He remembered the winter
to be unnaturally full of magic.
The verses perhaps too pleasant
as the girl lay there trembling
and thinking of tomorrow
and the dilemma of her death.

I wandered from distraction
to suddenly pause where
the fellow had ventured too soon.
Dressed sheepishly in pebbles,
I listen to your morning song.

The world is filled with the splendor of ***.
     It will blaze out, like sapling from black ground;
     It searches for significance, like the howl of a hound
Broken. Why do women then now not eradicate an ex?
Countless have hexed, have hexed, have hexed;
     And all is burned with skill; earned, learned with sound
     And hears woman’s cry and carries woman’s grief: the ground
Is flooded now, nor can mouth’s mutter, being vexed.

And after all this, man is made right;
     There lives the sweetest ignorance deep inside lies;
And though the broken bodies off the young West fight
      Oh, sunset, at the blackened brush eastward, dies —
Because the young mother over the bright
     World dwells with a cold heart and with ah! bright eyes.

There lives the sweetest ignorance deep inside lies
like a parent giving consolation during a hurricane
because sin is easy on the conscious when nobody believes in heaven or hell.
Grey matter, brains neither black nor white,
gasping for air in a world where we've lost the ability to feel
empathy like novocain, stares and strangers with eyes lacking love
waiting to die young and become raised up like a martyr
instead of living the everyman's life.
Self doubt, the most beautiful of all flowers, like blood from a rose thorn's *****
pumping through bodies. The man and his guitar on the street corner,
dressed in his Sunday best, each note a silent prayer.

Late night
conversations produce
unrequited love.

Life is circles and when only
change is constant we find ourselves
with pounding hearts and our minds
****** into hyperspeed. Overdrive.
Bodies tremble, concerned only
with the past. Eyes to the future.
Dreams be dreams.

Uncomfortable. Thoughts
rush through the spin cycle.
Secrets hold the tongue of the skeptic
and faith keeps the bottle from the hands
of the steadfast believer. Head and heart
are as the angel is to the fire. This can’t be.
She is her own worst enemy surrounded
by words infused with alcohol and good
intentions. Shattered by selfish actions
and unexpected reactions. Anxious, unrelenting
thoughts consume the woman who cares
too much but knows not how to change
circumstances which she cannot control.
He offers up prayer and she feels a flicker.
With hope that struggles bring strength
and a shot to meet sleep she’ll find peace in
her dreams. Lullabies wrap the wrecked in
cocoons where they learn to fly away
so high.