Lucas Weismann

Poetry

Adventure – Posters Available

- Lucas

Hello everyone,

I’m really excited to be sharing the first in a series of 12 images I commissioned as part of the Djinn’s Heart and Other Stories from Ukranian artist Olga Volkova.  Right now, the images area available online at my etsy shop as posters, framed posters and canvas prints.

This is the first in the series, entitled: Adventure.  If you like it, please consider buying a poster.  I’ll be reinvesting any money I get from the sale of the posters into more commissions from Ms. Volkova for upcoming stories.

I’m particularly looking forward to seeing what she can do with the story about that time I met the Devil on the road…

tomorrow

- Lucas

Wind whips through empty lands
stirs up sands, I close my eyes agains
not cold, not hot, not anything
these gray lands I walk
Alone in the echoes of silence.

Suddenly I’m not alone
Old friends are with me; my doubt, my fear, my laziness.
they invite me to stop for a rest.
just a chat, a chance to talk about old times.
I stop by to be polite

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen them.
the last few months have been full.
full of live, of love
of doing things I’d always dreamed of doing.

withered claws,
they pull me down.
color drains from the already subdued pallette of the land.
time crawls treacle slow.

procrastination (twin to laziness) shows
late as usual
don’t you have to run the updates, sweep,
shuffle piles of paper he asks me

he’s right, I think.
that all needs doing.
I can write later
Later, I’ll write.

in the sunless lands
a living death of worthless tasks
the sands fill the glass
life drips away.

will and muscle atrophy
victims of disuse
as my demons feed on me
they grow stronger

contrast dims and all is gray.

I can write tomorrow.

there’s always tomorrow.

tomorrow.

 

To the Would-Be Time Traveler

- Lucas

To every child who wants to go
To where the past was brighter
When men were men and lads were Heroes
Warriors and fighters

Or every girl who thinks perhaps
Austen’s England’s best
That world of balls and parties and
Talk of who’s best dress’d

A word of warning ‘fore you go
Off in your time machine
First of all your problems:
A world that’s not so clean.

You see dear reader ’s not so long
Since soap was out of fashion
Where thick-held grime and soot and mud
Kept your clothes from clashin’

That’s not to say most anything
About the germs you’ll see
You’ll have to fight off monstrous things
Like Plague and Leprosy

That ignores the problems of
your germy pedigree
For people cannot future-proof
Their immunity

All this trouble you’d have wrought
If you took this trip
To say no thing of burning ‘live
If your nature you let slip!

You see my young would-be
Time trav’ler ‘strordinaire
The danger’s far to great
To those both here and there

To be a temporal tourist
Sounds a great adventure
But there is another way
To go there I would venture.

Consider making voyages
‘cross the globe instead
Or grab a book and take a trip
Inside of your own head.

Then you’ve got a perfect chance
To go see what you’d see
Without risking loss of things like
Modern dentistry

If this sounds like a cop out
Or some unfair, unkind fate
You’re trav’ling time already
And so it’s not too late

Our time is best in many ways
Than any we’ve yet found
Finding wonder’s simple as
A taken look around

Take solace in the fact that
Time yet marches on
Changes come and changes go
And yet we linger on

The future could be so much brighter
Than the past you see
But it will take some work to shape it
Work for you and me

Our bright future not so soon
Will be some person’s past
“A simpler time,” “a better place”
But destined not to last.

And so instead of trav’ling time
I’d like to suggest
We make those future people jealous
By making our time best

On What to Read

- Lucas

Go read everything you can

Reading makes you think.

Novels, Comics and directions

For your kitchen sink

 

Never shy away my son

From forbidden lore

Just know that every thing you learn

Will make you thirst for more

 

You’ll never know your path in life

Until it’s done and trod

Go read of villains, heroes and 

Some long forgotten god.

 

Pay attention to which books 

People try to burn

For powerful ideas live

‘Tween every page’s turn

 

Learn to think like Plato

Marcus and the rest,

But take it with a grain of salt

Choose what you think is best

 

Wisdom from the mouth of babes

Proceedeth it is said.

Perhaps it’s true, but only if

Those babes are quite well-read

 

Go read every thing you can

Reading makes you think

Headlong into wisdom’s font

Take a good long drink.

Writing Prompt 5 – Pebble

- Lucas

Like a pebble disappearing as it sinks into water, so are those who incur the wrath of the Great Khan.

Upon mountains of skulls and a throne of bones does he build his great and lasting peace.

For his will is the divine will of heaven, so say the Priests of the Christians, the imams of the Muslim, and the Monks of the Buddha.  All pray for the health of the Khan that he might bring us the wealth of the city-dwelling cattle.

Those beasts of burden whose art serves to glorify the horde.  Whom we seasonally harvest when they are ripe, just as our women pick the berries at summer’s end.

Woe to any who resist the Khan, for to do so is to stand against heaven.  See how the Golden Khan has fallen.  This once proud group, who were free men of the Steppe are now lowly beasts in their nests.  See how their weak were culled and the strong added to the glory of the horde.

See how merciful is the Khan, who allowed those whom he spared to prove their loyalty by being the first to fight for his honor against their former comrades and neighbors.  How when given the chance to be free, they join and become men at last, if only for a second.

Note too, how any women of worth join the horde and become wives to the Khan and his men.  For truly it is the first time many of them have seen a Man, rather than these paper-worshipping pigs they called husbands.

It is only too sad that all are not fit to live free.  Such as the men who fought about whether to resist or join the horde and killed their OWN countrymen.  None could trust men of these and the Khan mercifully ended their lives that they might seek a better one the next time around.

Wise is the Khan, who will not be questioned, but seeks the wise council of the engine-makers who fight city to city, and the sages, monks and other wise men of all nations, that he might be as wise as they and truly understand how best to bring heaven’s will to pass.

Glory to the Khan, may he live a thousand years, in this flower of peace he has  wrought though the fertilizer of war.

 

– Unknown Khan Officer

Exhaustion strikes

- Lucas

Exhaustion StrikesSometimes exhaustion strikes
between the loves and likes

 

I catch the silence
and space expands
like cotton’d ears the muffled sounds
barely pass
The emptiness fills the space left for silence
and I’m cut on shards of silence
wishing to be alone.
Feeling lonely in the crowd and wishing to be loved and alone-
held in your embrace.
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