I had a father,
he was a kind man.
I'm not the kind of man
he was.

I try hard,
sometimes I fail.
I still look for him
in the mirror.

He fought two wars;
didn't make him strong.
He did that on his own;
he fought his own wars.

Looking back
now that he's gone,
I have to stop and wonder
what was in the water.

My old man
was the kind of man
that someday I hope to see
in the mirror.

r ~ 6/14/14

I wish I loved a poet
so I could be immortalized in words
so stories about me could be written in verse
just once

I wish I loved a poet
so I could be an inspiration
just once

I wish I loved a poet
so I could be the writer
just once

I wish I loved a poet
so I could help them when they realize
that the world of dreams is just that

I wish I loved a poet
so I could teach them of reality
of the beauty and the pain and the mystery

I wish I loved a poet
so I could show them the stars
so I could teach them how to reach them

I wish I loved a poet
so we could watch the night
and wonder

just once

Sometimes when I am in bed,
Laying in the dark,
I listen to the cars roar by
From silence back into silence.

The silence is so loud, I think I may go deaf,
And the darkness suffocates me.
As I lay,
I feel the dark closing around me.
The silence is consuming,
And my thoughts permeate the total blackness.

The world suddenly seems so big,
And I so infinitesimally small.