Before the gate has been closed,
before the last question is posed,
before I am transposed.
Before the weeds fill the gardens,
before there are no pardons,
before the concrete hardens.
Before all the flute-holes are covered,
before things are locked in then cupboard,
before the rules are discovered.
Before the conclusion is planned,
before God closes his hand,
before we have nowhere to stand.

They amputated
Your thighs off my hips.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all surgeons.  All of them.

They dismantled us
Each from the other.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all engineers.  All of them.

A pity.  We were such a good
And loving invention.
An aeroplane made from a man and wife.
Wings and everything.
We hovered a little above the earth.

We even flew a little.

A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.

A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.

He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything.

1 The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home,
2 'Tis summer, the darkies are gay,
3 The corn top's ripe and the meadow's in the bloom
4 While the birds make music all the day.
5 The young folks roll on the little cabin floor,
6 All merry, all happy and bright:
7 By'n by Hard Times comes a knocking at the door,
8 Then my old Kentucky Home, good night!

9 [Chorus] Weep no more, my lady, oh! weep no more to-day!
10 We will sing one song
11 For the old Kentucky Home,
12 For the old Kentucky Home, far away.

13 [Solo] They hunt no more for the possum and the ****
14 On the meadow, the hill and the shore,
15 They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon,
16 On the bench by the old cabin door.
17 The day goes by like a shadow o'er the heart,
18 With sorrow where all was delight:
19 The time has come when the darkies have to part,
20 Then my old Kentucky Home, good-night!

21 [Chorus] Weep no more, my lady, oh! weep no more to-day!
22 We will sing one song
23 For the old Kentucky Home,
24 For the old Kentucky Home, far away.

25 [Solo] The head must bow and the back will have to bend,
26 Wherever the darkey may go:
27 A few more days, and the trouble all will end
28 In the field where the sugar-canes grow.
29 A few more days for to tote the weary load,
30 No matter 'twill never be light,
31 A few more days till we totter on the road,
32 Then my old Kentucky Home, good-night!

33 [Chorus] Weep no more, my lady, oh! weep no more to-day!
34 We will sing one song
35 For the old Kentucky Home,
36 For the old Kentucky Home, far away.

you are never alone.
everyone you have ever met... is within you always.
mentally.
emotionally.
when the physical is gone, no longer present,
the soul spirit rests inside your deepest memories,
locked within the depths of your

heart.

To keep these thoughts to myself,
is the only option I have.
They collide painfully with others,
hidden by a silent front.

To let them free,
would be to ruin everything.
I am a prisoner in my own head:
seeing every scenario
played and replayed –
none of them mostly happy.

So I give a hint there,
hope you pick one up here –
A silent protest to a silent war.
And wonder what you think then.
But I already know.

You're as much a prisoner as I.
Like choosing a path in a dream
that turns to vapors and is gone
struck from the memory upon waking

And now,
it is all I have.
A faint memory of what could be,
and that of which, never will.

Is this the end
Of which you spake -
The wind's alarm,
The night's opaque,
The city's blind,
The people dim,
(The ambulence offers
The final hymn)
My soul run down,
Run out of light -
Or just bad weather,
And the winter night?

The landscape rolls,
The page unfolds,
And letters flood the gap.

The trees entwined,
The words in rhyme,
A sentence spreads its trap.

The world can turn
But paper burns
Until it turns to black.

The shop girl and the mannequin appear
Together in their shop front window stage -
It’s here the plastic soul gets cleaned, and here
The brand new body dons the latest rage.
The model feels the former’s hands embrace
Her own, and feels the stressed-out beat
Of heart within the arteries, the trace
Of hurried blood where their pale fingers meet.
The shop girl scrubs the limbs to blanker grace,
And twists the head to meet the staring street.
So all will see the calibrated face,
And all will search the heart that doesn’t beat.

Week coming, in the season’s latest dress,
The shop girl will the mannequin redress.