I saw him again today
someone with nothing to say
The open roadsides are his world
Standing under a leafless tree
In his shredded apparel
The sun beat down upon him
Yet he swore not and sweated not
Silent as a watchful sentinel
He scanned the surroundings
Eyes narrow slits like a hooded cobra
He knows no songs and tells no tales
Life is a closed book with his story inside
What juicy morsels might we glean therein?
What cries from broken hearts and what deep sighs might we hear?
I saw him again today
Standing at the traffic circle
Life went on without him
The dignity of his demeanor
Well beyond the reach of any diplomat
The winds and the breezes are his free bath
They carry the scales of his his scent to the ends of the earth
And so he remains free of convention
His own man to the last moan of broken branches
Today he looked up for the first time
And smiled a rusty smile in hues of yellow and brown
Aware there was  another in his universe
Then he spat out his disgust at my priorities
It clung to the dust in a mess of spittle
And I knew I had been exorcised from his world

I didn’t know it then but I was blessed
It took this woeful person so wretched
To dispel my sweet-nothing illusions
And wipe away my vast delusions

I didn’t know it then but I was spellbound
It took this ranting being to quell the hound
And restore my sense of mad reality
Till I began to believe I was wholesome again

In truth they are mad who are made breathless
By the simple things of a commoner’s life
Dangled before your mesmerized eyes
In that moment of sighed realization

When you grasp the beauty of absence
And know just how sweet loss can be in essence
These are the lessons life has always talk
That absence invokes the presence of the other

And that none is so wretched as one so unfortunate
As never to have known the pangs and doubts
That condemn all seekers to following their bouts
Of distraction to the limits of the conscious world

These dear lonesome wayfarer adrift in time and space
Are the lessons that life has always taught us
When it is time for great moments you will know:
Each moment carries you along regardless

Wanting something too much
Lands you in something of a bind
When it finally is in your hands
You have no idea what to do with it
Having burned out your verve
In your fire of desire and fantasy

tomorrow to fresh quests true
and old friendships in new hue
did we not walk this road before
and weren't you my companion?

tomorrow on these paved highways
and in dreams where perfection is no myth
we shall indeed awaken once vibrant dreams
from a slumber that almost slew them

tomorrow, old conquests 'neath hissing trees
shall become fresh and new in perpetuity
and we shall see that our fears were imagined
and life itself has clones in excess everywhere

so go softly friend and sometimes look back
there will be many washed in loving tears
and others perusing the sweat of your mind
in a world that needs urgent re-arrangement

she was once a true love of mine
but i left her to work in an old mine
where i sang my darling clementine
like a demented and forgetful libertine
but life always pays you back in kind
when i came back with those trinkets
she was gone and i was  alone in my old age
love had not waited for this poor thing in wrinkles
chasing time on dimming eyes and dulled memory
too many years too late for the girl who had tried to wait

this is what sustains us
this is what drives us
this twitch of the eye
this belief in a better day
this pulsating hope that
the one big one is coming