Derrick Keeton

Derrick Keeton is a freelance journalist who has worked for The Bristol Herald-Courier and lives in Northeast Tennessee. He is the author of a novella Portrait of a Clown (2008). Though obscure, Keeton continues to write and seek publication beginning with his self-published debut Thrust into the Void, containing poems and short stories, in 2007. "The Devil's Throat," a short horror story which Keeton has written, can be read in Black Petals Online Magazine, issue 49, Fall 2009. His work explores aspects of human exploitation, societal and political woes, and the blurring of good and evil; as well as evokes darker, ambivalent themes.

Derrick Keeton's Blog: dkwriting.blogspot.com

Downways 

Down the hallways, down the main straits 

Where the byways learn the hard ways 

Hear the hangman's last words, his hates

What drove him down the highways

Along the outskirts, buxom blues

Denim saints and throwaway children 

Songs they sing in a midnight's cruise 

Signs they ignore while swimming in the glen

Down the sad haze, down the main ways 

Contract kid's blood on battlefield

His last breath, a thought, "What a day." 

What a way to lose, to get killed

Down the valleys, styptic nature... 

Heeding those warnings of danger...

Ember 

In her eyes, a transgression

Ravenous orbs tightly binding each mystifying memory

I remember you, the girl caught in barbed wire and haunting passion

For the harmonious, lengthy world so unexplored and a life so full of mystery

Incredible: This revelation I have of you

To so fully remember that cold, barren December

When Heaven's gate rusted over, and the empyrean world broke through

Our reclusive realm, and gone you were, leaving me with the last bit of warmth

From a hot, burning ember

Suffering...Tranquility 

For the strongest of men...

Suffering is tranquility

They abide by all that is holy

In knowing

That death

Is merely a succumbing

To the vastness of time

They take guilt in their stride

They ride away, drunken at dawn

Leaving behind the maidens and her sons

To take care of

But within that strength

Comes a weakness...

And it is such when the strongest of men

Can no longer ride away

So he stays, his new maiden alight

In the likeness and mercy of the sun

Until he ceases to breath one morn'

The Gate 

Peccadillo: Your warnings and superstitious chants

That keep society raveled in a carapace, hid blind and hindered

Curfews, violations, trespassing, and probations

And only so few which appraise myriad gold for the key

To unlock the gate to excess and beyond

Leaving us to fawn and fathom

At what depths behold

Beneath blue oceans bold!

Whereby beneath lies gold

Not wealth, but of bountiful blessings

Whereby questioning becomes scholarly nature

And whichever route you prefer

Is the route you take

But forsake! Forsaken is he

Who hops the gate

No key he possesses

So confine

Make endogenous spree

That each hope, dream

Scorned with abjuration

Keeping all in tight breathing spaces

Until our wills act in admiration

For he who jumps the gate