Maybe Hell is our fear and Heaven our hope both of which were spawned by someone taking different meanings from the same night sky.

And maybe not.

A woman came to see me today,
She sat across the desk and handed me
A deed she wanted me to look over.

I didn't recognize the name on the deed at first,
Then slowly it began to dawn on me who she was
I looked up and saw her expectant eyes and a curl at the edge of her lips

God knows what she saw in my face, but she said,
"Hello, Jimmy, it's been a long time".
And it had, probably 30 years ago at my mother's funeral.

Here was my mother's friend, 81 now, old enough to call a
65-year-old man Jimmy and touch the place inside him
Where his mother's memory lives.

But it was more than a visit between old friends.
A friend of mine now gone called such things divine appointments

Because, you see, my mother was in that room as we talked
About our families and the days back when our world was young,
Full of love, and death had never touched me.

When she left I cried…

It's hours later and mom's still here beside me as I write.
I feel her as I have all the terrible times when she protected me,
Mostly from myself, and the blessed times like when I found
My way to a new home and love.

I'll see mom one day where she is waiting
I have missed her so very much,
But today I discovered she never left.

Look around and trust your heart, you'll see what I mean

He was born the year Babe hit 61,
Baptized by the Great Depression,
And confirmed in the South Pacific;
They jokingly called him the Million Dollar Baby.
No one knows why
Because he was one of millions who did what
Was right in a time when if they hadn't
Our world could have gone wrong.

And they expected not even a pat on the back for doing it.
They were beautiful.
He was beautiful, my dad.

He carried me even when I was old enough to walk
No complaints, no expectations beyond that I would
Do the same for mine.

I tried, but didn't do as well as he had done for me.

Now the Million Dollar Baby sits in a geri chair,
Cared for lovingly by his youngest girl.
Fading like his memory of who he was and what he did

But I will never forget.

Heaven will be lucky to get him,
I was luckier to have been his son.

My best friend says either God invented us
Or we invented God, nothing else makes sense to her:

I guess I don't know what makes sense to me either, but
when  I feel comfort sending prayers into the Universe
or I survive what should have crushed me, or
or I see my children's faces in the album of my mind, or
especially In the moments after loving my wife and
         we lie quiet in the night

I feel what we must call God and I know,
I just know,
That people aren't smart enough to have invented Love.

His stars were crossed at birth by the ones
Who conceived him.
She who used the act to hold the boy,
He who performed for his own pleasure;
Neither with a care for the son who was a consequence.
Both indifferent until they finally broke
And the son became a pawn in a hateful game between them.
Winner take all, and he was all there was

When he learned this he used it against them
So he  could get what he wanted from one or the other.
And he had never been taught to want healthy things.

They did not care, they each tried to buy him away from the other.
He raised the price each time it was paid
And they paid it yet again to punish the other with his fleeting loyalty.

He thought others would pay when he grew older and went into the world.
Because he knew nothing else; not love or kindness
or even reasonable restraint.
There was just the pretense of human feeling,
Enough to get his way.

He called me from jail today
A girl finally told him no.
She'll never do that again, nor will their unborn child.

At least this game stops here.

I am here like I promised I would be. I have been sitting here for awhile now , remembering you. I wish so badly to be able to see you... To hear you.... Something.... Anything.

From the back yard it all appears normal and as though life is unchanged. It is anything but normal.

The roses.... They are still here. Untouched by time other than some weathering of the stems. How I hate those roses and what they represent.
I'll not touch them. But I will recall their meaning that day.

I want you to know I am so very sorry I was unable to be here for you that fateful day. I would do anything to change that. I am here now and I am not leaving. I will stay here for you, knowing there is nothing I can do to bring you back.

It's 6. You would be home. It's already happening... And no one can stop the horror of your last minutes. It hurts so bad knowing what you had to endure. Remembering the aftermath.

So much left unsaid, undone.... So much life you had yet to live snatched away in a cowardly display of power, control, and pure venom.

