There is a deep honor befriending an elder;
returning the blessings that we've been bestowed.
Also a frisson of fear we have held, for
we pray we are gifted with honor, not owed .

...and so it begins,
rural against urban,
rich against poor,
change against established,
white against black,
privilege against opportunity,
proud boys against military,
prostitution against dictatorship,
both sides digging in
turning trenches to graves...

and so it never ended

There was no quiet desperation
in the riotous years of youth,
the grasping search for love and truth.
No, in those days there was no patience
for the faintest scent of dull
routine or rut.  It's just with age
that comfort's found in gilded cage,
no fires to set, and belly full.

Should a technicolor sunrise
strike a quickened spark of phoenix
from the ash of youthful pyres,
hopeful drops for jaded eyes
which, once refreshed, will then be fixed
upon millennial birds of fire.

Seated at my feet when I wake at 2a.m.
You faithfully keep watch over my soul.
Yet the unspoken words between us
Haunt my thoughts by day.  
There is so much I long to know.

I sense your ever-presence guarding
My every step, my thoughts, my heart.
Tortured by your silence, yet
Comforted by the knowledge that
I'm never alone.

These winter trees
cold and shouldering winds
their bending branches unhinge
falling limbs crash and break the snow
further still a secret world of mud and bulbs
that in the spring blooms of tulips and violet mossy lawns
and too, the sun that comes to warm and fills with green the tree arms
this wooded home that breathes with sheltering birdsong.

It's like having phantom limbs,
All protruding from random points on your body.
Sometimes it's like having limbs where there should be nothing,
And your brain is telling you that your hand must've taken a wrong turn.
I want to touch parts of me that don't exist
Outside of the empty vacuum of dreams.
I want to drag the scalpel across my own skin
And rip out the heavy weight of the tissue that drags me down.
Most of the time it's something I fixate on multiple times throughout the day.
Sometimes the worst-case scenario takes hold,
And on those days I've got a serrated knife in my hand,
I'm trying to find a reason to put it down.
I almost always put it down, if only out of vanity.
If only for the return of sanity.
So I breathe, I try to gain more air than is possible
Because the heaviest weight tends to be lying on my chest.
I breathe enough to return to passive fixation,
Where it's like an obsession and I'm stalking my own downfall.
I just want to touch the parts of me that don't exist.
I want to feel that they exist.
I need to know that I exist.