like you.

The Impossible Truth

What truth can be found
in the eye of a paradox
when the bipolar nature
of the black and white world
denies its existence?