It must be nearing that time. I am beginning to feel you. I am beginning to get chills up my spine. The breeze has picked up some. A sparrow went hopping around in your roses.

I should be sitting out here with you. Not sitting out here remembering you. Fires, chatting, watching the kids play as they were growing up...so many memories flooding back all at once. So heart wrenching to know they will never be more than memories ever again.

You should be popping out of the back door and sarcastically asking me, "Why aren't you coming in Chrissy? Too lazy to take your shoes off or what ? " Then would be that laugh.... I loved that that laugh. No more picking back and forth. No more joking around. No more funny sarcasm. No more anything. It's all no more.

I pray where ever you are now that you are happy. That you can still hear and see us all. That you know how deeply we miss you and love you. That you know you will never be forgotten. And that you know I am here today.
I love you so much Deb.

My friend who I admire believes the future
is controlled by our discipline and preparedness
and the effort we put into securing what we want from life.

But she is young, probably beautiful,
and therefore handicapped by the privilege given
to the young who see many doors to what the future holds.

Time will cure that, or perhaps not, but probably so,
in any event, I hope her perception works for her,
I have seen too much to believe it.

I have walked the stairs of life
where the future is not behind
limitless doors, but rather windows which get smaller
the further up you go, and there are a fewer of them.

So, for my dear friend, I hope the future
remains limitless and becomes glorious
I felt that way long ago,
but capricious fate  and destiny make me believe
the end was written before the story was published.

I was driving the back roads from my house
out in the country where things are real;
they live, they die, they make noise and they move
in the way Nature intended.

The road bumped under my wheels because it wasn't paved,
dust flew up behind the car, but fresh air came in my window.
The sun was going down a bit, so the horizon in my rearview mirror
was a beautiful orange blaze which gave me peace.

And for some reason I wondered when it would come.

I've been waiting for as long as I knew it existed
though when I was younger the wait seemed so long
the coming seemed more fantasy than reality,
time changed that perception as did experience and loss.

Now I know it's closer.  Thank God I can't feel it near yet
but I know it's closing in and I wonder when it will arrive;
I also wonder whether it will be swift and merciful
or if it will play with me and make me suffer
and force me to be brave
I'm not brave, you know.  I'm just stubborn
and I like to fight battles I am not supposed to win.

Then I wondered if fighting would be worth it
because all I want, all I need, is to be a part of this out here
a piece of what is real, which is why my peace will be as
scattered dust riding on the wind to find my place
in all of this beautiful, sacred, loving nature.

I wonder when it's coming.
          Some days i don't want to wait.

he was raised by a mother at the end of the line of
women who thought their sons did no wrong;
so he thoroughly enjoyed doing nothing wrong.

the rest of us envied him then,
no chores, more money in his pocket than any of us,
a sense he was never required to play by the rules that bound us,
he had no discipline because it did not apply to him
but you had to like him, he always smiled
and he always had a girl because he was the
one they were warned about and they all wanted
to tame him-they didn't know
you can't tame one who has too many carrots
and has never felt the stick

now we have spent our youth

those who invested it have treasure he'll never value
he spent his like the wind gets spent
and  he has reaped exactly what he spent.
his knees are bowed, his hair a color not found in nature
and his chest has fallen so his belt has to hold it up

but you have to like him, he always smiles
and he always has a girl, though none of them
look the same as when we envied him
        
But he's still smiling.

Never quit they told me early in my life,
Push yourself, do what you're told, you'll be rewarded.

Now I look back over their spectral shoulders
And ask where is the reward?

They look at me blankly over the years and I elaborate,
Where is the reward I have been promised?
I am older now, older than you were when you set me in motion,
Older than you lived to be and here I am tied to a life
That did not live up to the promises you gave.

For all my effort,
I did not climb to the top of the mountain,
I do not live in a mansion,
There is no plaque with my name for people to admire,
There is only me and I am often lonely even when I'm not alone.

