The paper drips with red blood from my soul
There’s no ink left in my pen
The clock has used up all its hours
The music of the spheres has ended.

I set out to build a village in a place
Not hard to find without a map
Proudly I used local lumber
Made sure the walls were square and true.

Sadly no one wants to live there
No one stops to hear my song
(Just one clear voice and not an opera )
People look and listen briefly then move on
     ≈
Wandering through the others’ harvests
I see words stacked in random order
Piled like fancy autumn haystacks
Held in place with azure ribbons

Mumbled voices raised in solos
Whose words I cannot parse or learn
Where verses run from one to twenty
And the applause is deafening

What seems real is evanescent
Fleeting as the winking of an owl
Impossible to braid with just two strands
And painted over with graffiti.
   ≈
How am I to fly when it appears
That I can barely walk and yet
I thought that I knew how to dance.
I guess I never found the beat.

I can’t but keep on building sturdy
Little one theme dwellings
It’s the only thing I know
And I’ll live there all by myself

And hope a visitor or two
Will stop by now and then
To say hello and how are you
And share a cup of my brand’s tea.
ljm

The too-long constipated pen
Strains for movement
And it hiccups out a line
That joins the rest in
Mediocrity and dross.
          ljm

He offered me a
golden future.
It came postage due.
           ljm