Grow up without a father?
That wouldn't be so bad...
Yet every broken man whispers
to his devil,
you're the father I never had.

My chains are my desires,
my eyes are your possessions,
and when I walk into the fires,
my lies are my confessions.

Just a taste of your flesh,
will bring me to life,
but if you depend on me
your heart is a knife.

My father was a ghost,
but I grew up
I sought bigger ghosts,
the devil in my throw-up.

You can run from what haunts you,
you can hide from your past,
but the devil will flaunt you,
up there on his mast;

because you're the fool
who sought comfort in gold
you would have learned,
if you could grow old.

I've been the king
in an ocean of sand,
not knowing choice
is in the palm of my hand.

As peacefully dying as the setting sun,
was our time together.

We did not long
to be apart or together,
but we drifted
and
kissed a farewell across
the ocean between.

It is on this day
that I
find ocean: guilty
It is not on looking back
but on looking forward that I say
dear lover that I never knew
I regret now loving you.

What does it say of the empty album
What does it say of seeds never planted
What does it whisper of happiness untold?
Nothing,
for fantasy cannot break the sorrow
of this moment.

It is the heavy pining that I gnaw at
like some lonely ******.
It's no **** that I build,
but a raft,
for I refuse to be an island.
Better to drift with the school,
learn common sense,
and remember not to throw away
new shoes.
But I remember...
running barefoot led me to
you.

In the quiet night,
borne on evening wind,
her dress flutters, speaking beauty.
In the stillness of my curiosity,
I pace over to her,
I whisper,
"She was no illusion. Liberty."

"What was she?" she breathes

With outstretched palm,
"Take my hand and we'll find her..."

She smiles,
she shakes her head,
"That's not how it works..."

My brow furrows,
doubt weighs on my hanging lip.

She dashes off, running wild and
free.

I give chase, laughing with glee,
for liberty does not run without me.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow—
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream:
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep
While I weep—while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

I went to turn the grass once after one
Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
Before I came to view the levelled scene.

I looked for him behind an isle of trees;
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And I must be, as he had been,—alone,

‘As all must be,’ I said within my heart,
‘Whether they work together or apart.’

But as I said it, swift there passed me by
On noiseless wing a bewildered butterfly,

Seeking with memories grown dim over night
Some resting flower of yesterday’s delight.

And once I marked his flight go round and round,
As where some flower lay withering on the ground.

And then he flew as far as eye could see,
And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

I thought of questions that have no reply,
And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;

But he turned first, and led my eye to look
At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,

A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared
Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

I left my place to know them by their name,
Finding them butterfly-**** when I came.

The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
By leaving them to flourish, not for us,

Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him,
But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

The butterfly and I had lit upon,
Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,

That made me hear the wakening birds around,
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,

And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So that henceforth I worked no more alone;

But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

‘Men work together,’ I told him from the heart,
‘Whether they work together or apart.’

The  babies sleep soft
as flour beneath
our sagging

roof and ice begs
deformed limbs
down

upon electrical lines while
we wait for the blizzard
to hold breath.