When Light craved your soul to see in kissing colors
as the evening envisioned to die in the dawn of depth,
when Soul lustered for learning, as blood bespoke to her bones
for building the star of flesh, when Time needed the resentment
of its ubiquity to be understood. The moment texture lured touch to
tease with a thousand sensations, when the labor of love sought a language
to express the extremes of its lips, as romance raged through the ravishing of
hardened hearts, when sorrow’s seduction made heroes of loving men and women.

When Justice is seduced to her innocent words,
as bravery battled the basic questions of conquest,
war demands a metaphor in the terror of its destruction,
as Faith finds resolutions to her problems in seconds,
Death wallows for relief and Life’s supercilious meaning upon its skyline.
When God wanted imagination to invent immaculate existence…
Poetry began, born as an eternal being,
because, the only vow of a Poet, is Passion!

tree spirits beckoned
through pools of dawn's blushing glow
trees silvered seeping with soft musk and hazel
their lilting throngs of whispering tilleul arms
splitting misted air into swirls of hushed enchantment
pressed into the grass with strokes of emerald shade
etched into that twisting turret
lines
a hundred
each a miniature scroll of letters and words
blazing through sap and bark and bramble
each a sample of language
the ancient and vast
ink of sun's blood, gilt and dragon's fire

Sing my restless heart
in a poem of wild roses
that bloom in the morning sky.
One verse for love
One verse for grief
One verse for lament

Paint the ageless beauty
of my face on your canvas of
ice and snow.
One color for my hair
One color for my lips
One color for my eyes

Play my melancholy soul
into a symphony on a vintage piano.
One note for yearning
One note for hope
One note for freedom

*... Life imitates Art ...

Where's a soft, safe place to land
In a desperate hour
When you find you cannot stand
And you're a mighty tower?

Where's a shoulder you can cry on
When you're the one who's tough?
Where's the place where
you can go
When you have had enough?

Where is God at times
When you are like an owl?
When you're in the 18th round
And want to toss the towel?

Sometimes I just feel this way!
Sometimes it's just hard!
It seems folks want to lean on me
When I'm a house of cards!

I know that God is closest
When He seems far away
I know that in my intellect
But it doesn't feel that way!

So I'll put on praises
To music I bequeath
Sing to my Lord and Savior
Though through gritted teeth!

I will read the Psalms
About David's many trials
HE didn't always dance a jig.
HE didn't always smile!

I'm not going to sell you stuff
You don't want to buy
I'm not gonna tell a tale
I'm not going to die, but
Sometimes *I NEED A SHOULDER

Upon which to lie!

They tell me I should smile more,
But I’m just lost in thought.
I like picking at my scabs and sores,
Each one an emblem of the battles I’ve fought.

Some people find solace in Summer
With its mirage that all is right.
But I thrive in the chilled Winter,
Relying on my inner warmth and light.

Go ahead…

Call me a dark cloud raining on your parade.
Call me a moping miser wallowing in pain.
Call me a bloated tick thirsty for attention.
Call me a filthy sinner unworthy of redemption.

Flimsy words deflected by my impervious mettle.
Don’t you know steel hardens in the furnace?
Leave me be, let the storm rage then settle.
Only then will I break the water’s surface.

Afterwards, I’ll mount a drifting log and ride along
Down sorrow’s stream until I reach the estuary.
Where purity meets the brine from tears’ song
And entrust my fate to the ocean currents to carry.

Humanity always seeking absolute bliss,
Condemning suffering to fathomless pits.
But under the covers of sleepless nights
Amid the sobs, wails, and blistering spite…

Out emerges a self-revelation,
A subtle truth whispered in the dark.
Cathartic release through meditation
Only bestowed by sorrow’s mark.

They tell me I should smile more,
But I’m just lost in thought.