some knots are bound so tight
it can take a lifetime to undo
but each one a reminder
how you tied yourself up
just to get through.

often the stream gathers itself
a river deep a river wide

emptying into the sea
that great mother of life.

You can drown in your perversions.
You can stew in your thick hate.
You can find your enemies surround you,
And them, annihilate.

You can bathe in your own prejudice.
You can reach for your release.
You can tar and feather trinkets,
If you don’t destroy my peace.

You can open every wound you’ve had.
You can blame it on the rain.
You can coat yourself in fervour
Until you finally go insane.

You can hope for their destruction.
You can poison their recipes,
But in your own cake’s construction
Don’t you dare destroy my piece.

But peace is an illusion.
And which piece will finally fit?
In the pain of their collusion
What chance that peace will finally stick?

You can wonder what they’re thinking.
You can judge and reprimand.
But in the cloud of sweat and stinking
Hate is all that makes you stand.

You can hope and pray for silence.
You can hope and pray for fire.
When you shovel coals of violence
Hate seems all that you desire.

Behind your gas masks and your rhetoric
You can make faces at their fleas.
You can step on every snail you want,
But don’t destroy my peace.

You can lock their thoughts in cages.
You can manifest disease.
You can curse the fallen ages,
If you don’t destroy my peace.

But peace is an illusion.
And which piece will finally fit?
In the pain of their collusion
What chance that peace will finally stick?

And that peace was only ever an illusion.

,cool,       into water
  like socks; whirlpools
splash is more than  that.
  suddenly        something
              from         nothing
  n  isn't that sooooo
         gorgeous ???

                                     no,so
tragically      temporary.

He stands where silence hums against the grain,
A soldier bound by ghosts behind his eyes,
Steel threads his chest, but not his ache or strain
The faded photos whisper lullabies.
Each taped-up moment clings like prayer to wood,
Though time has thinned what brotherhood once stood.

The camo hugs like armor and like chain,
Yet every fold remembers where he’s bled.
The wall, a shrine to joy not born of pain,
Still leans with shadows of the living dead.
He guards the space where memory dares to tread,
A quiet oath still echoing, unsaid.

The mirror watches with a hollow stares
Not quite a man, not wholly lost to war.
The past reflected, stripped and laid out bare,
Tattooed with names he doesn’t speak any more.
His silence roars where once he swore with pride,
Now draped in years he never set aside.

The brothers in that photograph still grin,
Suspended in a frame, immune to dust.
But he’s the one left carrying memories of them,
Their birthdays, burdens, courage, grit, and trust.
They marched beside him, now he walks alone,
A relic housed in flesh, not yet stone.

So steel your heart, and do not call it brave
This life of war is not a badge to wear.
Each breath he takes, he pulls out of the grave,
Each smile a lie, each laugh a threadbare prayer.
The vest may guard his ribs from a bullet's intent
But never from the hollow grief of death.

The story of two people,
sitting in the gentle night.
They hold their hands
without impatient fear.
Maybe this is true intimacy?

Too many plans, too many
subtle strategies
in the hiding place—
everything to avoid
the pain after.

Longing for what could be,
we say goodbye
to the now,
that leaves so quickly.

Between words,
taming the common confusion,
we will never come any closer
to another human being.

Celebrating the quiet feeling
of comprehension,
absorbed by the paradox of facts—
above differences, imposed tattoos.

We are sitting in the deep,
friendly night,
holding entwined hands
with an ephemeral moment
of fulfilled, trusting intimacy.

she took my picture,
that's how it started
that's how i knew,
she took my picture
off the refrigerator door

when your picture is taken off
the refrigerator
like dust off a knick knack shelf

you do the dishes,
you have to wash your own socks.

the refrigerator is cursed
like a lost winning lottery ticket.
cursed with pictures of dead pets,
dead aunt's, cousins, grandma...

(my picture rip off the fridge like $#@#$#@...)


the fridge hums its song,
warm on the outside
and cold on the inside.

you *******, i shout,
and i punched the fridge,
packed my suitcase,

grabbed my fishing pole
and out the front door
I went.

half way down the sidewalk,
I turned

and there was little Jack
looking out the window at me.

(tears ran down my cheeks.)

MAN! I'm gonna miss that dog!!!