Under the flickering street light,
we wished each other a good night.
Words we may have wanted to say
could always wait another day.
There would always be enough time,
we were kids, alive, in our prime,
never thinking we would grow old,
or maybe we did, but never told.
Then one night, the corner was bare,
and then the next, still no one there.
An old man, musing on the past,
(when any day could be my last):
Tomorrows are not imminent,
but our yesterdays, infinite

After we serve our nighttime tours,
we’ll break our fasts and strip the taps,
swallow the rivers, swim through doors,
dance the twelve step on basement floors
and dig our graves with bottle caps.

And when the moon drowns in the trees
and we’re down to a lonely dime,
we’ll make an altar of the breeze
and pledge our love to this disease,
a vow to one day at a time.

The spider web cracked mirror in my room
will never regain its clean, sheer surface,
but if I look from the proper angle,
or tilt my head to the side a tad bit,
I will see a face that once reflected
the promising light in my mother’s eye.

I step aside
to let you by
but then you say
I’d rather stay

a self forsaken son bleeds in his bed,
fathers scream rosaries at the undead,

broken angels dangle from debarked trees,
mothers carve their flesh with unanswered pleas,

paper-maiche sisters swallow pulped spleens,
Christ choking on a candied apple preens.

I push aside the cataclysmic gloom,
drink moonbeam light from the white river spume,
mock the snake bit reverend who forecasts doom,
and tap my shoes atop this nation’s tomb.

Splayed on the grass, under the listing birch,
I bemoan to a thousand unmoored moons
floating between a million bare branches
undulating like waves in the still night,
gurgling ungracious words about climbing
when I could barely grasp the bottom branch,
hoping, one day, to climb so high I might
caress the anchored stars with humble hands.

There’s a comfort in this melancholy,
an old blanket fraying at the edges,
pockmarked with holes, too thin to provide warmth,
but familiar, that coarseness over skin,
a retreat into something I know well
when battered by anxieties of hope,
something to pull over me when I fear
a mild air will caress my bare skin,
and I will be tempted to close my eyes
and taste the crispness of a ripe apple
picked from the orchard behind my old house
where I laughed with people who are long gone
and dreamt of days when I would turn the soil
after a calm rain refreshed the deep roots.

walking blissfully unaware over
the ossuary and ashes of folk
who danced and loved by moonlight in this space
where we build our abodes and bless our hearths
break bread and lay in a peaceful slumber
beneath a night glistened by the cold glow
of heavens departed before their light
emblazed the passage we recklessly trod

old friends laugh as I drown
in a dry river bed,
and when they offer hands,
I ask for rain instead,
and when it does not fall,
I crawl to the near shore,
**** on shards of dry grass,
and claw the earth for more

split me open
and you will see
a tiny seed
that once might have
sprouted and clung
to a trellis
bearing lush fruit
and casting shade
but now is just
a pitless stone
that has never
seen the garden

the bone dry days accumulate
at a slow and torturous rate,
yet every night i find the way
to raise my empty glass and pray,
"Aye, so the clock does not restart,
bless this weary, still beating heart."