In a tranquil night,
     soft rain
     began to fall;
     I, struck
     by your lightning,
     compelled to build
     defenses around
     my heart.

I'd rather be in distance
     than to succumb
     to your charms;
     the rain
     was just a drizzle
     like my feelings,
     if I'll tell you,
     all of a sudden —
     our story will end.

A single clap of thunder, a warning , comes from deep within the horizon
and soon the darkness is upon you as cows bellow in the near distance
the sky looks painful, a bruised blue, spreading overhead, and the storm
cries louder and louder, defying all on Earth to ignore her.

Addiction

noun:

a state in which one feels the need to have the last word...

The aching spine is connected to the brain
that makes the heart beat weary
when eyes have stayed wide too long

Ears ring in throbbing beats
same as the tired pulsing muscles
that have seen close to no rest

The eyes of of the summer
adventure seeker burn
like the ever waking ever raging sun

I am exhausted
beyond my health's capacity
to keep me moving any longer...

(Written in 2010)

Here is the melancholy
       of my own open bleedings into
    the World!
  My lost "once was"
gone for a gap of cool confusion.

Stupor'd and infused with
the repetitive
eat/sleep/
imagine random flash pictures
of pleasure and pain.
Stick/carrot psychology of the
free world media,
saturated color stain so sweet,

as unavoidable as death.

they fell slowly into snow drifts
as she flushed the bitter, stinging cold
from his lips with a kiss lasting
long enough to light a warmth
within them that turned to eyelash droplets the snow as it lit dizzy
on their brow

there are so many mirrors,
every memories I know
every street I go

they try to denounce me,
pull me down,
pull me down

i'm lack of existence,
lack of experience,
lack of senses

there are so many mirrors,
i can't break through them,
they try to break me in

my eyes are dead at night,
my heart burns like ice,
my heart burns like ice

In a slow motion haze I look out over the grey Philadelphia in a fog bank. The tops of the buildings obscured. Floor after floor continuing into space for all I know. Sitting here watching the faint movement of the odd tree, leafless in December. Opening to a world with which I am yet familiar, the window. Outside cars in a constant stream. Always the places-to-be calling louder than any horn or crash of impact, louder than any amount of glass shatter. People on the freeway, on the city streets, and in between in the alleys and narrowed roads going (they say) no where. Somehow we all find time to extract some value from this moment. Some sort of consolation for being. As if love weren’t enough that we had to go around printing in on paper and digging it out of the ground in gleaming golden handfuls. Then again, perhaps it’s not. Or perhaps there’s some sort of figuring out we’ve left to do. Some more Earth to be moved aside to find the treasures there. Dig deep enough and it’s all molten. All a liquid swishing heat. Why do we put such pressure on ourselves? From where comes this burning desire to have in our hands and to know without a doubt what it is we are made of? Have we not seen that death is inevitable? Still the reaching continues, down and out into the dregs. Soon we’ll find it. Soon. The gem must be there beneath this last scrap of **** and ripped bits of newspaper. Beneath these stones overgrown in moss. Still further beneath the metals collecting and pooling in toxic natural vats of too much nutrient. Into the solid iron core of the Earth under pressure. There we’ll find another absence. Another outer space waiting for the claiming. Yet in all our grasping we will never hold a fistful of love. True love, true happiness. Serotonin wash water over the coils is never enough to cool the white flame of need. Even if artificial and limping on the last prosthetic legs made from the long dead detritus plastics, the flame rages. It will not be sated by the material and forever the eating will continue. Finding silence in the storm is the true gem. The hollow in your heart is what beats your blood thru your body, what walks your legs and chews your food. To find respect for a lack of satisfaction is what will save us if ever we need it. Sated with hunger, patient with pain. "What is to give light must endure burning."

No job today. Sitting alone in the living room I sip a beer bought with my dwindling supply of cash. I guess I’m not trying hard enough. Rain comes down in wispping sheets outside. The peaks of the tallest buildings downtown are cloaked in grey. There’s a crawling sense of urgency deep within me but it stirs little. It’s overlaid with a knowing of my self that secures me, a certainty that none of this time is being wasted. I've always known who I am in an other than obvious sort of way. I was born and continue to be a watcher, a passive observer of the drifting seconds. As the rain falls in a steady stream of droplets my beer glass is slowly emptied. Thoughts, like the seconds, float by, like flies landing and then buzzing off to a more succulent  morsel. I like it this way. Unattached, solitary. It’s a freedom no hero can grant you. It’s a way of looking at the world like the weather. Rain today, not tomorrow. Sun tomorrow, the next day may be snow. Although I do get hungry from time to time (for relationships and food). Sitting and waiting for my baby girl to fly out to meet me in Philly. How I miss her skin! Maybe a job wouldn't be such a bad idea after all. It would pass the time at least and give me another vantage point from which to conduct my observations of this fading world. Maybe pay for my sweet potatoes. I finish my beer and step into the grey.

Many wake
with the sun well risen.

Some
find themselves
awake in the dark
turning over into sleep
until the light.

Still others,
night cast from their eyes,
go outside
into the black
to wait
and watch the colors come.

The sun on the horizon
is a shadow,
bent forward in time
by the eye lens atmosphere,
the light of it
sent to greet
the waiting awake,
heralding another
new living.

The smoke before the fire,
comforting the cold.

There is a certain beauty in a broken cup. A delicate elegance in an abandoned building or a disheveled old man. Some ghostly grace to a tattered dress.

Wabi-Sabi is a Japanese expression relating to the wonder of imperfection. To be sensitive to the natural way of things, to deny idealism for what is and to revel in it is the path of a true seeker, of a true poet.

My eyes are empty, they lied to you,
my heart was broken from wanting you,
bring us to the past, it was all perfect
shallow life just gave us these scars.

My eyes are empty, they cried for you,
my feet were standing in darkness with you,
we might meet in heaven on a moonlight,
let me be your angel as I bid my last goodbye.