It takes just a word or sight
To cry about lonely nights in a room
lit by streetlight glow;
To cringe at silence soundtracking the evening;
To loathe smiles dancing on the walls of your mind or
the clink of glasses ringing your absence;
To fear the season of youth slipping,
falling away like
silk-like water off smooth skin;
To imagine life not lived.

My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,
My tears like vinegar,
Or the bitter blinking yellow
Of an acetic star.

Tonight the caustic wind, love,
Gossips late and soon,
And I wear the wry-faced pucker of
The sour lemon moon.

While like an early summer plum,
Puny, green, and ****,
Droops upon its wizened stem
My lean, unripened heart.

The only promise is that final cry.
Time, itself, tells us each and every day.
No one, no thing in life can death defy.

When the dying springtime takes its last sigh,
Withering flowers themselves seem to say
The only promise is that final cry.

An object holds our exuberant high
Yet no sooner dulls, then passes away.
No one, no thing in life can death defy.

Certain is the fowl who will cease to fly,
Silenced by the springing of feathers’ gray.
The only promise is that final cry.

From first waking, the world presses our eye
solely to show what comes before decay.
No one, no thing in life can death defy.

Even God is unknown, yet still we try
To prove only what can be found in faith.
The only promise is that final cry.
No one, no thing in life can death defy.

You’re dying with this poem.

Slip on the syllables and
Crack your hollow shell.
Your eyes open to read your last
moment and breath within these lines.

Kiss your lips to the brim,
drink up these toxic words.
Let them trample your taste buds,
march through your veins, and
tie the loosened end.

Let them rip the very air
you breathe when you utter them and gasp, my love,
gasp for what you’ll never find
and drown in their reflection.

Your blind eyes will see before they gloss
that you’re just below the surface
stretching for the swaying safety;
so close, so unreachable with those
actions around your ankles:

The arresting of my heart.
The muting of my pulse.
The expertly placed knife on my clumsy faith.

These words will fall like bricks
crashing and smashing into your mind.
They leave fragments like those
you left behind.

These words, they
Tick, tick, tick,
and toll; the clock tower
screeches your final hour.

These words, they come from
Me.
And they run like blood.
And you won’t run free.

Plead all you’d like…
There is no warmth for
Cold men.
You’re dying with this poem.

I sit aligned with all you others,
Sameness in sync, no flaw seen.
Go down the line and you will come to me,
The one with the jubilant melody
floating from a wind chime
that sings nothing but serenity.
Every brick in place, the lawn
Evergreen.
The vision never looked so clean.

My door is clenched shut, unmoving.
You may look, but not come inside.
For the interior walls withhold
ancient echoes made of both
whispers and screams.
The mirrors are blurred.
Ghostly flames swallow the rooms,
feasting on moments fine as china,
devouring precious valuables.
I’m afraid the smoke will run for the chimney
spilling what lies behind drawn shades.  

I do not wish to be a sight in the window,
Looking outward from this hidden suburbia
Longing to be free.
In time, I’ll open the door.
It may be a minute or two,
Perhaps even three.
For now, my red roses will stay masked
behind the white picket fence and
I’ll let people believe.
They’ll admire, eyes alight, and leisurely stride by
thinking I have nothing to hide.