I have met darkness in a

Life burdened by prevailing 

Intrudes of accumulating 

Doubts that precipitate 

Pretentious eternities and 

Construct tautological 

Patterns too betraying 

For fearful minds complicit 

To my failing humanity 

Shunned as though I 

Were a drought-parched

Willow with no tenable 

Destiny while judged to 

Be incapable of preserving 

My own existence, but

I am the paladin they could 

Not see and my inner tempest 

Shall not surrender me