Sleek are the dragon scales
small as a leaf
Grey like the coming storm
Bright lights pulse my way

Clicking in its own weird talk,
Understanding proves impossible
Talkative one stops jabbering
When night consumes the day

Memory is impeccable
The shell as strong as rock
Many times adventuring
But always returning to stay

Shivering when left alone
Erupting fury when it’s not
Talking again in that language
Quivering where it lay

Replacement after replacement
Each smarter than the last
But impatience with each in turn
As their lives slip away

I grew up in the same house, same town, same place
my entire life.
Big brick house with a cinnamon smelling winter and lavender summer,
tiny garden around the corner edge filled with baby red tomatoes and daddy's carrots.
I used to splash around in the puddles the cracks in our sidewalk made
after a huge storm until mommy yelled for getting my dress all muddy.
Always warm, filled with fire, hope, and being together
with someone known that one is never going to lose.
I used to fit behind the sofa in the living room during hide and seek,
but then I grew too big and everyone started to find me-
no more secrets.
I grew up in the comfortable security of a real home,
consistent with the idea of family and love behind circumstance.

Then I met you,
shaggy hair, grey sweatshirt innocence
with loose jeans and a smile that felt safe when directed at me.
You took me,
to your fourth house by now,
after some time.
I walked in to the aroma of wet dirt mixed with grass and beer,
cigarette smoke smells sunk deep into the brown couch
with puffy yellow stuffing popping out of the seams.
Wood walls left uncovered, rusty nails sticking out
living underneath the minimal television light.
I could hear your dad outside chopping word,
his wife coughing over the sound of doing the dishes
and whatever program she wasn't pretending to listen to.
You told me you used to stick your clothing tags underneath the coffee table,
but you had to leave it behind when you moved.
There's a stain on the carpet and dog hair stuck on my jeans.
You told me you used to collect bottle caps from holes you dug in the ground,
until your dad told you to fill them all back up
as quickly as you could.
It was cold in there, but someone
I felt warm.
And I realized that no matter where I was,
if I was laying in your strong arms wrapped around me
pool blue eyes tracing my smile when I laughed,
then I was home.
I had something to crash into after the disaster of the day,
complaining about things that don't really matter
until you shut me up the way you know I love you to.

I realized,
the pencil height measure walls, the hush-hush closet hideouts
aren't what makes it feel like home.
The *** and pan rock bands, the albums on the shelf
don't really matter,
if you have no one to call your own.
You
are my home.
Somewhere I feel safe, secure, never left alone.
Somewhere with you,
even if the future is left unknown
if I'm in your arms,
I know I'm home.

Put away the paper, the ribbons and the bows
Put away the tinsel, the labels, keep the snow
A candle in the window, a wreath hung on the door
Just spending time together, that's what we need more

Running 'round the shopping malls for super, super deals
I hate the store congestion , I just hate how it feels
People running up the high street buying things they do not need
I don't know why at Christmas, our minds just turn to greed

We buy things that we do not use, or really even want
Things that die off in a closet, our future now to haunt
Gift cards that expire and books we will not read
When did we confuse our wants with what we need?

Just give me time alone with you sitting down to talk
Or an hour in the country taking the dog out for a walk
Christmas isn't shopping, showing love by who buys more
Christmas is spending time with loved ones, not something from a store

We need to help out others, and remember what Christmas means
Christmas is a time for sharing, not just buying brand new jeans
Until we learn to give the way that Jesus said we should
Then Christmas will be lacking, of what we all know to be good

So, even if this Christmas, you try to make a start
A simple thing to do is just to give something from your heart
Spend some time with someone who, you love and want to see
And if you find your way 'round here, you can spend some time with me.

Teetles tuppled storpidly, along the clurby path
Her toes gribbed at the plirky sand
When she lumbled swanuously round the ragthall pebbly wrath
Her stlilting head tipped back as she breathed the roopled frand

She trippered toinulously pausing at the gurgil streef
To drink slaverously from a Burbore skinned flask
Sea shells stolen plumberlingly from the Briley Heef
Dripped from her pockets as she svointered on the shubbled crask

And in her furling hand she snatched a Stoodle,
Feathered little spine smuffled from the wind so grabbily,
Its beak produced a little snawdoodle
And she laughed so jorbid and trabbily

“Little one, a seashell for you”
She exclaimed and stooped to pluck a sleemish one
And in the Stoodle horpled with a gentle twoo
And she set it in the blurkish sea, spinning loorfilly in the sun

With a sudden shloop
both shell and Stoodle were ****** under
so she stood waiting peering into the gloop
as the Stoodle sunk into the murky punder

Then up the Stoodle popped with sloopish swriss
But Stoodle it was no more, instead a brilly Havergrath
With grey silk back and wuverbul muscles twriss
A smarmy smile upon its jarby grath

And she smiled back at him
A korky, vubblious thing
And he flipped through the air with krim
As one only a Havergrath can bring

--Lily

Looking past Gilman St.
and looking across the
Bay to the indescribable
beauty of winter's hold
on San Francisco, I
couldn't help but
think of the world I
had forsaken to come
here and the troubled
life I will soon be leading.
Free of any masters, free
of God, free of judgement.

This old VW van is full
of smoke, full of hope,
and also full of memories.
And as I recall this we drive
past a small accident. Only
a fender ****** but there
still is a woman crying
in the rain. I imagine she
is not crying because of
her baby's health, which
appears to be fine, but
because of the hand she'll
to dip into the college funds
that she set up for her
daughter to pay for
the damaged. Not the
damages on her car,
she can live with those,
but the damages on the
2012 Ford Focus she
bumped into.

And I imagine that 16
years from now when
the now a baby girl
applies to Berkeley
and gets in her mother
will have to tell her that
although she got in, their
is no way they will be
able to afford to send her
there. The daughter says
I know mom, its more of
a pride thing. The mother will
then remember how she had
said nearly the same thing
to the daughter's father as she
kicked him out.

Later that night, she will
drink half of a fifth of *****
and take seven 200mg Vicodin.
She will not write a note. Just
as she will not wake up.

Berkeley will give her daughter
a full ride scholarship. Not because
she is the most qualified student.
Its more of a pride thing, they won't say.

You
Always know
Always sense it
You see it
In my dark eyes
And you ask
What's wrong
And its then
I see how foolish
This is
I'm always upset
At nothing
So I tell you I'm fine
And I know
I will be
As long as your beside me.