Having said this, I recalled my mother's eyes and saw her again
Standing there with the amused grin she wore
Just before she told me why I was wrong.

Around her I saw other things from the years that passed.
I felt again what I had done and what I had lived

I knew again the things that made me smile
And those that made me cry.
I saw my children and their children
And will probably see the next to come.
I felt my pains, my loves, my losses and my triumphs.
My friends reached out to me, even those who were gone for years
Embraced me and gave me warmth.
I met my wife again, my true love, and lived our moments over.
I felt my frustrations and my angers,
But they didn't weigh as much now as they had then,
Neither did the scorn of those who had their triumphs over me
For many of them are gone now, some ingloriously
While I plod on into an age they'll never know
With memories they'll never have.

My mother smiled from her distance.
She had always known me best and now she knew what I had seen.
She placed a hand upon her heart and waved as
She faded gently back to the place I will call my home.

This life was my reward and more than I deserve.

There is this fish who shares my office
I feed him and he has certain rules:
No noisy exchanges with the crab,
(the crab is territorial so this must be hard for the fish)
No staring at me, though I can stare at him,
and above all
No criticism of what I do.

He is my friend because he does these things perfectly

My other friends are mostly human
My best friend is a woman who married me
They are not like the fish, which gives me trouble sometimes
I give them trouble too, I think,
But it usually works out.

When it doesn't, I always have the fish
And if he's too busy, there is the plant in the corner
Who has stood by me for years.

Not like the stories, is it?
Or the movies, or the expectations
we get from all that.

It's about people who travel with baggage
they carry when
they move into your life.  

It's heavy sometimes, and ugly and you have
to help them carry it, which isn't much fun.
Not like what it was supposed to be;
nothing you want to do;
not fair at all…

So what it is, love that is, takes all the stuff
from the stories and expectations
and adds understanding, acceptance, accommodation
because that's what it takes to help you
carry someone's baggage…

and what it takes to help them carry yours.

It is a sad world where the things
happening in the night are the most fascinating,
which means they are broadcast where we can see them better
and hopefully buy the toothpaste sponsoring them.

The startling things are real, but they are not who we are,
not we who embrace our humanity and shudder
at the tales of those who prey and injure
to feel a power we shun

My mother said there is no paycheck for being good;
Maybe, but there is consolation for
in those moments when what we do
is what we ought to have done

Moments when a stranger's child frightened by lighting
instinctively leaps into your arms for comfort,
times when a stricken cancer patient is solicitous about
the sound of your cough in the doctor's office.

You have felt the warmth I cannot describe
and you know, you know
this is the touch of something greater given to
comfort us for all we will endure.

It was spring when the old things get cleared away
and I opened a drawer that was mostly closed now;
in the back was a ring of keys I hadn't touched forever
because the doors they opened were gone.

My first car, a castoff from my father we used in high school
to go to practice, or for hamburgers, or to the movies
in a time when that was the most fun we could have.
I see the boys now, smiling and singing songs you never hear anymore.

The key to my the apartment I had going to school, a little place
I shared with Jimmy Redd just off campus where we
drank, caroused and learned how to cook hamburger helper
between working and going to class.

The key to my first office and the house I bought where
some of my kids lived and I had a future
that was wasted by trusting people whose most important
love was in the mirror every morning

Then there were no keys for years when I could not unlock
the doors I lived behind in places where
the only comfort was a date yet to come as I waited
and the world turned without me, changing everything

Which turned out to be for the best
For the last unused key was to my first home after leaving high school
the place love became real and where the missing part
of me had been waiting through her own trials.

I smiled and held the keys tight then put them back into the drawer
they are not useless as I thought
because the doors they open are those I will
always be able to enter.

the key to our situation
is surreptitiously
concealed under the doormat
where anyone who wanted in
would look…
and so, my love,
I will pretend to be
surprised I found your
key if you will pretend to be
surprised when I come home..

