embraces and we feel more distant
as the night ends
and the curtains close

a safe distance
from the passive shore
will keep me from
wanting more

who cares about the past,
since now is now.
Have cool adventures and surround yourself with good people,
and be kind and authentic and sassy,
and you'll be just fine.

Cherish it, children -
cherish the cherry blossoms for they bloom in spring and fall shortly thereafter.
Cherish the clear sky for soon enough, smog will cower in the corners of the night.
Cherish the freedom of childhood; soon you'll turn ten and be off to college or travel the world.
Cherish this second because it's over before you realize how many milliseconds went away with it.

every word i read gives me hope.
hope for someone I can be,
hope for what goes on out there,
and what sedatives will soothe the monster in me.

he eats all the guilt like inhaling air
i wish he would taste his innocence too

wings beat fast a song
in the undertones of wind,
be mine forever?

i liked he
he liked she
she liked he
who liked me

I went in
the water was cool and healing
at first.
I saw the moon cry into her reflection,
she tried desperately to pull the tides away.
But foolish me;
I swam out,
practically asking the ocean to drown me,
I loved her cool caress on my skin.
My skin was like a midnight sky
full of stars.
I was lucky.
When I washed up on shore the next morning
I found out I was drunk on salt
and
the ocean left a desert of it out there.

And in your eyes, you breathe into me a new dream,
I'd give my soul to the loons and my hands to the lions
for that moment where our eyes meet.

brewing,
steeped so long
the tea is hot,
almost too strong

darkened;
a burning tongue
with steam that also
burns my lung.

porcelain;
tea-cups clamber
broken pieces,
cutting anger.

The horizon's obsolete
I want to appear mature,
so I stare at it for forever.

It is worth all that time
next to you.

is it uncouth to defile spring so,
with the layering of heavy-laden snow
when I could see the grass,
walk unphased beneath the pass,
taste sweetness in April's blast
of wind infused with scents that grow?

The lady of burdens,
she who walks unseen, in darkness,
with stealth and blade.
She comes unsummoned and slices shadow.
She knows only remorse,
cursed always to follow one path.
She slays all things of dissonance,
and is deaf to the songbirds.

What could have saved her from this life?
If only she had turned to see the morning -
light beyond a castor of shadows.

two figures in a storm:
but the storm is the spray
of the wind on the ice
as it melts in the warmth
of swans in the pale
beneath a full moon,

sweeping the pair
in the calm of the night.

apples taste so sweet
like knowledge dripping from teeth
the forbidden fruit

seduced by that
innocence
sounding so cruel like deer who
do not know to wait
they run head on
and live or die by chance

that is always the fear -
not even the timing
but the doing

an entire world is waiting
on the other side

so admire the grass
say things
ask.

at the end of winding roads, you still follow.
I believe in everything you are
to me, you are the reason and the means
to anything and everything I need.

The asylum is the biggest building;
we called it the spider because from above,
its wings looked like legs with a body at the centre.
The windows are framed by metal grating,
and crosses mark each of them in the middle.

Now it is no longer an asylum.
It's marked as private property,
yet trails surround it in the fields of tall grass and the woods behind.
In the morning, runners sweep past it in a dreary march,
and in the evening, kids bike past in a race against the sun.
Sometimes they get off their bikes and peer into the windows on the ground floor,
plaster their faces against the metal grating,
see the peeling wallpaper and the over-turned tables,
but mostly the empty rooms and the view across to the next window.
Inherently they look through the building, onto the other side where a window, parallel to the one they are looking in, transports them to the other side of the walls.

On the second floor, there is a broken window,
forced from the inside since glass covers the lawn and pavement.

Maybe it is tragic,
all the people from the north side of this land shipped up here and trapped,
some of them sterilized,
confined to a labyrinth.

Now the building sits empty and deranged,
locked up from the outside world,
not for any purpose anymore except to sit there,
expired.

I think I knew you once,
with eyes like the sea caught by a storm,
you left on the vow of this unbreaking love.

Come back to me, I begged into the hills, death having made us wed. I died that day, and every day after.

In the throws of a fateful wind, my dress blew scarlet threads; my dead heart was promised to a prince, and vacantly I walked, a ghost for you.

Come back to me, I begged into the hills.

In this life or the next, I will ride wildly on horses with you, my love. I became yours on the sword of your vow.

I am lost between
the senses infused; linger,
letting them last long

Autumn pulls at dusks
yet August will not relent
until September

when evenings begin to hold that hallowed smell inside,
yet summer holds

leaves loosen from limbs
and the smell of apples sweetens the air

I follow you to the top, to the peak. You  laugh and I know
we are for each other in this life,

despite the weather, the path, the season.

God or that breeze, spoke out and I could feel the caress on my young face. An intimacy only longing could tell you.

in a dream, the frozen expanse brims with colder water

but her and her father stood still as the water hummed below them, seeped through the cracks

a voice caught in the throat, a psalm for this frozen bay

as winter swells with yearning for the sparrow, for the stream.

so sweet
so shy
we both let months go by

the hierarchy of learning is in the institutions
that rob you of your money and then spit you
out into the world, shaking.

Learning is a form of art, I think,
yet it has lost its lustre.

Curiosity is no killer,
but the cruelty of what "education" has become, is.

there are times when my voice gives into the devouring worm
that is the silence,
that is the pull between your thoughts,
the tug of hate and love.

who do you let win,
because it is up to you.
but when you must choose who does lose,
there is no trophy for selfish choices,
there is no winner in this wordless crime.

i have loved and ached
and sought after those things you two once shared -
compared to now, we are impaired
of this balance between
too little and too much -

a lack of patience and of touch

One person like steam on the horizon in a winter morning as the sun rises

stuck in the awe of them, the way of them, the transientness of knowing how soon the day will move on,

be over but that feeling lingers

sometimes you must be your own fighter,
your own believer.

beast

it feeds upon dreams
and joys
and we blame it for our carelessness

and we forget about it being there
and it loves
and we love
it hates
and we hate

and it hungers
starves

though still it is a beast

The mirror's dark other half looks back at me in the dark of the morning

the whole street's asleep still, moonlight wavering and waxing to its peak

the lake is still frozen beyond the harbour, two islands joined by an ice corridor

the sound of the guitar a part of the darkness, a piece of the morning, a song before the birds wake.

Before the crows wake
I'd better collect the light
the moon has left me.

a lover's soft kiss
beneath this strawberry moon:
spring into summer

there is a quality subtler than kindness,
though they are connected.
quieter, lovelier, beautiful to notice and reciprocate
if you can see it in those eyes,
that smile, the look across the room

barely platonic, but some kind of love without tension,
a frequency that hums in beholders if you listen and reply
in your own way.

I admire this quality and the people it belongs to;
I only ever see them in passing, mostly,
and in fleeting moments I am enveloped by the warmth, the belonging, this lasting tryst of hearts that stay connected

the unrooted soul
who knows only wind as home
and land as its cage

the snow is a siphon

are you pulling me in
or am I pulling you toward me?

are you pushing me out
or am I pushing you away?

it blows into the windshield so we pull to this side,
let the transport pass us by,
hazards flashing in the dark.

silence hangs between us like the edge,
so feebly teetering between tears and peace
I want to spill my guts out to you,
but I am worried it will distance us.

my dear.

the emerald pines breathe
through the cold, forbidden prayer
of Winter's old mass.

the ancient, forest steeple

All of us are born.
Some live; others just exist.
We all die; some are.