The study-skill of coping
A scholar learns, and teaches
Vices of distraction, dissension
Stressed in silence and speeches

We are in this together
Or so we've all been taught
We stand united in struggle
But fall separate in thought.

We each carry hidden loads
Pains and pasts of our own
We may be followed by darkness
But in the dark, not alone.

We all march on, in struggle and stride
Through tides that pull to drown
For hope that together we reach a high
Before we all break down.

|b.g.|

Have you ever fallen asleep
in someone Imaginary's arms?
Have you ever dreamed
of a love you've never met?
Have you said a prayer
for the Forever of your heart,
That God would bless them and in His time
Show them you're there?
I wonder if somehow
it just might be,
When you pray for Imaginary,
you pray for me.
|b.g.|

The authenticity
Vulnerability
And truth of the pen
Give both
respect and respite
to the writer.
And the most
bewildering betrayal
and
catastrophic crime
is when you prove
the writer's truth,
a lie.
When etched promises
Hopeful words
Mindful melodies
are contorted
by
Conscious carelessness
Indifference
Callous
And cowardice.
As songs are first sung,
as words first
scratched and scribbled,
as
abstract emotions turn to concrete symbols
in the transference
of feeling through finger,
of infatuation through ink,
of pain to pen to page,

The deepest truths that seemed eternal,
Time proved temporal.

And when time makes a liar out of a once-honest writer,
How could the pen
ever trust the hand again?

|b.g.|