I gave you the steel -
Hopes, thoughts, fears,
Reforged,
Honed to jagged spears,
Turned against the flesh
From which they were wrought.
But blood won't flow
From the piercings
Anymore.
The corpse, complaisant, yields
From a lifetime of wounds.
Those razor-edged words
Drained joy
Like the ******
Of a shattered wine glass
Once cut painful and red-
Nails pressed through skin -
We veiled those marks
From family and friends
While I learned to hide
Behind vacant eyes,
Mute lips,
Mind dreaming of water
Running from oily feathers
Off a duck
Imagining words were rain
And ears coated with
The magic stuff
That would shed the pain
If only I believed hard enough.
Tomorrow
I could find another smile,
Know
The world hadn't really changed
Much,
Find new words to alter
Anger to love.
How did psyche falter -
Those few unshed drops
In incidental increments or
By catastrophe,
A failure like a levee
Rupturing, leaving land awash -
Doesn't really matter.
Frame now basks in your cascade,
Absorbing and accepting,
Soul long lost now wandering
Wondering when will body follow,
Missing the mate with whom to share
That steel from which love
Should be made.

Collected, raked to piles
Browned leaves, each a memory
Of a summer's sun-drenched day.
Now even most pious prayer
Unable to revive once emerald glory.

Birds that danced and sung among
The shady canopy
Have moved on, and I wonder
If they still remember
These leaves they once claimed.

Or have fresh foliage, warmer days
Resplendent sweet fruits to savor
Washed them clean again  
To bear from here no more mark
Than a season's passing?

Left to rest where it has fallen
The mass will choke the grass beneath.
So, having paused to recall past splendor,
Bent back resumes Autumn's labor  -
Collect and rake to piles.

I started a poem to ease the grief
Of my mother's passing,
But couldn't get it right,
So quit for awhile.
Some things just are.
Pompous words didn't fill
The voids or voice loss.
I flew to, cavalry to rally
The Life in balance,
Grasping at wisps,
Woven hopes of sky
When she knew her purpose
Will of steel, and tired still
Of the battle
And I surrendered.
Don't know if I'll ever forget her smile
From the hospital bed
When last we said
"Good night, sleep tight...
Don't let the bed bugs bite"
Just like when I was a child
Tucked in for the night
And I remember my tears
When I turned out the light,
Said "Goodbye,
Be sweet, Mom."

Back to the closet to await another year
The black lapel of my jacket
Sparkled with lost glitter
From a little girl's ball gown
A thousand stars in a night sky
I'll not brush them off
Just yet
So to remember tomorrow
Joy in the eyes of my little angel
And that I was a prince once

This finger still remembers
The path it once traced
Upon that brow
Memories of a face
Long ago stifled,
The dead body
Buried deep
Yet years' muck,
Accumulated debts
And life's debris
Washed away in a dream
I forgot to forget
When morning's light
Seeped through the blind
A mind now haunted by
The lovely ghost
Of the face I see in a photo
The smile, sweet smelling hair, now
As vivid as the day we first
Danced

Honeysuckle infused those summer nights
Painfully sweet perfume that dulled thoughts
Like narcotic-fueled fantasies
Replacing will with complaisance
While children plucked the soft posies
Eagerly ******* their sweetness like free candies

All season long tendrils encircled and wound
Around each bush in a push from ground,
Thieves stealing away life-giving sun
Choking old life from the garden
Unnoticed, leaf by leaf perishing, dropping
'Til shrub and tree stood each a lifeless scaffold

When night came to end this day
The heat of noon's sun
Still warmed the stoop,
Squeals of children at play
Silenced before blue glowing tube.
A mind's check list of chores done

Recalled the nagging ones left
While a moth dancing in the light
Cast a shadow on the wall
A display that would cost his life
Still, braved heat with dogged will
'Till overcome, dropped from sight

Burned in another flame
Thoughts of love long away
Days dancing a lone waltz
Man and moth flit the same
Now sit and await the stars
When night comes to end this day