blooming masses of purple lilacs,
savory bunches of grapes
for the eye to eat.

gnomes frolic
in the branch-cut puzzle box
of a lawn
under the white darkness
of the moon.

running choking,
blinded,
through emotional streets
of an erupting Pompeii of childhood,
a tidal wave of bile
swept me drowning away,
pruning me through and through
with poison
which I was left alone to digest
the best I could,
twisting my stunted growth
into a dwarf afterthought
in an oversized world
of family.

I gave up a life
I didn't know I had
to chase a mirage
of approving family
and human caring
that never was.
now the lake has vanished
into the desert noon of reality
and I am left mired
in the abandoned sands
of poverty.

the wine of family communion
washes me clean inside,
converting my potential
to the tenets of family dogma.
the bread fills me, expanding,
to nourish me out of my image
into theirs:
no questions,
no discussion,
no rebellion,
no independence,
no chance,
no hope,
trained up to become
a member of good standing
of the Church of Wilson.

I have the sun within me,
a smoldering furnace,
something,
from which something must come.
like the sun
which shoots out flares,
nothing to the inferno of their origin,
my sun of unrest,
forcing outward
jets of formed feeling
that, molded into words,
give an inkling
of that from which they came.

on the distant side of life
I squandered it unheeding,
careless of its passing.
now,
facing a receding mirror
of mortal time,
I count the dwindling years
like a miser.