Six letters making a sound that means so much.

The pressure of a month's uncertainty released.

The dark spell ended; the nightmare over;
the dawn burning hot with the promise of more life.

The glow had not faded and I thought of those who never heard
the word.  

Those now gone, those who suffer, and those who love them.

I wonder why I am the one who will sleep well tonight
while the only peace they will find is in their final rest.

Waiting for a biopsy result can be its own kind of hell
because you can't be sure whether time
will bring you something good or **** you.

It's not that I fear death yet, even though I know I will,
it's the anticipation of the death process ripping me down
from the inside out while people I love are sorrowful
and try to be brave for me.

And yet, the answer time is hiding could be life
full and warm and wonderful and long,
which is to say death will use a slower process to claim me
and those who love me will have more time to watch
as I fade to the Place we all must go.

It strikes me then these moments, even now
as I bare my soul to you, are something
to be enjoyed rather than spent in dread of what time could bring,
for the ultimate result has never been avoided.

You forced me to play twice,
But thanks to a friend, we got to you before you could dig in.

I was lucky, and I walked away and I was safe.

Two days after a check up
they told me you were back,
"this time it's in your pancreas".

Again it's early and I think I have a chance
but I keep hearing things in my mind like
"three strikes and you're out" or "third time's the charm".
        I would be lying if I said you didn't scare me, but
I'm more afraid of being a coward
And causing my people the extra pain
Of watching me whimper.

And I owe it to those who helped me before,
the ones less fortunate than me who you burned and crippled and killed,
Those who smiled and gave me courage as they were suffering.
  
So we start again...

They don't call me often, but I always  know it's them
When the calls come late at night, or
At moments that pressures from every other part my life
Are unbearable-

That's when they call

With life or death issues
Who is sick or leaving their spouse or
-God forbid I ever get this one again-
In the hospital having failed a suicide?

They call me and I know in their voices
Things are either wrong or very wrong

And something takes over in me, a calm in my voice
A clear head as my heart, which they can't detect,
Races into overdrive and I have to sit or I will fall.

I listen and hear my words as if they were spoken by someone else
Clear they are, and soft, and loving
I wonder how because they come from a man who feels
The pain of his child as his own pain
Yet the words don't betray that…not so far anyway.

These are the times they listen to me without the dismissal
Of the young for the generation above them.
This is when I am Dad, not "the old man"
I weigh more during these calls but I lose more of me to them.

But I don't miss what I have given
Any more than my mother missed what she gave me.

I thought I would be different today
I expected midnight this morning would have wrought a change
In me like Cinderella's coach that turned into a wrinkled pumpkin
Leaving her to walk home from the ball.

But that didn't happen.

Midnight struck this morning and the gentle heart and
Glowing soul who lies beside me through every lonely night
Reached back, pulled my face close to hers and said,
"Happy birthday, I love you".
Then she kissed me and I was young all over again.

He was a good kid once,
All smiles and personality that set him apart.
"A pleasure", his teachers said;
"A funny boy, but so smart"!
He was first among his friends and loved by family in those days.

But those days pass and life wears you down.

Romances failed him, or vice versa,
The big leagues never called,
And work was never interesting, just work.

Always his escape from what should have been was in the ****
    Which got inside his head and changed him.

Frustration twisted him as years passed and dreams dimmed;
Every change was a loss he took as something stolen.
He didn't see he gave away what he lost,
        So he wanted revenge on us because we couldn't help him.

His actions hurt us,  but not how he thought it would,
        We suffered to see him become the God who banished himself To the hell of his anger where the Satan he became
        Keeps him locked away in lonely frustration.

He was a good kid once,
All smiles and personality that set him apart.
"A pleasure", his teachers said;
"A funny boy, but so smart"!
He was first among his friends and loved by family in those days.

Now he's gone and can't find his way back.

And I miss him.

