The Darkness and the Light
and Other Poems
by
Travis King
Smashwords e-book edition
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This book is dedicated to the members of my family, each of whom encourages, supports, and challenges me every day in his or her own way, and to everyone else who has helped to shape my life, thus inspiring some of the poems herein.
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE
The majority of the text of this collection is copyright © 2005 Travis King. It was originally published in print format in May 2005 under the jurisdiction of the copyright laws of the United States. As of December 2007, it is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License, viewable at
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
The author’s introduction to this electronic edition is copyright © 2009 Travis King and is also released under the above Creative Commons license.
The cover photo provided with the Smashwords e-book edition is © 2005 Travis King. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants permission to others to use the photo only as an accompaniment to derivatives of this collection, along with the proper copyright notice.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Author’s Introduction to the Smashwords E-book Edition
1. Welcome to My World
2. Lines Composed on a Summer Day
3. Shoreline
4. Shadows Slither
5. Disneymind
6. Dragons
7. I Stood in a Forest
8. in darkness born
9. ONE WAY
10. in blackness
11. I Sleep
12. you speak of love. stop
13. Lines on Paper
14. Visions of a Faraway Land
15. Black Reflections
16. I Travelled Last Night
17. Those Eyes
18. purgatory thread
19. I Look Around
20. My Personal Hell
21. The Vampires and the Wolves
22. I do not need the gallows
23. The Fallen Warrior
24. Final Thought
25. The Darkness and the Light
About the Author
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Author’s Introduction to the Smashwords E-Book Edition
Greetings, readers!
In May 2005, I self published a limited edition chapbook entitled The Darkness and the Light and Other Poems—in essence, the same book before you now. This electronic edition contains the same 25 poems found in that print edition, albeit formatted slightly differently due to the current limitations presented by electronic publishing.
I had high hopes for the 100 copies of the printed chapbook, but sales were meager. I ended up giving away numerous copies to friends or as promotional material, and I never turned a profit. This is unfortunate, since my plans were to donate half of the net profits to local charities. As I write this, it is February 2009; I still have some copies of the chapbook available and would love to share them with the world, so if you enjoyed this electronic version and would like to have your very own printed staplebound copy, complete with original formatting, then please feel free to contact me at the email provided on my Smashwords profile page, and we’ll work out a deal.
Even if you don’t want a hard copy, I hope you enjoyed this e-book and will continue to read more of my work in the future.
Sincerely,
Travis King
Now...on to the poetry!
(For those reading on an iPhone or similar small handheld device, it is recommended that you do so in landscape format, as some of these poems contain relatively long lines of verse.)
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Welcome to My World
Welcome to my world,
Where everything is as it seems;
Your paradigm has shifted here.
Things are done my way;
My perception is Reality,
And you see things as I do.
Demons, devils, angels, and gods
Lurk behind you and in every shadow.
Here, they are not fleeting dreams.
There, beside you, is a door.
Open it—it’s something more.
If you see a paradise, then that is what it is,
But if you see a hell, then be afraid,
For there is no chance of hallucination here