Muddled thoughts and cigarette smoke
It wasn't like this a week  ago
It was love in its purest form
Hundreds of kisses and hugs a day
Never ending I love you's
It seems that's all gone away
Heartache and tears is all that's left of the memories we once held in our chest
Where love once brightened our hearts
That light has gone.

In life, through it all, there lies
A truth that never dies.
It’s the voice in your name
That calls through fires
And dances in the smoke from the flame.

Here in this wood, Oh how it rains!
Yet still that call remains.
In peals it’s singing clear,
The sigh of a thousand pains
From the voice I’ll never hear.

She whips me down
And drags me round
She roars like thunder
And my freedom is plunder
She spits and seethes
And still nothing pleases

And so I’ll leave
For she will not relieve
The torrid strain I am under
In this oh so monstrous dismal blunder
I’ll succumb to a sweet sleep
And I know you won’t weep
As I end my stay
Besides, who could dismay?

(C) Kathleen L. Hicks

Can anybody tell me why days were long when we were young?
Our days would seem unending from morn 'til setting sun.
We spent hours playing grownups and mimicked what we'd see,
And all that time rehearsing what someday we might be.

Some days I'd be a teacher, then a nurse or acrobat.
I liked them all, and it was fun to try them out like that.
I wished away my time back then, and I could hardly wait
To see myself all grown up and live beyond our gate.

Give me back the "good old days" of lying in the sun.
I never knew their value then; my life had just begun.
I'd reach out now and hold them tight, embracing every day.
I'd love to be that child again, just one more day to play.

I'm betting there are others who feel as I do too,
Who'd gladly join me back in time
When there was nothing more to do.

I cry
not because
I feel alone
but because
I feel others
out there
not knowing
what to do

You say
you have good
to offer
please
come to
my window pane

I don't
need any chaos
like the
devil
who
stands on
my welcome mat

I'll await
that gentle rap
from you
on my
window
pane

The man at the studio doesn't like us

we aren't pretty as the teens
not dazzling like the newly weds
our faces are pretty grim
smiles are once a river
foreheads dry riverbeds
eyes hold no commotion
but he does it for money
and winds up quick.

We walk to the river
where under the grey February sky
she plays with our reflections
babbling and breaking us
into unreadable pieces.

In the narrowest of lanes
I found the sweet shop.

Behind dusty crumbling glasses
dozed the old keeper
smelling of sugar, milk and sweat
over fossils of Paleolithic sweets
on a time machine from the century
he never was
to a millennium he doesn't bother about
clinging onto clay by pottery
not succumbing to synthetic
counting not on android
but accounting on parchment
with the art of finger's arithmetic
most intricately scribbled with pencil
announcing progress is a trouble
not designed for the simple
and contentment has no more nitty-gritty
than price and quantity.

Over his head
spiders worked and reworked
from the ceiling to the glass
as have been doing
since Carboniferous.