Here I am bleeding again
Taken aback by mortal fear.
                     Staring at faith
                   Staged by hope--
Pouring rain on visceral cage–
               The sound of deep
                       Calling to deep.

Repressed feelings buried by time.
Epitaph reads on the forgotten grave:

"Here lies the child now grown.
  His hopes and dreams
       Dashed to pieces.
  This is where the child died."

I often hear the Mystic Keeper
        Calling from night
And tradition calling from artificial light

As I run through scorched barren
                          Fields of doubt.

Walking barefoot over these coals
    Crouching low
                   To hide my eyes

As I run    
         And as I hide    
  From what has already been revealed--
The tombstone says it all.

When I am out on the water
Lost in the Channel fog
I often see fleeting glimpses of
                White cliffs of hope
Like the white cliffs of Dover
Shining on the edge of Melancholy Sea. 
But they often turn out to be
Withered white
     Seeds of religious platitudes.

      And then there is the ready reflection
Of the looking glass
        That often tricks the beholder.
For in it truth is not seen.
What is seen is graffiti of soul
       Hiding the crumbling
                         Cracks of age–

The threshold where
         Sanity meets its end.

Isolation has become
       A shining steel blade
Cutting deep
    Into the heart of hearts.

Nothing lives after amputation.
Depending on emotional prosthetics--
Phantom pain
                  When nothing is there.

But in the midst of these devastations
I am learning to take--

     Howbeit reluctantly--

The hand of trust and grace.
Allowing
            Hope to build
      A fortress for dreams…
Set boundaries better
       Than no control at all.

I look inside my skeleton
Love-hate bulging
eyes out of my face
Two warts of ambivalence

I want to hug my skeleton
Heart twitching in a rib-cage
Admire the asymmetry
of every piece broken

Dear beautiful skeleton
In veins runs the river
In a stream of excitement
I flood in disappointment

I talk to my skeleton
I tell it that I love it
Rub my head against it
Lungs violently sighing

I believe in you, skeleton
in the blood of your tongue
A kick in the stomach
Everything is working

I'll leave my
Heart here
crying for
something.

Last night drinking
cherry cured 'shine
from Tennessee
I caught the moon
flinching behind
a tree like a white
flower afraid to be
cut from its dark stalk
whereas in the spring
when I'm sober
it grows outside my
window before daylight
when moths come
and die gently while
I lie here listening
to their silent soft wings
dreaming of bleeding
in my sleep and find
no trace of a wound
aching in the harsh red cut
of another day breaking.

It takes
15 seconds to fall in lust
30 seconds to fall in love
2 seconds to fall on your face
And forever to fix a broken heart

Darling, the years have flown
around the earth and back...

And I still don't know what we are

When I go out at night
trying to sweep up the stars
my woman grows weary
of the cold weather in me
she thinks I am with someone
else, but it is midnight
and I am alone with the moon
that woman in a red dress
standing on the beach
but you see, it is an empty
plate with no supper, or
maybe a piece of stationery
without a lover's phone number.

Heart hard and worn as an old cemetery flag-stone.
Relationships were dead and buried there,
lovers long gone.
It can't help but mourn.
Does so alone
in lost hours.
Unexpectedly it stumbles upon
regrets thought flown,
hopes toppled down
and echos the loss of someone.