How strange to pour words into the ears of total strangers
We're consoled that their hearts beat the same beat.

We write of cares and broken hearts
We write of mythological creatures and likewise, love
Indeed, at the waterhole, commonality is revealed.

Dare we tell of who we are, who we really are?
Hard to face the facts shorn, but every witty in our ditty
Shows how ephemeral is life, and wink! soon over.

Butter the prose like sparkling cheerleaders
But alone, we cry and keep counsel with the shade
We write, we write and find it turns out not so bad.

Corncob dolls forgotten on the porch of a double shotgun cottage
Little child broken from the rays of the sun
God shone too lively and loves too bright
Every swish of the fan and harsh rejoinder
An equal remembrance. Tattered heart.

They will sell your story to the highest bidder
Just to keep their phone bill from trickling. They
will sell out. Sell the light, even. When doctors and
kings are praised, there's a whole lotta short sale.

Bike spokes aren't the only rungs on the ladder: they
also pierce the eyes. You, though have had to hide
the purple bruises. You made the grade.

*Your own.

When stalactites melt a slow dance to earth
           do humans cry when the sky talks in verse?


In the heat of blisters, my hand dies to feed you
           a hot toddy for a sad soul.


Make me.
Speak!

I am the earth, you the tree
                           oh, grow, grow
Some fire spouts from the heat of the tongue.

A silver candlestick on the table
               strike a match
And the world is lit.

Come, drink it now with me
             one smile, two kind words
Wrath easy vanished.

From where comes light in so dank a corner?
           like prising one word from fissures tight
But wonders never cease.