Hiring me to repair
and prepare the old rental
for you to occupy
after you sold our house,
I found the collection
of carefully selected snowglobes
bought for you over years
and the original copy
of my gift poem
left with the tenant's trash.

from one who knows
the hours spent
honing a voice
to cut through a room
the days lived
seeing the unseeable
until the lyrics
bleed onto paper
and the sacred moment
when the masteries
and the mysteries
combine
to rend my soul
and salt my eyes.

Every day is once again too precious;
a journey, step by step of thirteen years
evaporates to salt like drying tears.
The salt not wasted, rubbed in wounds so specious,
wrapped in bandaged memory, bound tight
and bloodless by layers of adhesive time.
A wish, a prayer, a moment from my prime
when all could be accomplished, all was light.
Each morning wakens heavy, trudges on
Promethius's odyssey to night
still hoping rolling stones may be diverted.
Reality re-dawns; all hope is gone.
The uphill climb remains to make aright
what gifts that born in grace became perverted.

Your bird-spine curves to the roof of my mouth, confetti-skull sticks to the back of my teeth. Your wet heart beats on my tongue, small lungs press in for sleep.

In silence, I carry you. In words, I carry you. I hear you breathe. Feel your dreams furl and unfurl, fern-like to term - and I miss you. I miss you. I miss you.

In pieces, I carry you. In love, I carry you. I feel shame. Not for letting you go - for letting it in. I know what happens to children like you, with fathers like him.

...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

If you'd care for a
severe case of whiplash, watch
CNN and Fox.

as time tumbles by
eroding its rocky bed
of eternity
in the shallows
we create
pools of stillness
capturing handfuls
to refresh us

on cold January mornings
the pools ice-olate
into frozen moments
we sculpt into memories
until the reality
of springtime
puddles them
drip by drop
back into the current