Many, many years ago
When the earth was new
There lived a lovely butterfly
Her wings of brightest blue
Everyday was happy
As she fluttered all around
Visiting each precious bloom
Each garden they were found

Till one day by courier
A message she received
The news was far from happy
The words caused her to grieve
Her mate was lost in battle
It broke her fragile heart
Never more would there be joy
Her world was torn apart

To show her grief she slowly
Removed her precious wings
Discarded everything she loved
The memories they bring
Then wrapped about her body
In a way to show her grief
A drab cocoon of teardrops
Then sat in disbelief

She could not eat, could not sleep
Her sadness did abound
So worried was her family
They often came around
Not to be a burden
She packed her simple things
Rolled them in a bundle
As well, her precious wings

She took off on a journey
As every day was kept
A map of where she traveled
By every tear she wept
The sadness so consuming
Her head she held so low
Downcast eyes the path she took
A heart that’s beating slow

Crossing creeks and valleys
What ever she did meet
Touching each and every stone
Beneath her tiny feet
Around the world she traveled
Her journeys filled in length
For many days and many months
Running short of strength

About to end the story
Her broken heart near death
She prayed for time to hurry
Her last and final breath
For love had left her being
Wandering alone
That day her mate did breathe no more
The message she was shown

When seemingly from nowhere
A beauty sharp and sweet
A stone now lay upon the ground
Below these tired feet
Though different was this relic
Such beauty not concealed
The loveliness this stone possessed
Her sorrow slowly healed

It lay as a reminder
That ugliness might play
But found within this sorrow
Some beauty was displayed
And then her eyes did open
The perfect shade of brown
When then she noticed wonders
Were waiting to be found

Like diamonds in the river
A perfect flower’s bloom
So happy had she now become
She cast off her cocoon
Shook the dust from on her wings
The brightest color blue
Put them on and offered thanks
This chance at life anew

She danced the dance of butterflies
And spread her story wide
To family and friends alike
The truth she did confide
In loss there will be sorrow
But life is just a time
Remember but the good you had
And you will be just fine

In everything is beauty
All that you will see
Whether in the rising sun
Or stones beneath your feet
Always find the goodness
It lies before you eyes
I promise you’ll find happiness
When you realize

So dance with me this morning
Spread your fancy wings
Follow me this summer’s eve
And see the joy it brings
If ever you feel sorrow
Don’t forget the chance
Gives thanks to all the good you have
And let your spirit dance

.

I saw her walking down the path,
then leaning on this tree
I wondered if she just might like
to be up here with me

I said, “come on, it’s nice up here”
She said, “I like the ground”
I yelled, “the view is very clear,
I can see for miles around”

She said, “but here the grass is green,
the flowers at my eye
I could not see these wondrous things
from up there in the sky”

“This tree is old, this branch is strong,
it easily holds the weight
I’ve been up here an hour or so
I’m sure that it won’t break”

“Oh that’s not it, my climbing friend,
that is not it at all
I do not think that branch is weak
and both of us would fall”

“Then what, if you will tell me please
keeps you so far below
For where I’m at, this highest peak
provides a perfect show”

“I just prefer the feeling of
the earth beneath my feet
The fragrance of the summer breeze
upon my face so sweet”

“But way up here the sky is blue,
like nothing that you’ve seen
The valley and the mountain side,
as if comes from a dream"

“Well, I’ll not climb this tree with you
and if a friend you be
Then you will slip down from that branch
and come down here with me”

I shimmied down the mighty oak
and staring in her eyes
I saw a view I’d never seen
on any morning skies

She said, “I’m glad you didn’t fall
from up there way above"
That’s when I thought, oh yes I did,
for I just fell in love

I found her to be beautiful
much more than any sights
And truth be known, I’m glad I’m down
for I’m afraid of heights

(But don't tell her)

.

Scattered wavelengths
from a worn out speaker
cracking with each unbalanced bass note
Finding my brain on overload
and a slower heart beat
out of tune

Static the union,
tuning dial gone, volume at high
glowing in the corner of cobweb melodies
lingering on a distant shelf
now sinking lower in this
roadside armchair

An empty bottled fortress
collects the pain at my feet
glass brown soldiers stand,
bottle cap mementos flip
like dancing beans on a folding table
painted Dos Equis green at El Mercado

One more for the road
a staggering venture
along crooked dotted lines, weaving nonsense
two at a time, smirking
snickering like a prideful ending
mimicking the way

Still the static, white noise,
foaming seas on wavelength casualties
and the trees cry, when birdsong of night
haunts with a sound
interrupting the dance
of the beer container guards
and I tap a painful toe

.

