Exile

I sit, in exile,

The four walls, four rooms

that have become my world.

Reading, and studying,

Things that will help me when I return,

As if fate has me on layaway

In a holding pattern for some future deed

That the world needs me to perform.

I sit near the bayou, near the putrid, beautiful,

Decaying life that lounges in the swamp.

Life passes me by as I sit—

All my friends on the other side of the land—

Alone with my books.

I focus with both pen and sword,

Flinging words and swinging a blade to keep the loneliness at bay.

But there is no one to read the words

And no one to fight with my sword.

My captor is ever present, but I shall do him no harm,

For my jailor is me.

And I have built my prison so well

That it will much take patience to free myself

From my self-imposed sentence of exile.