Who said that love was fire?
I know that love is ash.
It is the thing which remains
When the fire is spent,
The holy essence of experience.

Live to fight another day, just to die another night
Unzip my veins and set me free
From empty bottles, and broken dreams
A shaky foundation indicates doom
And I'm alone in this hollow, desolate room
So forgive me if I must depart
I've been murdered by this broken heart

Daddy got the ***.
Mama got the cola.
Had me wondering?

Then they mixed it up and stir it more.
Then they took a drink.
And said, mmmmmmmmmm.
Had me thinking?

Then they offer me some eggnog.
And a chance to get cookies out of the cookie jar.
Had me smiling?

While I'm enjoying the moment.
I notice my parents going in for  another mixture of their drinks.
Had me pondering?

As the Christmas music played along for hours.
I soon saw my parents was passed out.
Had me investigating just what that drink was about?

Then I realize, I had the roam of the house all to myself.
To call Santa and talk to his elves.
And to request that upon delivering toys that they bring my parents a drinkable gift.

What more could I ask for?

We drink to make each other more tolerable.
Whiskey washes over the painful memories of broken trust and promises.
I don’t remember the last time we didn’t fight.
It’s like I love you too much to care anymore.

I’d give you the world if I could,
but that’s easier said than done.
You don’t want me to be so kind to you;
and that’s something I’ll never understand.

Don’t forget who I was before you tore me apart.
I was a pieced together puzzle;
until deconstruction became your hobby.
You became my demise.

Tears trickled down my wrinkled shirt the day you left.
In our life wine rhymed with love
and water tasted like sacrifice.
There are only so many wounds liquor can heal.

New stains painted my shirts,
not tears or wine.
Red cuffs covered up memories of you.
Blood washed down the drain just before you came back.

Now it’s too late to save us.
Maybe we were doomed from the start.
But I’ll refuse to believe we weren’t perfect for each other.
Not until God tells me otherwise.

I suppose I’ll see him soon and ask for His opinion.
Your embrace has never felt more soothing
as my vision blurs to black.
You whisper sweet thoughts you should’ve said before.

We drank to make each other more tolerable.
I couldn’t think of someone I’d rather tolerate.
When I embark from dark to light I’ll remember you.
I love you too much to care anymore.

I can see the snake slithering,
hissing at my feet.
Will it bite me?
Hopefully.

I can watch the stars
form patterns,
while laying on my stomach.
The sky's reflection is best seen,
while staring at the ground.
The Earth is causing my head to swirl.

I fear the day
the snake slithers through the core,
discovering all the World's secrets.
It is always watching,
waiting,
for the right time to strike.

Once,
I fell into a well and
nearly drowned.
My father lowered in a rope to pull me out.
It slithered down the hard,
cold,
rocky side.
I never wanted to leave the well.
The water kept it's promise.
I promised to one day return.

I can hear the hissing of the snake.
Waiting for the right time to strike.
One bite and
the stars will fall to Earth.
They will scorch the prairie and
blind the poor.
We are not used to seeing hope.

I hope that you will forgive me for my lack of understanding.
The cold-blooded killers are hiding in the shadows.
Time is ticking
through the ocean.
Forgive me for being hopeful.
The sky will auction off it's wonders.

And still,
our buildings will crumble,
the blind will hear,
the deaf will see,
and I will still be here...
Listening to the snake slither through my world,
trying to catch the wind.

One day,
I'll scrub to the bite.

At a young age I grasped a pen.
Held it tight in my fist to make circles on a page
As if I was enraged,
But at that age it was all in good fun.
Soon enough someone,
I can’t remember who,
taught me how to hold one.
Pencils became cool.
I could make mistakes in school,
Then erase my error forever forgetting
That I may have been a fool
when spelling my own name with a lowercase K…

A school boy error.
But that’s just what I was.
A school boy.

