Life's reflection glistens through sands of time.
Days past due reunite with our current days disguise.

We glimmer in the false light portraying us to our knees.
Reaping such qualities turns our words to disease.

Acquisitions conquer minds through solid demise.
Leading hearts of hate to realise.

We are our own living destruction.
Believing such theories brought through subduction.

We replenish the rot of our personality.
To feast off our remaining qualities.

Together we fail united we'll fall.
Through the eyes of evil till death do us all.

-Joseph B Schneider

In the folds of the hills
and hollows
of my mind,
I remember a time
when you were free.
You were of the sweetest color
known to me.

No man could catch you;
I'm not even sure we tried.
It was such a sight
just to watch you
spread your wings.

Like a bird
you could fly
circles so high,
blue as the sky,
and free as the wind.

I knew someday
you would leave,
fly away,
no longer free;
my mountain bird
on a breeze.

r ~ 6/30/14

Shiny black spit-shined shoes
on the walk
in the Memorial Gardens
hurt my feet
to look at their stiffness
and his swollen ankles
in them.
His worn and creased pants
too short, belt buckle aligned
dress-right-dress
with the button fold of his shirt.
He wore
an old faded USMC campaign hat
pulled down
almost to his white eyebrows.
Almost comically.
I pitied him
in the way we sometimes do
the old who mumble,
never knowing
just who they are talking to.
I heard Inchon mentioned,
and Chosin a time or two,
and every time he said Puller knew,
yeah, Chesty knew.
I quit taking my lunch
with a book in the Garden
when he stopped coming around
and after I saw his picture
in the obituaries
with a description of how he won
his Silver Star and two Purple Hearts;
wishing now I had listened closer.
More’s the pity
I never spoke to him.

r ~ 6/27/14

I used sit beneath the shroud
Of stars that swathed the sky,
And gaze at length, with wistfulness
At Moon’s cycloptic eye.

My eyes absorbed familiarly
What were in my own.
Her perfect luminescent face
Despite the scars that shown.

I wondered if she missed the earth
Around whom she did dance
And if she tried, fruitlessly
To catch his lonely glance.

They’d never touch or cross in path
On journey through the sky
She knew this, and so did I
No matter how she tried.

I wonder beneath the moon
All wrapped up in the sky
But now I know just how it feels
To only ever pine.

Peering through a wasp's wing
at shadows on the wall
Hear the whispered whimper
echo down the hall
Glass thump of bone and feathers
against the bedroom window
Motes of darkness floating
to air a moldy winnow
Creak of standing knees
rise in opioid haze
To wander past the shadows
and sniff of death's bouquets.

r ~ 6/11/14

Danny O'Dare, the dancin' bear,
Ran away from the County Fair,
Ran right up to my back stair
And thought he'd do some dancin' there.
He started jumpin' and skippin' and kickin',
He did a dance called the Funky Chicken,
He did the Polka, he did the Twist,
He bent himself into a pretzel like this.
He did the Dog and the Jitterbug,
He did the **** and the Bunny Hug.
He did the Waltz and the Boogaloo,
He did the Hokey-Pokey too.
He did the Bop and the Mashed Potata,
He did the Split and the See Ya Later.
And now he's down upon one knee,
Bowin' oh so charmingly,
And winkin' and smilin'--it's easy to see
Danny O'Dare wants to dance with me.

Crawling there through the mud I

Scraped along, through flesh and blood

The water came in rivulets

In floods that I could not forget.



Gravel ground and broken glass

Over where my body’s passed.

Marked time in pulse memories with

Seconds to days with no end to see.



Salvation was just there beyond

Where light and crash does oft respond

This overhead swirled in the sky

As lightning bolts came crashing by.



Up there beyond the cloudy seas

Where I dream that I can drift on free

In Sunshine’s arms and nothing more

Than rest and heal against these sores.



The journey’s half the story then

When’s this journey going to end?

Somewhere anon, and somewhere close

Somewhere new, yet missed the most.

greedy eyes
never see enough
some call it beauty
others call it lust

greedy ego
can never boast enough
so many friends
very few to trust

greedy heart
can never love enough
giving it's goodness to all
even when it's tough

greedy spirit
can never have enough
complains at life, afraid to die;
it has to conquer more stuff!