I'm writing off short poems

how much joy can be contained in 10 words
what kind of grief accepts a Chrysanthemum

the day pain graces this flesh and is reprimanded in 5 concise words, I will tweet my autobiography

Oh how the Mockingjays will echo

you can find reprieve in the burning of a candle
the flicker of wick
  pure animation of life

come and dance on these ponds with me
submerge yourself in scents unknown

have you ever bathed in lavender
come out dripping royalty

this, is the secret to passion:
dance in the wind
dance til the end
and when darkness comes
light another candle

I haven't written in a long time.
The slave-driving mind of mine forces these chained hands
into spilling ink to canvas.

The woods are crawling with impossibilities,
as the nowhere home calls me evermore.

I walk a distance to find myself back at the entrance of it all.
The alpha, the beginning.

Is this growth? Is this monumental?
--
We give credence to paper.
It's no longer a tool for survival, but a god in our pockets.
A Christmas ******* miracle.
There are times where I'd like to cry,
But as a friend said, "my tear ducts were seared closed long ago."
--
The Forest crawls with impossibilities.
The trees beckon,
and I slowly begin again.

"I await a guardian."
Shrouded forms who wrench and weave the hidden things I can't percieve,
into twisted thoughts of rage and woe
which drag me through the flames below.
"I await a guardian."
Bony fingers who clench.
Macabre lips who **** to kiss.
Weapons of hunger, instruments of fear...
"I await a guardian."
Joy becomes a distant memory,
replaced with bells that clang and roar.
The light has passed the spectrum,
fading to a shade of emptiness.
Kneeling in the dirt with
hands across my face; demons mistlike in their flight embrace my sorrow,
their sweet delight.
"I await a guardian."
All I need, is hopelessly gone.
All I need is hope... gone.
All I need is hope.
All I need... hope.
I need hope.
...hope.
HOPE.
What brightness in brilliance through such confines of the black. Shadows cannot hide when you shine like the sun.
The brazen bells have silenced and the mist is all but clear, scattered in the lucent are abandoned tools of fear.
"I await a guardian?"
I have become the guardian.

Not first in my family
by no means the last

My son also
wears that badge

What can you do
when you live in a shoe

You can take stock
pull up the socks

and move to a boot.

I've heard some of the best,

hung around

with Priests or pastors

shared our records
spoke poetically

wondered about it all..

doesn't change the fact

we were all entertainers.

every canary has a star in its' mouth
that can stop a .50 caliber bullet. and little black eyes.
the south face of a north wind
has always been polite
before shattering your bones,

it is peculiar, but the very thing that makes you breathe
makes you need too.
the fix is in.

II

cruelty is the soft grit of pitch dark.

III

every canary has another word for suffocation.
it rhymes with kerosene and licks its' teeth.
it sleeps in the barn. Feasting on horses -
and dung.
it sounds like falling and glowing, but feels like
extinction. it obliterates the need for another word
for Hope.

Or something else as trivial... to abandon.

you are not attached
to a dead weight.

you are heavy.

II


if it bleeds
then it must love.
and the hours swarming the continuum
have no time for the minutes
of your day, you are too full of loss.
uncoupled from  the shelter
of nonexistence.
you grieve in
real time.

you are too beautiful to mean nothing

but can't recall.

Whatever you do... you are there.

We conjoin the impossible with the Mundane
And clip the wings of our Ignorance
with a Question... as befits a mortal
in the Eternal Brevity.

Philosophy is the kingdom of mindful spirits.
And Spirits are the dross of Reality's furnace,
We blow glass where Truth bends.
We come undone
where we make
Ourselves.