I live in the corners now where the light is a reflection
and the shadows are real:

The comforting shadows of what was and the
painful shadows of what was expected.

My corner is crowded with transients, like me, pulled
slowly or fast, into the farthest nooks where they are
finally lost to the ephemeral light of here and now.  

It's hard to remember some of them, glad they are gone in fact;
Others are seared in my consciousness, smiling there as when
we shared the light that seemed everlasting as the sun.

But not even the sun is forever.

So I look for something beyond the nooks where my friends
and loves and dreams have gone.

I will tell you, who are still in the light, truly from the shadows
of the corner: only love and hope and Love will mean anything
when you reach this place.

And you will be here too soon.

They all lie together now,
Those who hate and the ones they hated.
The short and tall, rich and poor
Ones who worked and those who lazed away their lives...

They all sleep together, equals here, even though some have massive
stones to mark their passing, others just flat bricks
with a weather worn name

And when they wake in some other place
this will have been a bad dream they shared.

There is a baby here resting in his mother's arms as she stands in a long line
Of people waiting to be fed.  The mother looks like a child herself;
The burden of the baby seems too much for her-but she knows he is not
As she sways and nuzzles
Him for comfort in a place full of strangers.
He looks at me, an old man in the corner smiling at him, and
Wishing for things long gone and time spent foolishly

Then he turns away to the comfort of his mother's powerful arms,
Safe for now in a moment fading quickly to a time when he
May be an old man in a corner wishing.

The big clouds came back today,
Rolling up over the western horizon in full sail.
Fleets of them.  An Armada reconnoitering in force
For General Winter, who is in the rear waiting for
The campaign season to attack.

Softly they sail on winds that brought the hummingbirds
Then turned cool as the days shortened and the sun more scarce.

I cannot turn away though I know what is coming as we all know.
I find I no longer care that it comes for me.
I spent my spring unheeding and my summer foolishly
But I have always loved the autumn, which is fading into
Memories I shall carry into the cold winter I cannot escape.

I wonder will I have them there or if there is anything at all.

If you can read this or hear it or ever knew it existed, I still love you.

No matter what may have passed or where we may be
or if I am gone, I still love you.

If the stars are still burning or if they have burned
themselves out and all that is left is emptiness, I still love you.

Only truth transcends and survives the fiction we call reality.
The truth between us is, and will always be,

I still love you.

I never understood the those left behind
Until I became one.
Trust and love are live in the dictionary then
And loneliness presses in like the cold, empty depth of a well.

But when I was abandoned, no one counted on me
Like the little ones whose mothers struggle
With their pain and have to keep moving…

They wear a mask through the day and have shoulders to carry
The load of two and they cannot falter
Lest the small ones fear and suffer the loss of
Of all that was left.

But at night the mask is off and the dark void
Fills places where pieces of life are missing.
Love is gone, the bed is empty, the money gone and
No one is there for warmth.

I never knew that part, but I know one who did
And she is strong in all the broken places,
Though how I'll never know.

And you who read this and suffer, know that she
Lives in your mirror if only you look.

Early fall colors are matted down. flags are dead, stuck to their poles.
People hustle as they walk bent over in hoods that hide their faces.

Hours ago there was the sun and warmth, pretty leaves, smiles.

Hours before that I was young and the sun never went down.

Then my rains started and my head went down.
The rain left lines as it ran down my face
I couldn't walk as fast, I hid inside from storms that always found me.   
Faces I knew turned down to avoid the rain,
I cannot see them now from here except in pictures
Taken when the sun shone and we all could smile.

Yet there is a fire in our hearth and one face that smiles
Though she too had been out in the rain
Until we came in together and found a place to keep warm.
In that the rains have served us well.

The weight of my life pressed behind me
Pushing like a dark wave for me
To outrun before it could swallow me.
I drove to work with thoughts
Of the must things and the must nots I had to obey
Or suffer a fall from which I could not rise.

