We’ll light the wedding candle
Each year upon this night.
Remembering why as years speed by
We first stood to make this light.

Not for a love that’s ever true
Or a smile that ever cheers.
Not for the sick or crummy days
Or to share and conquer fears.

It’s for the days we forget to love
and when aggravations start to weigh.
It’s for the times we’ve both ******* up
But have chosen to love again a new way.

The candle will burn and the wax melt.
Someday, the wick will sputter and gutter out.
But it’s just a reminder and can be replaced
As long as we remember what it’s all about.

Forgiveness is a wild beast
of an exotic land.
I know it. Its shape,
color, texture and
particulars of its habitat,
yet it means nothing in my
day to day; at least nothing that
impacts the path I walk
or world I touch.

It is as distant as a polar icecap
and about as much
help as a glass shard
beneath my bare feet.
This wild beast makes noises
perhaps sour perhaps sweet
to the ear
but I do not know
nor can I name them.
Daily I set out and go
stalking after it in
my bare feet and soul ache
unable yet to find it for myself
or others, I make
my ****** way along this
un-exotic, piercing path.

It is a way I cannot abandon
but I must laugh
at the folly of my purpose
for I have long since washed
the picture of this creature
clean and thoroughly sloshed
it remains in my mind.
I am left to blame the blood
and curse its trail tracking
ever after me in the mud.

Trapped;
by the desperate logic of your own mind
and the fear of circumstances you find
yourself trapped in.

It is a circular state.
Painful as it cuts its way
like a razor-edged hoola hoop at play,
alone.

Isn't it always alone?
Despite the support of all
or lonely lacking pall
of being alone.

Life cannot be lived for you.
The pain and gut wrenching fear
preside ever strong and clear.
I am afraid.

Perhaps, love is not brightest.
Fear seems to shroud its beams;
striking from the in between
to **** hope, peace

Help! please!
but the cry cannot be answered
for it is my turn to be stalwart.
I'm crumbling.

Time, please wrap
your shriveled shroud
about the wounds
that keep care out.

Find it in you-
however deep-
to end this torment
plaguing me.

My heart may burst
(blessed relief?)
if no relief come
succor me.

Trapped...

Recall the warmth of love untold.
Once found in manure and rags at night
Outcast of men-yet gifted gold-
Now celebrated in smiles and lights

Recall the sweetness with each sip
The sweetness of his face,
As immortality faded away
To become the greatest gift of grace

Let peppermint sticks bring to mind
The innocence and blood
From birth to death he carried
Now, forevermore, his legacy of love

And on this night remember
the childhood wonder once known
When chocolate, presents and stories
with Christmas came into your home

But the marshmallows are for family
Who cushion life’s many blows
May your Christmas be sweet and merry
As your love for Christ and family grows

Examining the tee from the game that you loved
I imagine your swing and thoughtfully rub
my thumb over imperfections made
of time, spent and gone;
now emptiness so. . . wrong.
I hold it for the ties to you.
Your nearness seeping in faint wisps
into my bones
but they are ghostly tethers.
Sitting in the home
you built. Amid the ruins of years
gladly spent in labor. Fears
gently assuaged and now forgotten
even as you fade.
As the time with you fades.
Your nearness pales,
After all, it is just a tee.
Now my panic fills the moment
as this tether fails
too.

I heard a bird sing today
And stopped still along my way;
My churning thoughts forgotten
In the haunts of yesterday.

Merely for a moment then
I was that younger soul;
Worries gone and wonder found
Atop a snow-capped knoll.

But in another instant
Just the breeze was at my ears.
As I sank into the present
And lost again those stolen years.

Yet, my heart was lighter.
Those problems not so dire.
I just heard a little bird today
While slogging through the mire.

Part 1
Pressed from all sides
'neath a mountain of gifts,
each blessing designed
to create yet more rifts.

Weighed from above
and compressed from all sides;
useless and helpless
and angry besides.

Defending forever;
with no give to take.
Now tired and broken,
just one decision to make.

Keep defending or not;
be compressed or fight.
claw my nose above water
or slip out of sight.

Still searching for reasons
to seek each new day
and continuing on is just
the most familiar way.

It's ever more appealing
to cease and be gone.
So tired of fighting,
of playing the pawn.

I ache for the stillness
I hope could be mine.
Yes, this lone hope is morbid
but it's serving just fine.

If hope springs eternal
there should be more around.
Perhaps they are waiting
within frozen ground.

Part 2
I've realized, I don't really want to die
I just want my world to die around me
the hypocrites circling to seek a cause
to be rid of unsuitable me
the family burdened by growing cost
clutching insurance in case I never succeed
the home I may lose- any time, many ways-
due to spite, envy and greed
the smile that I share, every day everywhere
despite what remains unseen
the pain ever there, never slack, always bare
finding new cause, in everything new, everywhere...
I don't really want to die
I just want my world to die around me
but in the absence of that, there is me
which could leave me similarly free
and that is well worth considering.

