In the darker place
where a man can be crushed,
taunts haunt
betrayal of trust
each echoed word steps
a ragged booted stomp,
one per breath of rust,
there  
the shackles that restrain
also hold me up.

the blue of ocean
did meet with the blue of sky
on the horizon

was as if the two
hues of blue were the one shade
in that far off line

Any gift which is lauded may become a curse
If it denies one office, or lightens the purse.
Though I once drank deep of the sweetness of favor,
My visions bear the taint of unpleasant flavor.
I have become, it seems, an inconvenience
Not to be moved aside with relative lenience,
But to be swatted roughly like some irksome fly,
To be excised as a nagging, untimely sty
An irritant which confounds and clouds one’s vision.
I stand before you, an object of derision,
A dustbin to collect your calumny and scorn
(Paraded in the roughest cloth, hair rudely shorn)
Likened to that which falls from a donkey’s behind.
No matter, then—one finds that young thoughts in an old mind
Foment suspicion rather than learned debate,
(Though I would likely decline to participate)
The upshot being unpleasant realities.
So shake your fists, and mouth your banalities,
Yoke me with the verdict of trial by fire.
You shall, soon enough, do your dance with the pyre.

This is how our dreams end:
Not an avalanche cascading around our ears,
But the subtle shift of pebbles in a stream bed,
An endless series of minute compromises with ourselves
Which we justify to by raising any number of spectres:
The weight of disappointment from unrequited expectation,
The bogeyman of unintended consequence from our successes.
So we make the box of our wishes smaller and then yet smaller,
Until we do not recognize them as ours at all;
Or, perhaps, we have adulterated them so often
We can no longer ascertain
At what point they stopped resembling our hopes and ideals,
Not unlike when the batter, stepping to the plate,
Scratches out the back line of the batter’s box
Until its boundary disappears
Into a confusion of dust and lime.

One final wish, then; scatter me at the crossroads when I die,
So that, if perhaps for only that one moment,
I can rise above the gray and cracked macadam
Of these too-familiar roads
And float into a clear, blue unambiguous sky,
No longer a victim of the gravity
Of the workaday concerns that shackle us together.

The air suffused
with warm sweat
traced in humors  
blood-stuffed vapor
at body temp
leaking, aching
engorged clouds
drop
lop
lap at back, my shoulders, neck
No wind, no thunder
drives them, harsh
Just sopped
they plop into cotton creases  
Pumped
out
into love's still hungry
art
– eries

Cover deck chairs
Reel in the line

Clothes stick to skin and wanting in
so filled and touching
everywhere
ever-so saturated

I want it sated

I want it raining