My eyes were locked on scenes in my mind
When I turned a corner where a small bank of fog
Had taken temporary residence in a field.
The sun was rising behind the tree line, so it
Was safe for the fog to sit here for a moment and change the world
Into something soft as it piled and flowed in a gentle breeze.

It drew me in

I almost felt it on my face in the cool morning
I wanted to stop and run into the bank where the pressure
Couldn't find me and the must-must nots were not
The fog was all potential and would whisk me off
To where I should be…

Prisoners call fog the parole man because it can hide an escape
I see why now for I needed to be released from
What I had wished for and received.

But the car moved and the sun rose and the wave pushed me on

Someday.

Someday.

Somebody posted your obit and
The name seemed familiar.
Then others followed with how they missed you.
Turns out we went to school together.
And I can't remember your face
Or when we spoke to each other
Or the last time I saw you.

We lived lives with no intersection
And not even a remembrance even though
We went side by side through times
That made us who we are.

I like to think we were friendly,
But how could that be?
I would have remembered you face when they told me
And I remember nothing except your name was familiar.

So why do I feel a loss?

Life is so expensive
The cost is not in gold,
But in effort we pay, and pain we endure,
And the compromises we make for love.

The beauty of life is that we do these things and enjoy
The moments when the cost seems small for the experience.

But she sold it for a needle full of junk

And we let her, you and I…

There was fog this morning softening
What I knew into whatever I could make of it
My mind fell out of life and into  
The business of re-constructing reality;
Like when I was young and could dream
Of things to come without limitations because
Young minds are endless fonts of possibility
Before life replaces the pressure of belief
With the exigencies of work, and pain, and the weight of broken hope.

But the fog restores by turning the hard edges of the world
Into soft things that my mind can mold.

Gravity becomes the illusion in the fog for everything floats.
Light is no longer sharp and discerning, but gently hides imperfection.
Shadows who fear the day walk bravely in the fog and carry
Dreams I had, and quiet memories.
The sound of the world is muted and I cannot recall
My failures, only my hopes, my dreams, the warm memories.

All this rides the fog…

Its mist gets in my eyes.  The breath of it is cool.  I feel it around me

I wish I could stay here forever.

Long ago the tree was strong and green,
But that was when the air was clean
And the water that fell as rain was not tainted.
So it grew and ignored what was happening
Reaching only for the constant sun that gave it life.

It slept through winters and sprouted every spring
As the earth turned and lesser lives were lived and lost
Always turning its branches to gather the light
Sinking deeper its roots to stand taller,
Time moved slower for the tree, but it moved nonetheless

It moved.

The weakness came slowly, creeping into its roots
From the soil that caught the tainted rain
Its leaves were less each season, less light was gathered
The winters grew longer and more brutal
He could not reach so high, though he tried.

And the time came when no leaves grew, but he was not gone
He stood his ground with bare arms stretching still
For the sun, who had never left him.
He stands there now, not forever, but long enough
For us to see the haunting beauty of a life now gone
Who in his time was a giant.

No one builds a life, we survive
for a time in that sea by
swimming through currents where
random pieces of flotsam and jetsam
keep us afloat for a time then sink,
or move on,
leaving us to swim again, looking for land
that does not exist in the form we seek.

For moments settle on islands until they
no longer sustain us or
the sea rises up and washes us out into the currents
swimming to survive,
but in the end we cannot.

The best we have of the sea are memories
of what we hoped for and the dreams
we dream when we sink below the waves to sleep.

Dusk, on a quiet evening
Toward the end of my summer.
Shadows kneel at the foot of the setting sun
In a place where I can see them gather just before
They join to form the night that comes on to steal the world.

The road behind me leads from purgatory, ahead it leads to home,
But home is different now.
The car I drive is empty of those who once rode with me.

I wonder how much different
Where I go will be from where I have been
At least I will not have the locks
They put on my doors and
Hope is not a word and whispered
By souls who have abandoned it.

