Count, a poem

Count

I count the shadows scattered by your lights.
Is that one mine? It wavers, fades, to be
replaced by dancing multitudes, each turned
away, each blind, deaf, each alone, each held
in place by faded twins. They move with me,
now growing, shrinking, through our flickering
reality. I guess wrong and again
must count. I count until there are no more.

Stephen Brooke ©2026

All That Will Not Be

All That Will Not Be

To what empty shores might your storm carry me
as I name the stars above this restless sea?
Gaze upon each truth, in fixed forgetfulness,
know each secret sin I must someday confess.
Edging forward now, ablaze then in regress,
crossing ebon fields, points dim and luminesce;
laugh on in eternal cold cacophony,
light my way to shores of all that will not be.

Now in fear I cower, now in ecstasy;
prophets shoulder forth and vie to set me free.
Let them slip me keys to promised doors and gates;
in the rooms of darkness, naught I know awaits.
As the stars grow silent, as each storm abates,
voices of the void take up our whispered fates;
echoes chasing echoes through infinity
fade among the vaults of all that will not be.

Stephen Brooke ©2026 

for some reason, I'm fond of trochaic hexameter 

Got Up and Went, a poem

Got Up and Went

My get-up-and-go
all got up and went
and now I’m old
and tired and bent.
Some days I don’t
feel worth a cent — 
I used to be
such a dashing gent!
But so it goes
when your get-up-and-go
is all used up,
when you reap what you sow.
There comes that day
and now I know
I’ve seen the last
of my get-up-and-go.

Stephen Brooke ©2026

some more light verse 

Wearing Red

 My talented niece, Mean Mary James, wearing red and playing the blues.

Forgotten, a poem

Forgotten

Did I never ask to be born
or have I only forgotten things
I once dreamed in my lost darkness?
Existence yearns to exist, to be,
groping after a hidden god
where scraps of memory lie scattered
among the dying silent stars
I thought I glimpsed. They change each time
I try to gather them together,
as with each memory, do you,
shifting this way, that way, in
peripheral, inevitable,
visions. Do you remain as you were?
Do you remember what we asked,
you and I? We understand
too much and care about too little.
knowing dreams of birth and being,
of forgetting and of sleep.

Stephen Brooke ©2026

back to the more obscure stuff! 

Slaves, a poem

Slaves

We are the slaves of death;
  its shackles may not be shed.

Run, and it will still catch you;
  hide, and it will still find you.

Yet one day, it will break
  our chains, saying ‘Go.’

Stephen Brooke ©2026

in a vaguely sijo-like form 

Maturing

I wrote the four relatively short books that make up the Donzalo’s Destiny series over something like fifteen months time yet I can, rereading them, see that my style very much matured — improved, I would be inclined to say — during the course of their creation. It became something much closer to what I would call ‘my’ voice. I’m not about to go back and rewrite them or anything of that sort. They’re perfectly acceptable as-are. These were my very first fantasy novels and mark the creation of the entire Izan mythos. It has certainly grown since, and the somewhat murky magic system introduced in Donzalo has become downright scientific in its explanations.

They are also the only novels in which I have used a semi-omniscient point of view. Ultimately, it’s more a matter of multiple POVs but the narrator does occasionally intrude. Not enough to hurt anything; it’s still pretty much the way the characters see things. For the most part, I managed to avoid head-hopping, though in fiction since I have largely restricted myself to one point of view per scene — and, generally, per book.