Rolled tight and sealed
with my lips this pome
I wrote for you
and placed inside a bottle
Tide is going out
as the sun is setting
with a pome inside a bottle
and you still on my mind
Blue winds and waves
will bring it to you
This pome inside a bottle
Just another love song
like the ones we used to listen to
as the moon rose o'er the ocean
watching the tide come in.

r ~ 7/25/14

I've been told
that I'm built like a fencepost
Kind of wiry
A few knobs here and there
A knot or two for character
I make a pretty good fence
Good at keeping things inside
Not letting things out
But now my shadow seems leaner
Not quite as tall in the morning sun
The soil around my feet eroding
Drying out isn't all it's cracked up to be
Staying straight ain't easy
The herd is getting restless
And the barbed wire on my back
is tearing me up inside.

r ~ 7/25/14

Shuffling in broken down shoes
Where people blink blindly by
Thoughts are ruined by today
Tomorrow seems to be no better

Why does humanity dwell in death
Where children are taken away
Snuffed out like a candle flame
As leaders play in their war games

Souls are burning in crying shame
If only words could heal as before
But nobody wants to try to change
Innocent blood spills unnoticed

The last great poet has shut the book
Scratched out his eyes of the unseen
Broken his fingers of all around him
Alas, that great poet will never be me

Deep within the lyrics


The closest thing I know to love¬
Is something I am thinking of
In every sorted worry that my mind decides to share

While drinking heavy in the past
Inside the shadows I now cast
The bottom of the bottle lets me know I am aware

Collecting on a shouldered score
Finding it is nothing more
Than voiced in my confessions of imaginary scenes

Reaching for a photograph
Searching for its aftermath
Tuning off the station in the middle of my dreams

The fury of this drunken bliss
Reminds me of your tender kiss
Though never having felt it, it is something that I long

For in the end this fairy tale
Reminds me of my quest to fail
Deep within the lyrics of some broken hearted song

Armed police in the streets of
Oslo. A rare sight.

The intercepted plans for
Terrorist attacks any

Of these days, are taken
Seriously.

It was just too good a summer,
Wasn't it?

A dark cloud hangs over
A city that sleeps through

Months and months of
Unsummer and cold.  

We live under it today, looking
Up over sunglasses and

Beerglasses, happy that it's
Just a metaphor yet, and

Still doesn't have the shape
Of a mushroom.

I am wheat
I cry, I cry
Again
You leave your dead
At my feet
Oh why, oh why

At Gettysburg
We cried
Again, again
They rose and died
Below our stalks
They lie, they lie

From Stalingrad
To Leningrad
One million dead, one million dead
The Panzers came
Wheat fields aflame
They burned, they burned

And once again
You leave your dead
Ukraine, Ukraine
Oh, Putin's shame
The innocent lie
In wheat, in wheat.

r ~ 7/19/14

Strong and tall
the lonely pine
rising up
to sky so blue.

The emerald grows
its beauty slow
and captures light
in solitude.

Lonesome pine
down by the sea
dreams of ships
with beams hand hewn.

Strong against
the wind and waves
the pine will sail
the ocean's view.

r ~ 7/20/14

Rains come
Rains go
The wind blows
And so do Mondays.

r ~ 7/21/14