“I miss her so much,” he said
as he sat in the corner crying
I wanted so badly to say something to console him,
anything to make him feel better,
just a few kind words to soothe his pain
but I couldn’t,
he was me

.

Take this, this poem
with torn, tattered edges
Stuff it in pockets
of jeans faded blue
Tell all the people
who teeter on ledges
Nothing is worse
if you have not a clue

Shatter this pen
flowing ink made of fire
Charring the castles
where dragon wings fly
Fanning the flames
that a sad heart has started
When every stanza
now ends in goodbye

Fracture the vase
that once sat in the window
Emerald green
with a chardonnay shine
Toss me the shards
till you see I am bleeding
Now have some cheesecake,
a nice glass of wine

Bury these dreams
so they fade in the morning
Hidden from sunlight
and coated in dew
Roll out the leaves
in the cover of autumn
Springtime for me
is now long overdue

.

I punched the sun
and burnt my hands,
they blistered ‘fore my eyes

Because I want
just cloudy days
to fill my sorrowed skies

I used to like
the daylight hours
before she went away

Now I just can’t
accept the sun,
I want a cloudy day

And evening
doesn't help at all,
if it is coming near

Because I know
there’ll be a moon
upon the heavens clear

So I’ll keep punching
at the sun
with burns upon my skin

Until I can’t
fight anymore
or clouds return again

I love my dreams
for they show me the places
Mystical scenes
filled with beautiful faces
Sherbet and rainbows
like waves in the summer
Playing electric guitar
with a drummer
Floating on clouds
above rivers of jelly
Limburger cheese
that is never once smelly
Stairways to heaven
that I might be singing
Picnics on Thursdays
and plastic bells ringing
Grapevines and flowers
and candle light dining
Beneath a moon
that is forever shining
Holding her hand
through the park we are walking
Hearing her whisper
"I love you" while talking
Kissing her lips
in a soft tender fashion
Seeing her smile
and feeling the passion
Spending the rest
of my days with her sharing
No longer worried
if someone is caring
Happiness follows
wherever I’m going
And how the look
on my face it is showing
I love my dreams
but awake I am weeping
Because my dreams
only come while I’m sleeping

.

Twisted vines of thorny fingers
Wrap the entrance to this place
Ripping flesh and bandaged whispers
Outlines dark of sadness trace

Carving names in weathered forecasts
Those who fall before it’s due
Leaning off to glimpse the future
Never once a grumbled clue

Placing frowns of lost persuasion
Drawing lines in charcoal sands
Daring one then yet another
Shouting out in loud demands

Gather here for time is wasting
At the edge where hearts now break
See the waves return to sender
Out beyond the landslide wake

Take your spot, a crowd is forming
Cloudy skies now call your name
Step up to the planned formation
Only you are now to blame

Spread your arms in bird-like fashion
Don’t forget that you can fly
As you find your destination
Following the tears you cry

You will reach the sorted bottom
Where the rocks predict your fate
Hurry now, the sun is setting
Doomed horizons will not wait

I looked inside my heart
and found her in the corner,
then asked her how long she had been in there

She said it’s seemed a while,
but she was disappointed,
to understand that I was not aware

I gazed into her eyes
and thought she looked familiar,
then wondered if she’d been there all along

She said almost forever
and that she had been singing,
just hoping I would hear her loving song

Did it go like this?
A hummed for her a stanza
and saw a smile turn up on her face

She said, yes that is it,
I guess you really heard it
the whole time I’ve been singing in this place

I really liked her song,
the beat was smooth and steady
It seemed that how I walked was like a dance

Just like a metronome,
clicking to a tempo,
hypnotically it put me in a trance

I buttoned up my chest,
real tight around the collar
to make sure that she would not run away

And listened to her song,
remembering her smile,
forever in my heart I know she’ll stay

.
I have tasted tear drops
Acid from my eyes
Streaming under muted smiles
Cutting deep into my skin
Leaving trails of sadness
Glistening reminders
Along lonely cheeks
When damp expressions
Weren’t expecting rain

.

I circled the rumors in red on my sheet
Sat there and looked for a while
Planned out my day just a start to the week
All in a wait and see style

Considered telling, but then changed my mind
Fractures in time will be known
Feeling betrayed in a truth that does blind
Shunning the light that is shone

So many pass that do not disappear
Hoping the news will retrieve
Headlines and sorrow and shedding a tear
Praying the masses believe

Drinking the praise through a white plastic straw
Savoring every drop
Laughing inside as they digest it all
Knowing someday it will stop

Ordering stones with a carved epitaph
Dictating words as they’re bled
Counting the frowns in the day’s aftermath
Watching from shadows ahead

I could be wrong, I have been there before
Choices I tend to conceal
Though I do know there is one thing for sure
This is not one they will steal

.

