The demons lurk from behind sheltered memories
Pushed down for far too long
Their strength scares the hell out of you
Rising
Pushing down
Fighting
Clawing their way into the light of the night
Scream if you will
No one will hear you
These are your own demons
The ones of your own making
Co-created within years of connectedness
Hell where are the perpetrators now
That you allowed to steal your peace of mind
And why is it the light of your soul didn't keep this from you
Scratching
like chalk on a black board
Hell have no mercy
So shall it be
Look fear in the face like a child with the  world in their hands
No one will take this from you
It is yours to own so treat your demons with respect
They have learnt you well and keep stronger demons at bay
Let them scream and dance by the light of the moon
They are but healing and becoming the past
Kiss the ground on which you stand
Soak up the rays of the sun
They will settle again
Silently revisiting the files at the base of our soul.

I spoke and my words along with me started to fade away
Nothing more or less than a gentle sea breeze
Never to be seen but always to be heard
We can feel each other but you'll never find me
Your heart could pretend to love me
I know you're cold
I smell nice and your skin so soft
Getting off track but that's what eternity does to you
My mind hasn't gone it's just occupied by the changes in the ocean
Of your emotion and impossible to read chicken scratch personality
I've lost it all but go with the flow so you know even though
I'm not around all the time I still feel the want to touch
Your life don't forget me I love you very much
Inhale the courage to exhale my name
and one day I might breeze passed you again

balking, then walking into the suburban night,
I have escaped the TV, the PC, the clutter of memories
and the last two hanging, breasty incandescent bulbs in the galaxy,  
soon to have their filaments burn out amid the indifference
of florescent pigtails and their infinite, incessant hum
I have escaped into this night      

marching on, marching on
the sullied, sacred sidewalk squares
past the dentist’s house, past the woman whose husband was murdered
by his best friend over a case of beer, and had her eternal fifteen minutes on Dr. Phil
past the retired educator, past the woman who…hell I don’t know what she does--she drives a gold Avalon
and never retrieves her Sunday paper before noon  

marching on, marching on  
I count cadence, move as if I am headed
to another battle, and I am, but I won’t see my enemy tonight
he is yet on the black horizon, waiting for me, and you    

marching on
when I pass the widow’s house a second time, a third (?) time
I smell her cigarettes and see the orange glow in her garage, like  
a lonely firefly moving to and fro, in the universe she creates for it
before flicking it to her oil stained concrete graveyard, stomping it out
never to let it fly again, though by my next circle she will have birthed a new one  
and given it a foul fickle journey of its own    

marching on
a truck passes me on my final lap  
its fumes mixing with the cool moonlight
I hold my breath, wanting neither lunar light
nor carbon monoxide for my evening repast
  
when I breathe again,
the scent of tacos soothes my olfactory,
I do not know its greasy origin in this dark place  
nor do I care, but I inhale again more deeply
daring the odor to tease me again  
and help me forget what
I escaped to find  
marching on

There's a hole deep down inside of me
That cannot be filled
No matter how hard I try
Self medicating only makes the bottom deeper

This hole is much like a black hole
It will **** everything good that seems to come close inside
to never be seen again

Afraid to see what is down at the bottom of the hole
Afraid that it will be forever there
I search for something more
Something to fill it in with
Spiritual rituals become dull
And life leaves me complacent
Searching searching searching

Hoping that some day the hole will soon be filled again
That a smile will be across my face unforced
Searching searching searching to fill this deep deep dark hole inside of me.

on the opposite side of
the world
the green budded fingernails
of the frangipani unfurl
to their lush full verdancy

all the flowers stand tall
to see the sun
and open coloured arms
for a full-scented hug

the birds are all a twitter
with nursery nests
and sqeaking chirking beaks
and in the pond small rafts of gelatinous eggs are watched over by frogs

there is that wonderful
tang of warm salt and
eucalypt wafting inthe breeze

autumn for us down
under just a pleasant
memory...
here we now look forward
to the summer sun..

I need to write a letter, in curling cursive blue,
and mail it to me, it doesn't matter what the words say
I just want to see them scrawled on the page, to remind me
I am seventy minus eight, and my symmetry in script
is increasingly askew

I know this
when I press ******* the pen,
when I fold the paper, lick the envelope,
and drop it in the blue metal world where its flat life
commingles with strangers until it comes back to my red and white box,
into my black and white life, where the average of the two is gray,
the growing, groping color of my beard,
and the hair on my heaving chest.

I need not even open it to know I have forgotten
what secrets I writ...the name and address suffice,
showing me not who I be or where I be, but how slanted and sloping
my world has become, no matter how vainly I endeavor to keep things straight,
of late, and more tomorrow, my dysgraphic lines
tell the truer tale, in the simple scribbled letter
I wrote to me