When sleep comes
Just like the snow
And settles like a blanket
On your toes

And covers both the day and night
In flakes of thought
And sheets of white -

Hold tight –
Don’t be afraid
Breathe in and take
A moment of the dreams you’ve made
For your tomorrow…


Walk among the wonders
Through the powder,
Melting tracks
Into the silence of the night –

And know –
This sleep will come and go…
Just like the snow.

It’s days like this that I’ll think of you
Days with the kind of cold that bites your skin
And days with the kind of wind that knocks you off your feet
Much like how your words cut into me that night
And how the heartbreak stole the breath right from my lungs

It’s days like this that I’ll crave the warmth of your embrace
Days when I’m hungry for the taste of your lips

It’s days like this that make my bed feel especially empty
Leaving me to wonder whose arms you’ve wandered into for the night
Because I know it won’t be mine

Slicing avocado with a grain of rice
I add a pinch of salt to the flesh
And the pulp of an Urchin, thumbed -
From the Sea, with a frozen teardrop
shaped like a hook.
I mistook your Virginity for Indolence.
You smote my ardor, with apathy
and Grace.

Carving the pumpkin with a blade of grass
I save the seeds to roast over blarney stones.
As i blacken the plantains with shards
Of Ash Wednesday and night sugar _
You broaden your scope to match the vistas
Of my Accusation... You false my Hope
with a True Face.

As i groom my submission.

We're sand, you know
Slipping through splayed fingers
Our hearts,
Are but ash filled bubbles
Carried upon the lilac,
rough winds of May
Blown by peach faced children
Sensitive to the human touch
Grasped too hard,
And a poets heart
Will burst
Should we fall,
As we so often do
We can't be caught
Promiscuous in our words
Faithful, in our dreams
We,
Ash filled bubbles
Eternally in May and lilac~A

As the twilight starts its dance with the shadows,
My limbs silently break from their tin man sentencing.
Hanging from the ceiling in ornamentation,

Only to be ignored. That is,
Until everyone goes to bed.
I'm in the child's room overlooking the balcony.

Just before he goes to sleep
He lays there staring. Paralyzed.
For he knows I am alive.

As the shadows creep further
Through the windows my body
Becomes the more freer.

He thinks I can't leave my perch..
I wait until his eyes are closed.
It never takes long.

Just wait for that little pulse of his to stop galloping.

every night, before bed,
a simple ritual: he walks to the foyer
and drags the deacon's bench to the door
to keep intruders at bay

has been this way, since
the day he read "In Cold Blood"
and realized what uninvited guests
can do under a god's watchful eye

the belly of the bench holds every bible  
he has ever owned in his four score years
save the one by his bedside, where it sits as sentinel
against other imagined foes and woes  

though he is long deaf, those
who would defile him can yet hear, and
the righteous moan of the bench on the hardwood
would give them pause

or so the old man believes;
as if a simple sound could be so profound
to tip cosmic scales in his favor, save him
from the tyranny of evil men

this very night, before bed
he takes the same walk, shoves the same  
weighted wood against a locked door,
a simple ritual