Ronin, Pt. 3: Atonement

Alone and accosted
Allotted for grave appointments
He who dwelt in thievery
Recovering life was robbed it.
Clung on to reclaim what his name defamed
To tame and comfort the falsely deranged
His life led astray
To find his blinded bandits
Til all was left of his balled up blame
Was a lion to the slaughter
Blood diluted in his water
Where his name was writ
Nothing left to trace of it
Gracefully misplaced
All he ever gave for it.

A silent breath perspires
A whisp where life expires
A figure hung high above
The muck and mire
Desire to break the wire
But for the bruises
Where his fire once sprung.
Strung up from the rafters
Hogtied, abandoned
Swung lightly, branded
Stung like the rope round his hand.
Surrounded by spitting laughter
Heard creeping from next room over,
The broken in ronin
Dangles free, fruit from a tree.
Left eye swollen shut
Struck by memories of them clubs.
Dragged up through the mud
Clubbed and mugged
As he swung from the roof
His proof of life
Wishing now that he was drugged.
Cold clutter of a broken split
Gourd and sword
Grass sandals torn and thrown
Across the floorboards
Crown of thorns.
Torch is lit, embers spit
Alight the captors
Torturing the conquered samurai.
Familiar voice pierces
From a form with familiar poise.
Three-stacked diamonds,
The magistrate's emblem,
The false benefactor
Speaks to the malefactor,
Lifting his face with the tip of his cane:
"You're gravely mistaken,
To think you'll freely awaken
We're just starting to break you.
The world's all forsaken you
Long ago.
Now you know the only
Road left to roll on,
We'll take what short breath's left of you.
Soon enough, we'll bring your own death to you."

Keep me aligned, my sole sight
Roped tight in my stolen mind.
Know my words well
To spell this my last reproach.
Broach my farewell
To whoever would hear me.
Relinquish me
Of indemnity
Peacefully
With solemnity
Disseminate me.

Immobile in his jail cell
The vandal left, torn and frail,
To wait 'til the morning pale
'Til his final breath is stilled.
His rattling sigh
It tries to grapple light
He topples blind
To the quiet ground
That cools his bruised frame.
A crunch of gravel
It echoes and travels
Unravels and vibrates
Beyond the wooden cage.
A lone guard standing
His vantage on the vandal
Stoic and silent
Eyes patrolling the bandit.
Weak and broken
The ronin speaks
To the stoic warden:
"Before you forgo my innocence,
Know another who's felonious.
Left me, sold me this
False fortune, my sorely missed
Placement of trust.
It was two of us
Construed a bluff
To snuff out the lawman.
Whatever the judge told you
It's true, I struck the fatal blow to
The lawman like I was paid to do.
But motion was never solo,
He used me like Judas
My Brutus, I followed clueless.
If there's a hunger I share
In warfare and judgment
With you and the magistrate
And his ruthless lair,
Bring judgment on this apostate
Retrieve him without reprieve
Perceive him as to receive
With honesty and prophecy
Fair payment for his hypocrisy."
The sentinel turns his words over
His mind mulling over every corner of thought:
"And if we should go
To where your brother is sought,
What insurance is bought
That once the traitor's caught
Vengeance you both wrought
Distraught with black rot
Won't ever be allotted to me?"
With belief, the samurai spoke to relieve:
"Brother, my body is broken and bent
My spirit's spent.
Cemented my repentance
I relent to wicked consequence
The judgment of providence."
The sentinel approaches
Encroaching on enemy turf
Terms of the ronin's enmity
Echoing his narratives of servility.

Keep me aligned, my sole sight
Roped tight in my stolen mind.
Know my words well
To spell this my last reproach.
Broach my farewell
To whoever would hear me.
Relinquish me
Of indemnity
Peacefully
With solemnity
Disseminate me.

The guard and the ronin
Roaming the hillsides
Moonlight pursues the two vestiges.
Moving through abandonment
And wreckages.
Snow going slow
Growing cold going home
Holding silence in place of woes
The ronin he stumbles forward
Struggling bones hold him credible
Skeptical the sentinel
Sticking close to the weak and crippled.
Out beside embankments
Currents sweep a blank scent
Augment the silence sent
Conceal and shield
The ronin with his vanishment
Slipping towards his banishment
If only to circumvent
His death and grisly accident
Dissent and malcontent
Leading to reinvent
Unbent, repent, a new orient.

Keep me aligned, my sole sight
Roped tight in my stolen mind.
Know my words well
To spell this my last reproach.
Broach my farewell
To whoever would hear me.
Relinquish me
Of indemnity
Peacefully
With solemnity
Disseminate me.

It was twenty years passed
At last, the lone vandal
No longer a scoundrel
Roaming the lone shires
Kept his peace thirteen years
In comfort of his brothers and trees.
A monk rearranged
Sits unchanged 'neath an awning
And the yawning of the morning breeze.
A tattered man saunters
And ponders his last encounter
Offering his thoughts to the silent monk:
"I search for a deserter
Who killed my only brother
A bandit who once was wanted
For silencing with permanence
A lawman, several innocents
Fugitive escaping from the punitive
A drifting monk accompanied
From this sunken ministry.
At once, he was impounded
But in anger, unfound unbound,
Struck down my loving brother.
Twenty years, the price I've paid
To slay the stray malefaction."
Opening slowly his chosen moment
The monk he notices
The broken emblem
Diamonds three-high
Preside upon his garment.
Semblance of a figure
Paid vengeance on the monk's ornament.
Beset by lies
Spread wide his last pursuer
Construes the monk's eyes
As they abdicate
The tattered man's hopes as they culminate.
He stands aground and indicates
To the gate of the ministry's entryway.
A gust blows high
Between the two samurai
Swords drawn forward
As their eyes detain
Muscles clenched tight
As their light is sprung
Breathing slowed
Heartbeats strung
At once, the monk
He lowers his sword
Forms a seat by his torn up gourd.
Relates his meditation
Speaking straight and straight:
"I am vindicated."
He opens his eyes
To his chosen moment
No sign of the tattered man
But stands there a lone, abandoned blade
Standing straight beside him
Upon this withered land.