We work together in the day,
But it isn't Us that rumbles through cases
And put out fires and deal with unreasonable people,
It is our lawyer avatars doing what must be done.

I see you though in moments…

It is not Us who do what we can to blend families
Who do not recognize the concept of family as
Applied to them in the context of you and I,
It is our ever hopeful avatars straining at them and each other.

I see you though in moments…

In the night when we are alone, or when we play and laugh,
And always when we touch,
I see you then and clearly and I know this is Us
That survived the rest of it to find each other
And travel together in love.

It is the dark place at the end of the road we travel
And that darkness scares us, but it also beckons.
Seductively it calls with lies of an end to pain,
"Show them what they have done." the darkness whispers then demands.  
"Show them."

We all have heard, some have believed.
People with everything who could not see their worth.
People with options who could not find hope.
People who could only feel pain in the arms of love.

They dive recklessly into the cold dark water and are lost
To us, but not to all
For there is light beyond the darkness that beckons too
And the journey home is longer but no less sure
For all of them.  For all of us.
Peace, Robin, fly true.

I wonder why I am here so I pick over all the little
Things, and some of the big ones, that
Fell into my life.  
I hold them up like a jeweler and examine them
For flaws, or causation…but I don't really see
Them clearly through the loupe of my
Memory where I am always in the right and the aggrieved
And the righteous one who was let down..

And I wonder why that is.

But I know now I wasn't always the hero and I think
I can live with that, though I still don't like it.
I turn my face skyward and pray for forgiveness, realizing that
I also have to forgive, and I don't like that much either.

And I still wonder why I am here and if it made a difference
To anyone…

And then I think of you reading this jumbled mess from
An old(er) man who knows the best stops are in the rear view mirror…
I wonder what I should tell you that would make your minute here
Worthwhile and it comes to me.

Don't wonder, live.

I say I know you, but perhaps I only know
What you want me to see
Or what I hope you are as you bend here
And twist there to conform what you can
To what you think I want.

And I bend the tunnels of my reason to fit your contortions
So I may fit them to the conclusion that I know you.

You do this for me, too.

So we live, an accommodation each to the other;
A compromise born from knowledge we learned
From those we knew who could not learn,
Who could never know either of us.

And in the moments we are close I must touch you
In ways I could never do before or will again
Because the force that gives us strength to blend
Is that over used word that means
We have built of ourselves a home that we will never leave.

I was lost searching for things
I should have had…
Or so I believed
And the search took me past thresholds
I never would have crossed but the quest
became something alive, calling to me
at first then demanding when I gave it the power to do so
as the combination of desire and frustration
drove me past the limits of my mores…
And I was lost
And I was punished
And in the depths of that was
despair known only to the powerless who had once had power
then lost it to misuse.
In that pit reason returned and I knew the fault
was mine, so I prayed sincerely like a child.
Slowly time passed and I became who I was again.
But I was lost away from my world, your world, the world.

And then he found me, the one of ninety nine, and through the
instrument of those I had scorned he brought me out
to live among the world again.

I shall never go back, for in that pit I found the tools to know
What counted.

And I had it all along.

I am not sure when the Anger first whispered to him
or how he treated it then
or when it became his companion and then his friend

or when it took possession of him and crowded the rest of us out of his life

But the Anger owns him now and sold shares of his life
to paranoia and fear and hopelessness at ever being loved
or loving…

He was a good kid and would be a good man
                      but for his master that compels
his rage and distrust of the ones who love him

And I wonder if he will ever find the freedom he thinks he gains by pushing us away

When from this mortal place I go
To lie beneath Time's silent snows
And when my sacred name is but
A broken phase of verbal rust
What matter then that I had lived or laughed or died?

Yet if there is one heart who says
"He touched me as he passed my way.
He shared his smile and loving arms;
When I was cold he kept me warm."
Then your gentle memory will justify my life.