you ride on rolling waves
always at sea
voyaging across cultures
weaving colorful words into a pattern
beneath my eyelids
i don't think anyone
understands a soul
   flickering
back and forth
between worlds.
when your hands can reach before your poems
and i can feel
  it all
contentment would flow
between us

oleander pale
in love with the scarlet
ardent against the gale

empty walls
chipping their paint
arms of war
had settled stains

tinderbox broken
for a half-assed light
baneful prayers
and their volume's height

artlessly, the breathings
of a craven deep in night.

heavy curtains of smoke
dream and cling to halls,
sickened and thick
are my ears to these walls
"hurry child, bless them,"
voices marred and screamed
painful in their volume,
"miles and miles heaved;
your hands to be condemned,
your feet to tire and bleed,"
vicious in their pith,
"for you own not your breath,
nor a fraction of your mind."

I am of man, yet still untold.
Hold tide together and race into sunset.
I am of man; atrophied, and unfold to meet daybreak air.
Set, I am hollow -- a stale, earthly wear.

Breathe it out;
a sigh tossed through a wind
struggling and bending;
rustling fruitless treetops,
and turning dead leaves with roars.

A collision of warmth against cold.

What goodness is there in this wine?
Am I trading time for smokey phantoms,
or is this the way it always was?
Rising from fire and running away.

All my dreams speak softly of progress
and the violence of life,
their murmurs like a word I mistake for my name,
echoing in a crowd and
turning me around.

I've found no solace in peace,
nor in the luscious droughts of love
together we drink and have been drunk on.
However, under my restlessness
my steps are sure,
and the road home,
winding as it may be,
seldom seems against me.