Alone under the golden sunset
I watch those amber waves of grain, the ones like in the song.
I watch as their wispy stalks tip
back and forth,
a ballet in the summer, a waltz for the fall.
And with the harvest they lie down
and sleep
as farm hands like dreams collect them and carry them to far-off places.

Tonight I will lay me down and sleep.
As I close my eyes and drift away
I pray
that those hands will come down,
cradle my body and lift me up,
rock me back
and forth,
show me a place so far from this
that I cannot catch a single glimpse of myself through the veil of distance.

One night, in the slick humidity of late summer I sat in a bar conversing with a girl I barely knew.
She and I were playing a game of summer love,
though I, hardened to love, was playing a game of another sort.
I don't remember much from the nights preceding, or much from the days to follow,
but I do remember one thing.
I remember her telling me that when we exhume bits of the past
those memories are modified in our minds,
as if every time we think back,
we leave something behind.
She reached her ultimate point: that those things which we think about
most, those tender and treasured memories are the most altered.
The most fake.

I got a letter from her the other day, a small envelope packed full of the past.
It is sitting on my desk,
unopened.

Lately all my friends are
ghosts,
wrapped in black,
painted pale.
They are chopping
at their powders,
speaking into cigarettes,
breathing gasses,  
ingesting
acids.

They are laying
on the lawn under the
damp clouds.

I watch them watch the skyline,
their eyes
fixed
on the horizon,
caught in that
crooked
glance that ends in both eyes
twisting inward.
Both eyes closing.
They are looking for God in everything.
They are praying for a
sign. That special
high, that painful
peace and the semblance of
proof. Seeking every ephemeral
comfort.  

A car drives by.
A mother is taking her kids to soccer practice.
A man quietly
shuffles along the road, attached to his dog by a leash.
I'm sitting on the front porch under the
damp clouds
waiting for anything.
The poison is kicking
in.

Haikus, curious...
All tied down in syllables,
Short-lived word *******.