In the darkest days of our humanity
I often wonder why we thought not
To turn on the lights
Why we condemned wrongs and injustices
To small rooms
And only entered them through back doors
Why the judges of damning deeds
Didn’t dismantle the decay done by guilt
And instead locked that guilt away
Not erasing it but not affording it the right
To catharsis either.
Keeping it in the dark leaving it to fester in and from itself
Why not expose guilt?
I asked
Then thought it strange the answer was in the question
Who does that help?
When has the airing of guilty feelings brought on by damaging deeds
Benefitted the one who owns no stalk in guilt
It is the guilty it helps
It clears their conscious and frees their soul
But so
If theirs is the one tainted shouldn’t it be they
Who have to live with guilt - a punishment
That doesn’t have a casualty count.

The ordinary man
Is always, in part, the villain.
The supporting role for the hero’s story-
They are never adorned with
Fangs or ominous and dark eyes
Their evil is much more insidious
Subtle but complex
Within a man that could easily
Pass for the hero himself
If his bad days did not over shadow the good
If he did not so strongly hold steady
His own beliefs
So that he felt bound to bind them to others
We are all part hero and villain
What casts us in our role as one or the other
Is if we act on the small part of us
That fights to the death for our beliefs
In the face of the popular opposition.

Glitter Rain shimmers outside my lightning window

            and winds a dream—weather of dreams and nightmares,

            a reign of indifference somewhere in between the windowpane,

            the widow pain, and the windy plain—to whisper possibilities

            into the nice night of nostalgic friends, wishing friendships hadn’t

            ended, knowing it had to end, glad it did end, ignoring the ending

            of all this time, ticking away in the timely thunderstorm of the



night.

...

Viktor Aurelius read four of my poems on Whispers in the Dark Radio, a horror poetry show.

...

She watches
at her window
for the sun
to reappear
and when it's warmth
is on her eyes
she knows
her friends are near
she smiles
because she's happy now
and turns around
to play
hand puppets
with her playmates
before they fade
away.