You tell me you're bright.
Excuse me
While I squint.

as fragile
as a songbird -

her hands

knotted and spotted
from many winters


november came one last time -
i held her hands in mine - gently

- gently, she flew away
to where songbirds go
when it's cold in the mountains.

r ~ 11/18/14

As my most obsession
    God's creation
floating on my shoulders
      adrift on my island
off a rocky coast
      the gulf widening
'tween the ears
      I float, look in, at what is left behind,
as I sink to find my oyster
      I find an empty shell;
shucked years ago, slurped the salty flesh,
so,
many years ago, washed down then, I thought,
in
Alcohol, my Life Vest-
      it all was dreams,
holding to one post remaining
from a queens bed-
thought, how it kept me afloat-
Oh, how wrong can one be?
the floating wood,
was my anchor,
I mis-thought.

are annoyingly loud silently
coy, proud, defensive,
prancing around
chomping cheerios
slurping, now. the milk from the bowl,
leave the toilet seat down
on purpose, I see.
Grind your teeth incesantly,
at night, snoring.
I come home from forty and more
hours working
putting them bon bons in your mouth.
You watch too many reality programs,
I wanna watch "I Love Lucy"
It all cracks me up.
Pull all the covers off me, you do.
When we first met-you pooted.
now you ****.
I see you growing in so many ways.
It is amazing.

I sit at my window pen in hand
staring at blank pages, willing them to speak, to whisper something of my frustration and shatter the silence within.
I curse the ink that blackens my fingers as it flows without ebb, skillfully scratching out the mundane, the lists, the cards, the endless to do's, only to  become as mute as my friendless tongue when feelings threaten escape.
I struggle to contain all that I feel, all the loathing of all that I know and all that I am within this small form. The threat of drowning a reality and sometime solace.
Emotion unknown chokes my soul as fear cages my heart within it's cold clenching.
This art was my voice, my passage to sanity. Now ticking clocks and glowing paper mock my troubled mind.

While I wonder at the point of it all.

into a world cold and lonely I set sail my only son
I tried in the seventeen years to teach him right from wrong
so, one day I turned him into the sun and set his sights on living
It has been two years I have heard from him.
I think about him and me
and how I may have been wrong,
or how I may have done better
yet I think again
on how I may have made him strong
strong enough to not need me,
In that I am
proud
and      
weak kneed.

Dying slow in the mountains seemed much easier than simply breathing at sea level.

I've been thinking that maybe I was happier when I was still drinking.

I tried to write a poem called Pointless and never made it beyond the title.

Dying seems easier than breathing at sea level.

r ~ 11/7/14