He was more himself
Than anyone I'd ever met
He laughed with his eyes
Made me sandwiches
While his friends
Told me about the good times
And the bad times
He held me tightly
In front of everyone
He wanted me everywhere
I wanted him too
I wanted him too much.
I ignored his habits
The medicine to sleep
The drinking to speak
Never leaving the house
Except to pick up
More and more habits
I wanted him too much
He didn't want me enough.

I followed his footprints in the snow
Thinking his path was the way to go
He didn’t even seem to notice I was there
I spoke to him as we walked but he didn't care
I stopped at several places along the way
He just kept moving forward with nothing to say
After a while I felt so alone and so tired
And I began to drift further and further behind
Though I could still see him way up ahead
He turned onto another path to walk instead..
Eventually I realized I could no longer see
As he moved relentlessly on without me
His footprints start to fade and then they disappear
He never even knew I was near
I stood at the path he turned to walk on...
Unable to move forward
And I turn to walk...
Away...

*Maybe one day our paths will cross again

.          Seized by the moment,
          the gravity of a memory
           lay closed the window
             to the outside world

               Eyelids surrender
            in the breath of a sigh,
         the silent pacing footsteps
unable to walk beyond their shadow
       nor their footprints left behind,

      never needing to turn around
               to look back to feel
      the weight of every laden step
         across the old Arch Bridge
        spanning the river far below

             The cold wet sidewalk
         rumbles like the throbbing
              heartbeat still echoes ,..
                     resoundingly,
           through the muted voices
          of a past buried away alive

                 Halted footsteps
           become a blacker silence
                  at the precipice
     of the Arch Bridge railing ties;
   revisited deeply with eyes closed,
         wide open so many times
                 before  and  after
  that  long abhorred day since past

   Reliving an old noir silent movie,
       tarnished time and the river
              coursing through it,
    remaining unable to wash away
    the stains of that watermark tide

                 Standing   frozen
      as a weatherworn bridge tower,
  high above raging waters far below
feeling a cold chill, empty as a pocket,
            perpetual teardrops flow
  filling an empty thimbleful with love

           A thimble seems so small;
               just a pitted silver cup
       to shield from a piercing pang,
              and yet  a welling  love
             uncommonly  overflows ―
        tossed over the bridge railing
             toward the river below
       to see if hope really does float

            Seized by the moment,
          a random act of kindness
            and a thimbleful of love,..
                    lay open again
            a pensive soul's window
                to the outside world ...


                 rivers ... 11/06/2017

A voice  gently  called  out
      whispering loudly
from the rafters of silence,
the way canyon walls softly echo
in a warm southern breeze

It seemed as if it were a dream
but eyes wondered wide open

Reaching out for the lingering
empty air that breathes my name

Touching a wafting emptiness
rippling through the hollow void,
  to buoyantly catch sight of
an oasis in another distant realm

Swept away by a seething waterfall,
      the  heart  won’t  let  go ―

 Seized  by  the  calling  voice
 that spates the broken intone

           never  fathoming
                distantness
           was  so  ­far  away

   An  abiding  voice  hovers ―
  a paling  memory beholds a glow
     of someone I used to know
                  by heart



                                                                ­                             .

moving past the foliage
I smack back
the tangled brush
a strange truth revealed
my emotions in a rush
Here I am
in this hell-hatched bind
braced against the winds
grasping at shards
           of the Divine
for they're inside me,
all those pieces
jagged glass and soft meringue
my innards humming
shades of the blues
in offbeat notes of pain
and I know that deep within
between my earthly
beats of heart
resides a light that's
only mine
that slices through
this drape of dark

It's a heavy nightcloak breaking
as I reach out from
                     the abyss
praying for the comfort
of my soul's
bright morning
                kiss

“I took a Rorschach test”* she lamented
*“Though I admit, it was accidental
A bouquet of Cherry smears splotched on toilet-paper
Through liquid lines and violent streaks
Miraging shards of an eight month Terra-cotta
I saw a dishwater boy
Sifting dirt in a garden
He hid among the tomato vines, smiling behind strawberry stains
Oddly reminiscent of that picture I stole
from your mother’s house
I turned the paper square in my hands
Another child
A young-eyed girl
drowning in a pair of peacock heels
And a floral patterned muumuu
Involuntarily closing her left eye when a laugh turns to tears
You've always said you love that about me
Raw images framed in a sharpie-circled day
It’s permanence displayed on the kitchen calendar
A mind’s-eye mosaic that shattered when
I felt it around my insides
A searing grip, and gravity wins
The porcelain bowl is filling now
Like a bloodroot squeezed from toe to crown
None of my tears could wash away any of the red
And all the sirens came
But the tiny shoes stayed wrapped in tissue paper
And some mornings, not many but some
Before the bluish tint of pre-morning dawn
When the slivers of my thought wake me
I feel that invisible hand
Squeezing a butterfly inside my stomach"