Bells within
cause clangor,
drown
sounds that
currents make as
they boil past-
we go in
opposite.

White lie servants,
steering the wheel so
far south,
how could we not
go down?

No Captain to
guide.
And though this
vessel's shared,
We've proven only
mock shipmates.

Churning swifts keep all
aboard-
Ship clutch tenants
close.
All at once trapped
and
left behind.

Even my body
holds me
hostage-
Ribcage cell
barring
manic heart...

when walls won't
fall-
stoic fake brick facades
cling to
well-worn dive bar
foundations,

'Tis the bitter
finally cuts through-
slices past the
evergreen potency
of man-made
strength-

bellicose, forcing
its way in;
open up and
swallow-
tonic permeating
soulless through,
anchors to bottom
& crumbles youth.

The water lies
opaque,
and still on the highway,
glistens, then evaporates as
you draw near.

O’er the left,
windswept, dry
to a brittle chalk white,
that barren floor of
alkali.
Just to the right,
subdued, honey-hued,
a flame that doesn't glow
as bright.

Clamped by the vice
of dread,
as the road before us spread,
farther than our own eyes
would bear to see.
Wisps of feelings had,
trapped hot against the
rocks,
on the hills
rolling by, beside and beneath.

Misplaced words,
quipped obliviously,
snuffs, buries
the flame.

This soul sits
opaque
and still,
riding across the highway,
as dry as the ghost of that sea.

When you draw near......
You end me.

Welcome the damp...

to quench its need

to purify.

It is -at least-

a change. And...

I need a change.

Yes, I need change.

There's never an end to this

All The Time.

Buried 'neath stacks of grey,

Drain bone-dry, the last of silver.

Bleed out to the inevitable

Crushed.

In nights when
a crisp humidity
wraps its
cocoon-
Jolts within me
suddenly
thoughts of a cove
where as a
child,
scattered clandestine
words-
burrowed on their
own
into the pallid sand
who soaked herself
with salty sea,
then pledged confidentiality...
until I grew,
and could take
it.

So
Burn
Inverness.
Let the whispered
die
and with you
firefly
ethereally toward night.
One can merely
hope
not a single soul
will catch
one
here nor
there...
though what's
there
to fear?
Only that which is
deeply known:
I was,
I am,
a child still-
never grown.

Red sky,
hide
stowaway embers;
remains
fallen from youthful lips.
Let ride away on
bobbing crests.
At low tide,
an even lower
soul
walks the shallows.

Ghosts of snows
swirl, slow...
fall humbly 'top
our heads-
each leaf
knowing
just where to step,
how to avoid
trespass.

Long aft
the idle melt,
facades evaporate;
leaves brisk breaths of
calm
while ghosts of laughter play...

So
Warm. Sure. Steady.
It bristles the skin-
And
I'm fine
just knowing.

Got the
lock and key.
Will you promise, though
whispered words cannot be heard
from

So long, and hundreds of miles-
think I took the wrong direction.
Beguiled by comfort
and another kind of
promise.

But did you ever hold fast
to Anything?
Could you...
to me?