Spent the afternoon
In bed
On my regular
Scheduled
Day off.

Kept dreaming
That people
Were trying to
**** me.

My folks
Are saying
I don't look good.

Maybe tomorrow
Will be better

i know
the idea of you
is pointless

nevertheless
today
i dream of you
like i tend to do

in that valley
where i left your kiss
hanging in the air

i could feel you waiting
for a change of heart in me

my heart never changed
it still beats with the same
ambiguous beats

i cannot remember
our night time talks
and forget our burned down silence

all the same i try

tingling agony
desperate for your gaze

i cannot shake you off

longing for your absence
to pass

when I began to write
poetry
all those years ago

I was amazed to find
that I even
had a voice.

It was a gift
that I never
hoped for.

I only shared light.

There is too much
darkness.

And then
little by little
I had to write
about the monsters
in the deep.

And my writing
got to be
unrecognizable.

Those couldn't be
my words.

Don't bury me
in a grave
in a big old box
I've known too much
darkness.

And so here I am
trying to balance
injury
with hope for a new future

That may be called
healing.

No river bed rock ever
Kisses the same water
Twice.

Autumn opens her arms
To September, and I close
My window for the first

Time since May.
I have had better
Summers. Love left behind

In a deluge of tears and regret.
Doctors sharing bad news
With honest concern;

Waves upon sand castles,
Moments; memories, then
Nothing.

I rest beneath the
Cold stream, perhaps
Allowing new waters

To feel my face in time.
For now, the rain strokes
Nothing but the glass

Of a window shut
To the chill of a dying
Summer.

I have this place
no one knows about
between a field and a willow tree
along a pastures edge
a creek down around the corner
I go to when
things get oppressive
dark and hard
and I sit there
I don't know if I meditate
there in this place hidden
but I get peace
I see love I hug this earth

the sea the skin of a wet dog,
black the beach; a ruined church,
the coastal lights a string of lesser ways;
we are as empty as a dropped shell
pulled across the ebb, a ripple of salt..

and as the night gets deeper
a dragon breathes like the tide:
no mistake, the dark needs its hours