Love stories are not meant to be lived
you know that from the deleted faces
and vanished traces
of the ones once most valuable to you.

I don't get you I said
don't I feel a regret
for the women i loved
but was never able to live with

don't they still haunt me?

Regret is not the word
the man was adamant,
it's more a mourning for your failure
a tormenting reminder of an undefined deficiency
that you were not up to them
or in the wrath of missing the target
they were not up to you
and then he fired the killing shot

what you remember is not the love
years have wiped out the details
leaving you with the embers of unaccomplished missions
which in the first place
you didn't deserve to be a part of.

I hated his departing words.

True love lives in the stories
and love stories are not meant to be lived.

Caught in the tangled, death of weeds
I hear the shots ring out
It has begun--
between the fading day of sky and hollow
crackling ice beneath my feet

Again, resounding shots above my head
with baying hounds
and threat of voices blazoning the prey
I do as I have always done--
make a run for it….
and always, in the past
I seemed to get away

My soul is sinking, this time
along with boots in ******* mud
-soaked panic-sweat
clambering up a bank in naked peril
numb with cold
Heaving breaths billow
onto frigid air
Stumbling sluggish
Moments cling
Inertia--
grapples for an edge...

With all my body's strength
exhausted longing
I heave myself back...

Fear floods out
like birth
into the lake of waking

A long time there
I lay
paralyzed, dumbfounded

They talked about him as the one
who none had ever seen smile.

You couldn't gauge
if he was happy or depressed
no emoji could describe
the repressed expression
but all said
he was dutiful.

Caring husband and father
responsible family head
silent bread earner.

His constant arrangement made sure
the home was neatly organized
not one object was out of place
and but for the children
it would have been hard to guess
if he ever met his wife privately
summing up him to be named
robot
and the belief in his name was strong.

When his wife died
he wailed so loud
it could be heard beyond town.

To the neighbors,
it was mechanical breakdown.

A wretched soul kneeling before the fire as it reaches out into the night.
She closes her eyes and soaks in the breath of someone other.
Wrought with rot I raise my head to the rosey glow of the room.
Comforted only by the flapping sound of the winds wings.
Oh to hear that voice! To be quenched of woe by the sound of her singing.
My songbird has but flown into the arms of a world unfamiliar of her.
Charred by envy I'd cast myself to the will of the gods.
Save for one problem.
I do not believe in gods. Only monsters.
Her hand reaches out from the darkness in my dreams.
Soaked in the blood of loves gone by.
I stretch my hand out to hers.
Only to have the apparition slip through my forlorn fingers.
The darkness consumes my will.
I succumb.
For my light, my love, she wanders still.
And I. Alone.