One of these days
I’ll find someone for me
Just for me
To own

Like a stable owns a horse,
To protect and shelter.
Like a perfume owns a throat,
To beautify and enhance.
Like an editor owns a book,
To improve and nurture.

Someday I will find the one
The one for me
To own,
And belong to.

Someday we will get there,
The place our hearts know.
Just over the sunrise,
Where the birds fly to sleep.

And when we arrive?
Our family will greet us,
Blood and water are both as thick
As the bonds that keep us, here.

Brethren, standing together, tall
As the clouds and what’s beyond.
If Atlas drops, and the sky falls,
We will hold each other safe.

The Wordsmith beckons,
Finger crooked and bent
From pens and quills and verse
That spill, all too frequent,
That paint like blood and curse.

The Writer smirks,
Lips tainted black and dark
From speaking to the unbeliever,
The force to know their mark,
Their words are tinted sinister.

The Artist screams,
Silent, soundless, and crude,
From words they tossed,
Let escape and exude,
Their craft’s eternal cost.

They loved us until we fell,
Tumbled on a flaming wing.
They thought us smart, great,
Until we reached the fired sun.
We rose too high, too great.
Wax melted on our wings,
Formed by our friends and family.
We were great, once.

Tired is raw
Coffee-coloured desperation
Straining, searching red eyes
Walking and walking and endless walking
Through the halls of an immense house
Maybe you find a room of sand
Maybe you find a rough paper bed
Maybe you find another hallway
Leading to another beyond it
Pleading, begging, needing
To rest just for a moment or two
But the House of Tired
It doesn’t relinquish its catches
At least
Not without a share of their blood and tears.

The House of Sleepy is another kind
A home of pillows and clouds and comfort
Dreams drift its halls
Dreams of a night-type slumber
A sky dusted with stars and cosmos
A lazy cloud past a crescent moon
Weightless thoughts
Of smooth, gentle brushes
Of soft skin against soft sheet
As you slowly
Ever so slowly
Drift into the realm of sleep.

I used to see you every day
Met your eyes and smiled
Held your hand and laughed
And now you’re gone
And you left a single footprint
In the center of my bathmat.