What is a poem?
A lilting of words?
An image of voices
forever unheard?
What's this picture of symbols
all ordered in lines?
What's this rare combination?
Did it take her much time?
What makes the pattern
or rhyme start to flow?
What sets it apart
from the prose or the scroll?
Is it empathy recalling
some rose-tinted dream?
Maybe it's laced in darkness
the vile or obscene?
What is a poem?
Some words written with tone?
What are these lyrics
Sung straight from my bones?

I'M
JUST
ANOTHER
BIRD
THAT
DIED
-
TRYING
TO
FLY
INTO
YOUR
BEDROOM
WINDOW.

It’s the best intentioned lie
that anyone will ever tell.
It’s a lie broken hearts
know only too well.
It’s the guy who is nice
but just not good enough,
or the girl who you like
but just won’t ever love.
Friend is never fair
when that’s all there can be.
Friend is the one
that your heart never sees.
It’s the word that is said
when your hearts on the mend
or the lie that is whispered
when the fairy tale ends.

The
distorted
feather of
cigarette
                 smoke
                                         trails
                              upwards.
             It dances
                                    on the
                                             first
                       wisp of wind;
escaping
                 the draw
                                 of cracked
                weasened
lips.
Lips
formed of
                                      withered apple skin
                                                         and stale coffee;
                                            of puckered
                         mouth
              and deep
inhales.
                             Hunched shivering
                                                       shoulders hoist a
                                                                                            shaky hand
                                                                                          toward the
                                                                                    face.
                                                A raspy exhale releases
                        another puff of smoky breath.
The icy air exaggerates
the capacity of old
and tiring lungs.

I foresee this rarely preempted fate.


I quit!

The warmth of bed, is draped on skin,
as I struggle to shake off the hazy hold of slumber.
My toes distort the rowed, uniform tufts of carpet.
They stand, stretched high to meet my weight.
To support my unsteady ascent.
I rise to feel last traces of dreams fall loosely
from my creaking shoulders, like a shroud of silky mist.
Voices and faces disappear, as rubbed eyes restore 'reality'.
Erasing the false memories etched on the minds canvas,
I make fiction of my nightly reverie once more.