Part 3
Though I've realized this
no decision is yet made
I remain adrift

Part 4
Wrung out and still dripping,
these tears still slipping away,
under my skin;
Sallow thin skin.
A weekend lost to agonizing over
what is beyond my control
and always was
because I am still swayed by
those I care for and those I don't.
Shaken by each puff of breath
and screaming gale.
The thought of a mere ten minutes
has me terrified
and just for tonight
I would trade for almost any fight
that would allow me to run away.

A cat is mischief incarnate
from claws to whiskered nose.
He spreads his form indiscriminately
whenever and wherever he goes.

19% in his tail;
the sweeping fluff of doom.
23% in the wailing cries
that wake you in nighttime gloom.

8% in the claws and teeth
which teach the unwise to take care.
31% in the legs; carrying him
from disasters- he caused- everywhere.

19% in the eyes that direct
these ongoing rebuffs of fate:
surveying all that smacks of horror
in the humans who are always too late.

My value is up in the air again.
“Be confident,” they say.
“Do your best!”
But what is my best?
When all my contributions are turned back,
when my best is thrown away,
I need to reassess.

Perhaps the value I've given
is not valuable.

When I am trapped in a single
uncomplimentary description,
when they smile
and turn away,
am I now worthless?

I may decide I am worth
a kings ransom
and my thoughts and actions
his right hand
but I cannot be confident in
the assessment
unless there is one
willing to buy.

Just hours since I learned of the great fall
my childhood enemy has taken.
My heart is shaken in internal squall.
Yet still, there is joy which I partake in

Why feel guilt at such a time, so long sought?
When others still roam the alleys of night;
our nightmare meetings still frequent and fraught.
The terror still real in the broad daylight.

I have been, largely, where she has now stood.
I have ground teeth on the obloquy.
I can’t rejoice now, though I wish I could
**** this infernal anisotropy!

And yet anger smolders at the pylons;
burning bridges and lashing at icons.

Hope often dies in
lonely vanity when not
paired with wise action.

The greatest injustice of death
is that life moves ahead.
Every crowning moment tempered
by the next, when you are dead.

There is no way to 'matter most'
of hope to preserve your name,
when those who love you, too, pass on
and others rise to fame.

Some may matter longer
yet their essence hides in grey:
a subject for debating,
distorted household names.

Most of us find saddness
but a reminder of the lost:
a fleeting planned out process,
some psyche scars, the cost.

How many wear these scars for us?
How many lives were touched?
Though in the larger scheme it seems
not to matter, as such.

Per haps three generations, or
four if the dead possessed great age.
We slowly fade from memory
little more than notations on a page.

It is life's greatest injustice
perpetuated everyday;
for which outcry never matters
as it has always been this way.
.

We are cloistered by stars so near from galaxies so far
The nearby planets wheel and tip among their beams and we are entranced
Such a small distance yet massively out of grasp
The magnitude boggles and we are routinely silenced
The world about seems all encompassing and it is
It encompasses time and death and hope
For these are concepts foreign to the rocks and ***** of fire without
Perhaps beings on similar spheres espouse similar ideals
Perhaps not, but yet we hope
The greatest steps are yet far too small
Trapped here on our dying ball
We cannot yet even leap from one stone to the next
And I fear, with growing certainty, that I will not live
To see the leaps from stone to stone and dance to dance
However much I may dream

No musings, complaints or sorrows
can carry their weight and depth so well
as those turned to poetic rhyme or pose.
For much else fails to swell
the heart of the listener in sympathetic plight;
words scraped in the meat
of meaning rather than the surface sight
of understanding. The hands and feet
don't tremble or still; the heart doesn't quaver;
until you learn to bear another's ache,
or from your views uncertainly waver.
I fear many of my generation lie unawake
to the joys, and what could be
if they could settle back to read
their hearts into another's chest;
and by sharing again, find inner rest.

I’m almost numb sometimes.
So banal and standard
I could almost breathe or revive
but then I remain unmoved.
The world is just the lack of you.

The sun shines anew
or a gift presents
but then again I find
no way to give you all the treasures
of my days or nights.
And your absence eclipses
all my petty pains
or hard work stains.

Laughter and tears
have lost all import.
They come and go as freely
as a ship to port.
I slip between them
through these empty days;
put on a living face.

This makes the people sigh in relief
but I could just as easily
scream to the clouds, cut down a tree
or be still and vacant as a windless sea.
empty motions
pointless acts

My world was for your pleasure
and to love you was the joy
of my heart.
I can’t help but think
it won’t be much longer
till I join you in the dark.