~

For something more than love

Trenches dug, a mile deep
My body it is sore
Firm against the lies that seep
Beneath the sliding door

Crevices of mounting hate
Stand the borderline
Quietly I sit and wait
A distant church bell chimes

Thunder falls from every cloud
Children run and hide
Barricades inform the crowd
To walk the other side

Sticks and stones and broken bones
Phrases fired back
Insults from the words have grown
Now arming the attack

Strangers in the circus tent
Clowns to fill the car
Popcorn quotes, the need to vent
This now has gone too far

Raise the flag, your colored choice
Wave it high above
Think before you use your voice
For something more than love

~

Say cheese


I don’t recognize my footprints anymore,
flash bulbs and dusty breaths
distort my sight and laugh
I barely recognize my name
as if anyone might call
on the gusts of barren life that hit me full force

Lost in a silent thought  
bouncing from shutter to shutter
blistering paint and chipping sorrows
outside the windows, smeared of tears
resting on cheddar sills
reflecting unknown images, as I stare

Photographic headlines swing on wire fences
twisted around dreams and laced with unforgiving pain
rusting in the rain, falling piece by tiny piece
until words read like fragmented sentences
in amber speckles on the walk,  
asking me to believe

A three legged cat begs for a mouse,
yet the only thing held in this trap is me
folding another fitted sheet (I hate folding fitted sheets)
as Tripod claws at my leathered skin
trying to erase the scars, captured in the lens
which mocks me…say cheese

You and I separated long ago. The only writer
I ever loved. I try to find myself in
between your words, lingering somewhere deep
in your inspiration, but I don’t think
I’m there. You always made them up,

but I knew you better than that. Recycling
moments from the past to make a fake
love feel real. I don’t love you.
I only wish I could see your memories of me
living on through your fingertips,

the way you do through mine. We live separate
lives in the same vicinity, touching the same
people. If you had told me this years ago,
I wouldn’t have believed that even a single
degree could separate you and I.

We were each necessary for the other
to mature. My biggest fear is that I didn’t
help you grow as a writer. So what
if we matured? If being loved by me
didn’t improve your writing, then it was all

for nothing.

The steady pitter patter
Of rain on windows
Like deft fingers on a hollow drum.
A steady chill
Of grey stretched across the sky
Like the cow hide pulled taught
Over the Woden skeleton of a drum.
Watch through windows
The rain that falls
From the clouds to the ground
Smearing across windows
In a drizzle of grey
Painting abstract trails of water
On the landscape.
Water will not scorch me
So I run in the rain
And feel alive
Yet wet with raindrops
That stain my clothes
With big wet splotches.
I escape the monotony
And the steady drum beat
When I run in the rain.

~

5:37 am

5:37 am…the morning is silent,
eerily so that I can hear nothing
louder than I ever have before
Not a bird sings as the sun still sleeps
outside of this four walled solitude
Slowly drinking a cup of coffee,
wondering why I even exist

5:42 am…staring into the dark spaces
surrounding my mind like elastic memories
While I write these words
of absolutely no reason,
as if they will heal somehow, take the pain
scatter it upon horizons
that no longer have meaning

5:46 am…somehow I enjoy this silence
Seeing my shadow below,
head in hands on the surface of my desk,
painting charcoal pictures of loneliness,
listening to key strokes breaking the quiet,
hoping this faux ink erases the past,
yet I believe nothing can…5:51 am

Weight…wait

Fantasies of cobblestone pairings, cracked and scattered
and wheat field decisions, looming large
now rest on my shoulders
like moss on a stone
~
Clinging tightly to each inch
of north facing skin
while never really noticing
that east is my direction of choice
~
So much it seems piles on,
***** laundry on the bathroom floor
disguised beneath damp towels
only to add more weight
~
And I lift, not knowing if I will fall,
crumbling beneath this load, drunk of the massive pain,
yet I find the ground is much softer, a bed of posies
since you wait for me, and help me to stand
~
Guiding hands comfort, shading the sun from weary,
tear stained eyes, brushing back vines, tangled and thorn’d
revealing that nothing is ever too much
when a friend is near

~

Sad Existence


It is a sad existence, that of a poet
with flowery phrases and disguised meanings
Tossing out happy faces like quarters
splashing in a wishing well with no bottom

Painting heartstrings in an amber shade of gold
lingering silver linings losing their crease
in frayed bottomed hip huggers
that are long out of style

Swishing fragrant melodies on starch white paper
collecting lines in neat rows and margin’d desires
lips fluttering and eyelashes batting
well below the league's average

Whispering notions of sheer delight,
tantalizing rapid pulses pushing blood
through narrow corridors finding
locked garden entrances in chained Jasmine

Dreaming dreams that only a dreamer could dream
all the while knowing that when they awaken
pen in hand, ink at the ready
these dreams shall never come true

It is a sad existence, that of a poet…who believes their own dreams

An old friend stopped by today

Your'e face lit up, you were shining

He joked with you, you called him "*******"

you wouldn't know you were dying.


First time in weeks Iv'e seen your smile

Amazing what old friends can do

For just a few moments

Out came the old you.