When she turned her gaze upon me,
I was a mote of dust
caught in a beam of sunlight
I was huge and beautiful
and bright.

I laughed and danced
and shone.

And when she turned away,
a cloud moved across the sun
and I was extinguished.

memories are only fragments,
flashes of color, a vagrant scent,
even a song or a story;
but i cling to these fragments,
the shadows of a good man.

your voice,
soft and hoarse, but so powerful,
like a breeze, gentle as a
feather at first, but of fickle
and increasing ferocity,
gradually intensifying
until my hairs are splayed like
flailing limbs and the trees bend
like dark green pipe cleaners.
your voice always calmed
me, the way you told stories.
i felt the characters alive within
my soul, burning and existing
like fiery candles,
and i saw their adventures
in my minds' eye, so vivid.

your books,
everywhere always.
older than you were,
which was ancient to my tiny
child's memory;
you cared for them like you
cared for us, tender, firm,
and just perfect.
you gave that love to my
mother, and through her, me.

your claw of a hand,
always curled in disbelief,
always squeezing and trying.
you used your good hand,
the untouched hand,
to write in that block print.
i still have a card, buried
somewhere deep in the
underground of my cave,
my prized possession.

your creativity,
always finding ways to
entertain our wandering minds.
flashlight tag,
so simple, but so enthralling.
you always let me win.

your face,
ever-smiling, even at
her musty, ruined funeral.
you always found a way
to say the perfect thing,
a way to make me laugh
through tears, crack a
grin through my blind,
child's anger.

your funeral,
so cold; my salty tears
left icicles on my heaving cheeks;
the wind stung and made
me want to yell "GO AWAY!"
just your favorite people there,
crowded around a grave impossibly
tiny, and i wondered how
you survived without her for so long.
i remember that feeling,
that burning in my throat--
sometimes i still feel it--
and i remember the poem
he read for us, so simple but so
******* true.
i cried for days and weeks,
but today,
i choose to remember your beauty.

His eyes grew dark and distant
absolutely nothing wrong
He smiled without his eyes
how are you feeling?
nothing, numb, bored

Bracing each other, pushing
                                             out

Fearing the flatline, we find
one another, in the dark

Rubbing the blood back into his palms
he buries his breath in my clean hair
Counting down the seconds, we remember

Leaving the cold room, he asks
is it over now?

THAT civilisation may not sink,
Its great battle lost,
Quiet the dog, tether the pony
To a distant post;
Our master Caesar is in the tent
Where the maps ate spread,
His eyes fixed upon nothing,
A hand under his head.
1
That the ******* towers be burnt
And men recall that face,
Move most gently if move you must
In this lonely place.
She thinks, part woman, three parts a child,
That nobody looks; her feet
Practise a tinker shuffle
Picked up on a street.
1
That girls at puberty may find
The first Adam in their thought,
Shut the door of the Pope's chapel,
Keep those children out.
There on that scaffolding reclines
Michael Angelo.
With no more sound than the mice make
His hand moves to and fro.
Like a long-leggedfly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence.

Ginger Bread Man tried to run away,
So they chopped off his legs.

The Three Pigs and Chicken Little are missing,
But I saw the Big Bad Wolf eating ham and eggs.

Little Miss Muffin is drinking with that spider,
He will have his wicked way, when she's drunk on cider.

Little Bo Peep is playing with Little Boy Blues horn,
Nine months later, Mary or a little lamb is born