With a pencil you wait
Hand on paper
To behold and make still
That point in time
Covetous mind

Each stroke a bar in the cage: eternal vacuum
Each stroke a transformation; a window built
On your graying walls ; covetous mind.

You bear the child of perception; gestating
Each glimpse a sad caress; a plea
Asking every detail to stay behind.
Each birth of salient insight; a tradesman
Haggling with the ravages of time.

It's a wonder how
Each line, each shade
Is a mirror; reflecting

Cradles and tears; and
The miracle of learning
How to ride a bike
That first love
And the first child.

That full moon in a clear sky.
That mouthful fare from a mother's hands.
Those conversations of cuckoos
Hidden from those who pry.
The love radiated from parched land
When messengers from teeming clouds are let fly.
And a touch on memory bereft;
Of a lover's hand.

A collage of senses that flows
To the captive hand
Held by you; covetous mind.
And as I sit here, contemplating
On why we draw
I realize, what I do
Is a conspiracy lead
By mine own
Covetous mind.

Bathed in silver moonlight,
Falsely reassured by unwavering stillness,
My eyes open to a place left behind,
Where I lie gurgling; uncomprehending.
Where my infancy fell and I learned to walk.
And I watch now, curiously; uncomprehending
The scene that forms in my eyes.

Adolescence is seen stealing the previous throne
With bribes of new emotion and mischief
And flows into my entire childhood
A river come under rule of the sea.
And I watch uncomprehending; distant from
The boy that once climbed trees.

Trees wither as Autumn comes; shed leaves
And I drift through space and time
Not watching the clock; free.
The young adult is in a palace of smoke
Wandering through echoing halls
Trying to reach the throne.
The sea.

And when the doors open, debility
Comes creeping; hair white as the snow, beneath my feet.
I see shattered limbs running away
From demons underneath.

The present tugs at me; my worried spouse.
And away I go, from the newborn; ignorant,
Watching day and night embrace; two halves of one
Locked in a dying embrace, afraid to let go

And even now, mortality
An essential nightmare still grips me; a devious fiend
Hiding behind the impassive, unyielding
Father time.

What do you see, when you look into
A clear lake?
When there's a ripple
From skipping stones
When waves rise golden
Against sunlight
Tell me, what do you see
When you try and fathom
With your orphaned eyes.

What do you see
Through orphaned eyes
When you open a window
When waves of warm light
Come creeping in
On dandelion wings
To reach out to you
To tell you
A tale long forgotten from
Your orphaned mind.

What do you hear, when in a meadow
With your buried ears
Footfalls on velvet green; cry of a lone wolf
That follows behind?
Do you hear?
Leaves, whispering secrets
With the coming of a cool Autumn breeze; the silence
Of the night, that leaves behind pearls
On blades of grass?
If only
You could hear anything
Anything at all; save stories
That haunt you with songs
Of a barren land.

Would you stop, nomad?
Stop yourself and breathe life
Into those flowers, trampled
In your trail.
Would you taste your misery
And seep, into
The flavors of your orphaned soul
And be whole?

Yet you abnegate
Subjectivity.
In fear, in denial
Why would you do so?
Why would you do so?

You know you stand
On fractured pieces of you.
Yet you hide behind faces
Masquerading; far away
Why would you ache
To be a wraith; drifting
When you're already home
When you're already home.

He walks in a hurry,
Embracing his personal night.
Haunted by banal specters
That block out the day, its
Sheltering light.

He walks in a hurry,
Impervious to tears shed by the sky.
Moved not by emotion; but by
Puppets birthed
From a dead mind.

He walks in a hurry,
With no sign of morn, in those pitch black eyes.
On a flat circle of time.

He walks, one among thousands
On islands of
Never ending
Night.