They lie
under cover
of darkness
'neath blankets
of fear
and mistrust.
The distance
between them
immeasurable,
scant inches
apart.
Feigning sleep
and ignoring
silent tears.
Hands reaching
across an
ever widening
chasm,
but never
touching.
Souls searching
for each other
but never
meeting.
A night
spent together
while divided.
The loneliest
night.

the ghost of the moon,
a sky of dark oaks,
its blacks deep cauldrons
breaking like twigs underfoot
its blacks tragic horizons
where the clouds stretch and dissolve.

THE CALL OF GENIUS

Genius wakes trembling
From its deeply-troubled sleep
' I've a gift that I can't describe
Can I this something keep?'

The call of genius from an unknown realm
That which breaks the mould of the owner's past and mind
Its imagination encircles and encompasses the universe entire--
Ideas, images, figures, patterns and shapes of every kind.

'Am I real or am I in a dream?
I seem to have lost what I was in the past
Life and people are strange and the world seems to have changed
Whom and what can I trust?'

What is genius and where is its abode?
Who can its mystery decipher ?
A question even the owner can't answer--
He walks, often sadly, as a loner.

What a terrible shame that I have such specific taste in people.
There are so many great ones.
So many attentive ones.
So many who would admire me, touch me, listen to me.
And yet at the end of the night I am lonely, not because they leave me behind,
But because I leave them behind, to wait for the few people I know I can learn from in the ways I need to.
The problem is, I seem to spend most of my time just...
Waiting.
I could be that person laughing in the bar,
I could be one of a crowd, talking,
Unhindered,
Unburdened, for the moment, by solitude.
But I am so horribly magnetized. I am so horribly aware.
And I go where I am pulled by whatever sleeps inside my bones, that stirs for certain voices but not for others.
I follow their echoes down alleyways, and at the end of the night,
I have walked alone for miles, and told not a soul my thoughts.
Because in truth, my taste for people is not only specific.
It is venomous.
It is bitter.
It is what tears taste like, or rain, when you've been bowed beneath either in silence and the drops roll down to kiss your lips.
And perhaps the sadness, I could handle. Perhaps I could accept these moments of clarity as transient, as all encompassing in their brevity.
But,
See,
The worst thing isn't to follow and be left behind.

The worst thing is choosing not to follow.

To turn and quietly take my leave, and stay silent, and ask no questions,
Even when they crawl up my throat like smoke, raw and urgent.
The worst is to feel a sudden spark of connection in a liquid world, that slides over my skin like water,
And then to watch it fizzle out-
Puzzled, always puzzled, and always, like a child,
Surprised.

Leather and whisky smoke
Whisping around yesterday's memories
Curling around your face in a haze
And you
Setting the world ablaze
Leather and whisky, smoke
And ashes shifting
That's you

Even in my seventh decade
enough remain:

impatience, ****, whiskey,
too many cigarettes,
lust (eternal and bright),
driving carelessly, laziness,
not being Buddhist enough,
preferring my own silence
to the chattering of humans
and others that come and go.

I once hoped to die pure,
but I know now these blemishes
will stick to me like true love
and follow me into the grave.

Such terminal devotion,
so rarely to be found
in this fickle world.

Friends to the end,
womb to tomb.

a fiery heart,
the beating sun,
summer’s ghosts burning
and a lonely petal falls from the rose.

Time is full of ethereal riches
And I, the thief
Eternally whisper my stolen minutes
So time passes me by