I remember being introduced to crayons.
I thought to myself,
ALL OF THE COLORS ?!
Every color I could not even imagine.
Colors I could not pronounce,
Colors of pride,
Colors of passion,
And when I was asked to use these colors,
at first being young,
I chose to abuse these colors.

I’d put red where it didn't belong,
And orange where you would think it was wrong.
Use pink for people and purple for pants,
Brown for the ground,

And one time,

Just this one time,
I made the grass blue,
And the clouds green.
That made me laugh,                                        
Because this world was that page,
And that page was mine.
I crossed and I scribbled all over the lines.
And when I was finish I’d go running to tell what I’d done.
My father would look and say
“Wow!”
“That’s beautiful son.”
And then my exhibit of art
Would hang neatly from the refrigerator door.
But that
     does not
          happen
                any
                    more
I grew older.
And as time passed,
the lines grew to be guidelines and laws.

Rules began to apply, I did abide.
My right to be free was strictly denied.
Each stroke of a color, each stroke of a pen!
When would my hand dance freely again?

I learned of letters from A to Z,
In love with language I won spelling bees,
Put consonants with vowels to make words,
Learned adjectives, verbs, nouns, and adverbs.

I was a proud little nerd,
And I still felt this deep discontentment.

An egg hatched and I was not yet a bird.
Where was the wind beneath my wings,
to give me  a feeling fly enough to make me sing?

I began to fall.
Fall fast into the depth of misunderstanding.
If knowledge is power,
Why were my heart and soul disbanding?

In frustration I sat in contemplation,
Pondering thoughts and memories,
of when I was most happy.
Looking through old picture books I found a folded piece of paper with the only solution to my problem.

The page had my name at the bottom.
Lines danced and trapeze from one side of the page to the other.
No sense,
No order,
Just ink.

I understood with a smile,
I hung that picture on my bedroom wall,
I opened a book and held a pen.
On lined paper I put line after line with occasional rhyme.
I used letters to laminate life.
I used words to take flight.
I used sentences to draw dreams.
I used what I knew and what I had seen.

Words are wisdom, what wisdom gains value when not shared with what we know as the world.
So when playing with ink, understand to be free,
understand your responsibility to others when they see what you have created in secrecy, and let there be no limit to what you think is outside that box.
That is how you dabble with ink.

Funny the things we recall.
Images that flash through our brain.
Some most vivid for me were of an old man.
Skin like creased parchment paper,
Lined and yellowed with age.
The veins visible just below the surface,
of a thin nearly transparent veneer.
Liver spotted flecks of red,
Charted paths from the toil of many years,
Palms callused forever from a life time of labor.
Big fingers knotted and misshapen,
The two inch tip of one gone missing,
Saw taken, at age sixteen.

Looking at those old hands, one could hardly guess
That still there remained gentleness in their caress.
For an old dog, or a little grandson in need of some
Companionable affection or parental love.

Those aged hands could also make things,
Toy sailboats, and wooden trains,
complete with caboose,
And cow catcher guard.
A cool flute whistle that actually worked,
He said it was like the Indian’s made,
Out Oklahoma way.
And he would know,
He cowboyed there.

His hands taught me to tie my shoes,
Open and close my first pocket knife.
Those same hands could become birds,
rabbits, butterfly's, all sorts of things.
When projected up on the wall,
Silhouetted by a naked back light.
His hands knew magic too,
Pluck silver coins right out of my ears.

His tired face matched his hands,
visual weathered, creased and
wrinkled road maps,
Of 89 years of rugged roads traveled.

Yet, his lively pale green eyes remained
forever fraudulently youthful prisms,
Eyes and spirit of a much younger man within.

But it is his hands most of all I shall remember,
Their imposing look and their reassuring
touches of tenderness.

I shall never forget my Grandfather’s hands.

I can't breath,
Will I cry?
Not just yet.
Another puff remains.
Through it all,
Wisps of smoke.
Pouring outta my lungs,
As fresh air fights its way inside,
Do I dare to dance this hopeless trot?
I think rather not.