Parade of bones, ride high
Filling up the whole sky,
Past where my hands can't reach.

Bleached by sun and twisting,
Hanging like chimes singing.
Dance on, something like free.

You'll be gone tomorrow,
Split and cracked for marrow,
Pouring out your lifeblood.

Down below, the living
Never got forgiving,
And it sure ain't easy.

In the end, all is made right.
The page, so pristine, so vulnerable,
Awaiting my every error?
It's all set right, wiped away, and nothing.
Nothing remains of what I've wrought.

Perfection comes at the tip of the scalpel,
Carving away and down into jumbled
Words, each its own perilous
Non sequitur. They fall away in tatters.

The only peace is in purging them
From the mind to the page,
Then from being to unbeing.

This is no way to get published.
There's no fulfillment in the empty book,
And even less in an empty hand.

The night winds down to embers, left to die
All smoldering and seething, coiled apart
Like rattlesnakes engaging eye to eye
Instead of lovers sharing heart to heart.
This could have been avoided, some would say,
If they were different, were these different times.
Some better, more auspicious holiday,
Perhaps, but winter offers bitter climes.
Now elsewhere, things are better. Elsewhen, too.
The curtain falls across an empty stage,
Our actors long departed, longing too -
What's longing, as you're flying from the cage?
Together and together, free as birds,
Beyond the humdrum cares of poets' words.

If a picture buys
Something like a thousand words,
Which of us is robbed
If I should, as a kindness,
Paint with so few syllables?

puzzle me this, mr. jigsaw:
when did you cut me down?
why did i step on your block?
if i did, why would i bow my head
and trade my peace to you
to be another piece of you?

i know the rest: i was born dead
and life is what you poured for me
a glass of bitter shackles and a path
of brittle bravery

i walk your walk, i talk your talk,
i wear your shirt across too much gut
and not enough guts

i bob my head to your tune,
my heart beats to your beats,
my addiction is your beast,
the monkey on my back called
fitting in

A florist’s dream swept through before the sun
Peeked up past the horizon, burning bright:
An April shower scouring the night,
A soft cascade of blessings set to run
Down windowpanes and eaves, down ruddy dun
Of brick and craggy stone alike. The sight
Of sunrise sets the dewy world alight,
Each blossom scintillates, an all-in-one -
In gazing into crystal *****, one sees
A multitude, a myriad of hopes,
A million shrouded possibilities,
The fascination of each half-dreamed thing,
But in the dawn, my rooftop’s rain-slick slopes,
I see the blooms of May begin to spring.

The lights stretch back for miles, hollow stares
all trained toward the twisted, shattered steel,
waved on in pairs and threes like visitation lines
at ******'s speed, slow enough for a glimpse,
high enough for everyone to get a turn.
The night turns every shade of paint black,
each window to a tinted mourner's veil,
glass shards strewn by an uncaring hand
to scintillate like starlight in the glare,
sirens wailing away like the bereaved.