I play my guitar,
now crying in sevens
a cold vacant morning
with rain on the ground

Sorrowful chords,
on the strings of emotion
in three quarter tear drops
where sadness is bound

                                   And the storm clouds they form
                                   on the edge of tomorrow
                                   with thoughts ever yearning
                                   for your melodies

                                  dreaming of yesterdays
                                  caught in the feedback,
                                  out of tune longings
                                  in lost harmonies

Breathing in silence
of fret seperations
seeking a songlist
of lyrics unfound  

A chill strums my heart,
sitting empty and hollow
I play my guitar
and there isn’t a sound

.

*If I call to you,
above the crashing waves
boisterously gathering
on a rocky coastline,
like a trumpet in the mist
cutting through the fog
signaling a safe passage
to my heart,

do you hear me?

If I send out echoes
of promises made
and lifeline affections,
floating as a buoy,
a vessel of desire
reaching for you
on these stormy seas,

can you hear me?

If I am left stranded, marooned
in the silence of my tears
alone, without you
on a desolate island where
seashells have no names and
tides retreat from the sorrow
of my broken heart, pleading for you,

will you hear me,

please?

.

I choose to breathe for every breath is free
Calmly bound of tempted drizzled fears
Slow dancing on the desperate dying wind
Placing endless hope against the flow

This does come
beyond iron gates of broken trances
to sing
undying wishes upon deaf ears

Fractured in meanings and senses known,
these wrinkles form a favored mask
Donned in apprehension of a wilted feeling
Sleek and slender, along a poisoned vine they grow

Challenging
in endless streams of sorted need
Stead fast
with chains of charmed tethered truth

Cartoon headstones with scribbled crayon names
cast darker shadows beneath the edges of sanity
Ripped and tattered these empty voices scream
my name in echoes bearing nothing more than seen

As I cry
my tears sprout wings and flee from my face
I fall to my knees
finding only the jagged earth to rest

Desires cling to the massive arbors of life
Dreams falter along a winding creviced cliff
Nothing laughs like the air upon my sorrowed face
and I choose to breathe for every breath is free

Soft are the wings of the firefly princess
Twilight the scene of her flickering dance
Pine needle whispers aflutter of springtime
Alone on this evening in search of romance

Warm April breezes caressing her body
Slumbering daffodils, gold leaf embossed
Shining, her beacon illumines the valley
Twinkling sorrow of love she had lost

Wandering sadly neath evergreen niches  
Shadows and silhouettes bend at her glow
Hard to imagine her tiny heart broken
Far from the beauty this night she does show

When then she sees him alone on a hillside
A pen in his hand as he quietly writes
Silently floating, she lands on his shoulder
Kind is his face that her glow gently lights

Noticing teardrops upon his cheeks falling
“Why are you crying?” she asks him sincere
Startled, he looks at her, eyes wet and weary
“Oh little firefly, what has brought you here?”

He turned away gazing up at the moonlight
Then shook his head as more words he wrote down
“I miss her so much,” he said in a whisper
His mouth once he finished returned to a frown

She knew how he felt for her heart it was broken
One winter’s evening, a cold misty day
Taken from sleep by her jealous big sister
Evil her magic had whisked him away

Just then she noticed that things felt familiar
Something about him jarred her memory
It can not be, visions rambled within her
This can not be my love taken from me  

“If I may ask sir, please when did you lose her?”
She fluttered her wings so excited to hear
Her light now as bright as the full moon above them
Here on this hillside the skies ever clear

“It’s hard to remember, but sometime last winter,
a sorceress came on the solstice I think
From by her side I was suddenly taken,
found myself here just as quick as a wink”

“Since then I’ve cried on this hillside we frolicked,
writing her poetry, words how I feel
Sorrow and sadness in harmonic phrases,
verses my broken heart could not conceal”

“The saddest part is, it is merely a feeling,
only the love is what I can recall
I know she was real for my heart does remind me,
the rest is a blur, almost nothing at all”

She thought and she thought of her wicked old sibling
Remembering tears drops from lovers that fell
When mixed together might change what had happened
Glistening together, they could break the spell

She took one of hers that she saved since December
Flew to his cheek were a steady stream flowed
Placed her own teardrop within his now weeping
To her amazement, his body it glowed

Shimmering sparkles like fireworks bursting
A magical sheen filled the heavens above
A blink of her eye and he changed right before her
He now was a firefly, the one that she loved

His eyes grew as wide as a sunflower smiling
Flapping his wings like he’d never before
Looking at her, his light brightly was gleaming
He said, “I remember, you’re the one I adore”

He was so happy, he flew up and kissed her
“I missed you,” he said “never leave me again
We’ll fly and we’ll hide far away from your sister”
Then he looked down and he noticed his pen

He lifted it up and then flew to the paper
Flapping his wings he penned one final line
It read that they lived happily ever after
From now in this moment, till the end of time

.

