When you get lost on the way
When the true way
No longer exists.
Remember such sayings.

Sometimes the way forward
Is the way backward,
When nothing feels right
Try the wrong one.

All my feelings started to make sense when I poured down them on a paper inked with my heart.

body blazing, he roams
with flames for feet, drags earth
behind his back, as in magma
melting mountains, as in moon
pulling, seas shifting; skull swinging
open
        like windows
                             at dawn—

all gloaming, sun slept on the satin sheets
of his mind; make merry the morning
melody till it awakes, it wakes—

he weeps, tears trickling like candle-wax
dripping from its flicker. he flares
& firmanents fall through the fumes,

bruised, blinded
—burning bush for his
banquet.

ash and cinder know not
his swelter. he bore the heat now
he becomes the fire.

yesterday no longer exists
memory is flawed
selective and forgetful.

Red
like a red rubber
playground ball

wet
from a late
October rain

it was a solitary galosh
that did me in floating
and suspended in thought

robbing me
of those early morning hours
of sleep

while you snored away
and I haunt the halls and rooms
of the house

to shoulder
yours
as well as mine

whit howland © 2020