I need one more poem tonight
but I can’t decide
what I want or need to write
about this real or
fictional life.

The glower grows
as glows a shiny nose
of silly whispered prose,

a wisp of wasted wind
that could have cooled
your sweat glistened skin,

a tiny tower where
Rapunzel lays her hair,
a glorious mane
that stories share,

a stray verse
spread to those
who wear tradition’s clothes
in dreamy hopes
that they will tread bare
and release the poet
that reside somewhere
under there.

She is a quick
drug trip
for this
dopamine
addict.

She is a bad habit
that will only last
one or two moments
cause that frantic feeling
will fade just as fast.

She is awe inspiring,
poetry driving
to passionate madness,
that makes me restless
with desire,

but when that fire
expires
I will feel ill.

Not with her
but I will
be disturbed
by my inability
to settle into
a reality
of companionated affection,
instead of the elevated *******
of severe urgency,
that previously uncontrollable
necessity to be
with her.

Since, I have been
devouring
old romantic notions
I will feel like a failure
when my devotion
slowly simmers into
something soft-boiled,
because that is not
what I thought
love was supposed to do.

What a waste of this cold night
and beautiful white light
from the orb in the sky,
that glorious glowing sphere
merely passing by here.

It’s so terrible to see it so clear,
and not have a someone deer
to share the view.

What shame to feel the same
as autumn colors come to claim
every ounce of green I’ve seen
replacing them with yellow tints,
then onto orange and
settling into dry brown
particles that come crumbling down
to feed the cold December ground.

The roses you planted don't know
that you're dead.  
Dumb vegetation can't comprehend
the perversity of its
outliving you, how its
simple act of being
when you are not
is an affront to everything
decent and sane and just.  
A senseless vitality of
petals flash their idiot colours
through a shroud of needling frost.
It's not their fault.
The flowers cannot understand
that the one who gave them life
has died.
Whereas I pretend I do.

For it has been
Time,
Who's sudden coincidences,
Her glaring indifferences,
Which in the grand
Model count seconds
As the smallest
Increment,
Has failed to account,
Whether by years or
Decades, centuries,
All history,
That the perception
Of reality,
Is always
Late.

It’s seven steps to the door,
across a lava like floor,
flat feet searing
strangers nearing
somewhere out there.

It’s seven steps to the door,
only that and nothing more.
So, to explore the outdoors
I just have to move
across this floor.

It’s seven steps to the door,
for others it would be an ease,
strangers would stop and tease
laughing loudly as they please
if they could see me.

Seven steps to the door,
then out there seven more,
but then I would be
outside with the rest
of this mad society,
with the people
I do not wish to see,
those big barbarians
loud and threatening.

It’s seven steps to the door,
but fear holds me back.
Each step is an anxiety attack,
each inch agony
splayed in front of me.
So, at three steps
I fall back,
foolishly retreating.

Those seven steps defeat me.

She is a beautiful echo
from so long ago,

a strange smiling face
that I no longer know.

Still, her presence presents
the emergence
of old feeling,

stirrings from dead synapses
reviving a past that is
something I didn’t even know
I missed.

Almost twenty years
since we were close friends
working the weekends
at Long John Silver
slash A and W.

A similar smile
beckons back
old feelings that
I thought were dead.
  
I know this is just
in my head
but we agreed
when we were forty
if we were single
we’d be together.

I am almost there
and she is right behind me.
I know this is a feckless daydream
but to live in it
I’d gladly go on sleeping
keeping the hopeful heart
of a younger me
returning
in love with
someone
I haven’t seen
in over fifteen
years.

What matters to the heart,
is it matters that spark
a hard and sharp stark
emotional response?

Is it love
that moves most of us
or is it the other detritus,
the chaos that rumbles
inside of us?

Is it the anxiety
that we are missing out on
what the rest of society
is doing or how
everyone is getting along?

Is it terror
that drives
our night lives
into bright lights
in hopes of
escaping
death’s gaping
jaws?

Is it anger
that puts us in danger
of overloading
and exploding
our rage load
as we lose control
and destroy
everything we know?

Is it pointless
to ponder this,
till, I am wasted
and restless
no longer wanting
to express this
or anything at all?

I will not get to hear
or hold my dear
because it is clear
that my deepest fear
has become reality.

I wasted so much time
pretending to be fine
until I had fooled
everyone and myself.

But when the night falls
and the lightning crashes
when my breath
barely catches
and I am force to see
warm flesh go cold
of once young body
that is now broken
and old.

Then I will wish
I could turn back time,
take all the lessons
that where sown
and grown
in my maturing mind
and value those who
I wasn’t ready to lose.

I could be
a myriad
of mystical things,
abstract creatures
from your romantic dreams,
a culmination of your
creative schemes
as you unsew the seam
that seems
to keep your sweet sanity
stitched to this
harsh reality.

I could be
the escape hatch
unlatched
so that
you can get back
to that deep hole,
falling into
wonderland
then on again
to OZ and
Never Never
Land.

I could be a
great friends
and later when
you go looking
for him
I could be
the lover you seek.

Or, I could just be
a cold vagary
of nothing
never lasting
simply passing
on into the
the emptiness
eternity brews.

This is a festival
where beasts feast on fools,
a dark carnival
of carnivores
and cannibals
who devour those
they see as beneath
the wealth
they were bequeathed.

This is a field of grief
and greed
where those in need
never see
a single shilling
of hope,
because those
who hold the ropes
have made a noose
out of ambitions
and fashion shows.

Welcome to the nightmare
be wary, be scared
but most of all
stay sharp
and prepared
because if you slip
and are ensnared
there will be
no secret squad
of superhumans
swooping in
to save you my friend.

There will only be
blood and gore,
shades of grey
that split the day
and bleed to black,
to take you back
to the place from which
no victim can ever
return from.

This poem is dedicated
to the fire strangers started
to incinerate the broken hearted,

to the flames I had to walkthrough
that charred my flesh
and barred the rest
who did not have the strength
to resist this disintegrating mess.

To the pain I overcame,
though I dare not
whisper its sacred name
for fear of having to
face that **** storm again.

This is dedicated
to the trauma
that dissected
the desiccated frame
that no worthy lover
stood to claim,
and though those
throes and woes
from which I rose
proved to be in vain
since I am still stained
by the marks
that keep me apart
from the mundane,

this is for that which
taught me not to accept
all the *******
because I know
I am worth more
than all of it.