Empty,
this heart is desolate
a barren wasteland
of what ifs and waiting
for words no longer needed,
no longer wanted,
no longer heard
poetic failures
from a poetic failure,
crawling, pleading,
fading fast

Sun bleached and brittle,
in an instant
all is gone,
lost to the shifting sands,
deserted, abandoned,
cast aside as bones
begging for flesh,
for blood, for breaths,
chewed and spit
by the scavengers,
taking what is not theirs,
feasting on the loser,
laughing at his tears

Such a sight,
he bought it, all of it,
the promises, the lies
disguised as dreams,
shiny lures, bait…taken
at this dry lake bed,
blistering shores,
blinded by her vision,
walking away,
sorry

Still hearing the echoes. . .
he’s got a gold mine,
a poetic gold mine,
you’ve got dust,
beige, drab dust,
minute particles,
filling your pockets,
weighing down steps,
lower into the sand,
waving goodbye

To a love
that turned out to be a mirage,
as the oasis crumbles
(the oasis crumbles)
beneath black wings,
beaded eyes
still circling overhead,
calling his name
orbiting his life,
hungry for his death,
licking parched lips
caked and crackling
stealing everything
held in his heart,
picked clean,
empty

.

Standing alone in a room filled with sadness
Photograph smiles in a frame on the shelf
Ashtrays are filled with a death wish still breathing
Lighting another in spite of myself

A hand full of pills and a glass of Jack Daniels
And old black and white, I think Lauren Bacall
Through heavy eyes, I am still thinking of you
Only the floor there to meet as I fall

When on the door comes a knock unexpected
Shattering plans that I must put on hold
Closing one eye as I look through the peep hole
A shadowy figure is there in the cold

Twisting the lock and then turning the handle
Chilled is the blast that runs into my face
There I find death with his sickle untarnished
Needless to say my sad heart starts to race

“What are you doing, you can’t be that stupid
It’s not your time for this world to depart
Just for some girl who has left you here crying
Wanting to die for a **** broken heart”

I stopped and I thought and I heard this thing speaking
Then shoved my finger inside of its chest
“I’ll do as I please you know not what you’re saying
It’s time to go and I think it is best”

“God what a loser, oh wait, I meant Satan
Fine, suit yourself, we’ve a place you can lie
Swallow those pills but I’ll take that Jack Daniels
I will get thirsty while watching you die”

I thought of her and what I would be leaving
How much it hurt she had found someone new
Then of my heart that was shattered in pieces
The sound of her voice when she shouted, “we’re through”

That she is happy with somebody else
How every scar of my life has now bled
Why would I want to give her satisfaction
Knowing she’d smile if she heard I was dead

Then like a bolt or a light bulb exploding
Came a decision as clear as a bell
I’ll stick around in this room filled with sadness
It’s definitely worse than that place he calls hell

.

Left alone, the abyss of failure
closes in,
for days it seems like weeks,
though months are now reduced to counted minutes

Coffin’d stances form the stoic barricade
which surrounds my hope
in picket lines of untrained defectors

I claw at its lid,
thrashing mightily to my sides
as collections of miseries
flood this chamber of my coerced sleep

“I am here!” I shout,
hearing my words
echo in distance dance halls
two stepping on my memory,
spitting above where I lie

Here - a relevant term
as columns of disbelief carve themselves
from my mind.

Forgotten, left for dead,
erased from the blackboard
by the firm swishing hand of fate…
reduced to dust (I don’t feel like dust)

Blisters climb my arms in search of answers,
none can be found here,
where ever the hell here is… yet, I am here

My brain circles the skyline in desperation,
the gutters below cry, trash strewn as if it were me
sleeping off my drunk
in that Frigidaire box

“I am me!” I cry to the empty corridors of someone else’s life
One I’d rather be
Or one who would rather not?

…….

Someday my file may lie open,
atop a desk,
a partitioned sanctuary of hidden ethics,
beneath the crumpled Cheeto’s bag,
now layered with stale orange crumbs

maybe someone will see

maybe someone will wonder

or maybe still forgotten