I am in love with the night.

My body craves the chilling midnight breeze.

My mind lingers in dark corners

and wanders through the silence of the small hours

with ghostlike ease.


I am one with alley cats

and all the prowlers of the dark.

We dance our slow samba

through sorrow and peace,

weaving from one emotion to the next

and back again.


We sing in whispers,

harmonizing with the hush tones

of life in piano.


We are phantoms.

We are the moonlit shadow-men.

We are the presence you feel just before sleep takes hold.

Feel us sweep through your mind like a storm wind.

We bring the cold.

We bring the quiet.

We bring peace to all but ourselves,


for there is no peace in the night.

We are the children of uncertainty.

we have taken the hand of chaos and kissed it

and felt all of life's woe and elation.


I have seen possibilities so boundless

that I may never rest this riot

and so

I will forever be a lover of the night

and she will forever be my mistress.

Your laughter will haunt me,
and the way golden threads swept past your smile.
Your laughter will sound through my dreams
behind evil faces and blood painted smiles.

Butterflies will become moths
which will eat my cloth-patched heart
And the glint in your eyes will light fires
to burn me alive.

Let me show you what I see
(nothing too special)
but there is beauty
in between the tiles and floorboards...
and such serenity in the twist of an aging tree.

Just enough to give reason to art
and provide something with which to describe
your fire and water eyes.

Once your beauty is transcribed
let me sing to you my only song,
though it may not be beautiful.

Despite efforts to smooth out the accidentals
and soften each frantic high
it may seem a bit... experimental.

But perhaps,
if you listen with an open mind
and no intention to interpret
it may remind you of spring nights and summer dances
and that smooth chill that rain brings at twilight.

If you would allow it
I would give you all I have.
It isn't very much,
but it can rise to the moon,
like dust through a room,
pleasantly, catching breezes and bits of thin light.

And it can soar straight to the sun,
just close enough to evaporate...
until all that's left is you.

Sleep giggles from the corners of my mind,
A child, playing hide and seek.
And I search,
calling its name in a frantic need of assurance
that it hasn't wandered too far off.

It waits in closets and cabinets
crouching, playful,
when I open the doors of my consciousness
hoping to find it in spaces
the moonlight   can't
                                           quite
                                                        reach.

Then, as the sun rises
and it sees with dismay
that I have given up,
thinking it must have fled to the empty house on the corner
it curls up beside me
with a smile of childish satisfaction
and embraces me with sincerity
unmatched by any apology.

As my breath kills this flame
that stands near my mother's ever smiling image
the soft scent of warm candle wax
sweeps through my room.

The smell of comfort left
by the single flame I lit
to tell her so much.

To say thank you
for those fifteen years she held me,
above hunger and the winter's chill.

To show appreciation for each drop
of blood, or of tear
she shed to nurture life in her child.

The words of a poem,
should not be read, but felt.

They should enter the mind
not as nouns, verbs, and prepositions,
fitted with appropriate definitions,
that chain the mind to common thoughts
and common feelings,

But as the pounding of a lover's heart
in the silence of a summer night,
Or the sobbing of a child alone
without a light.