I see you creeping in the night
Ephemeral spirit that haunts my darkness
And lurks within my shadow
A silent whisper in my ear
Cast your lot with me,
And see the riches I will adorn thee with

I see you skulking in the morning light
Ephemeral spirit that haunts my day
It’s harder to see you in the blackness of my shadow
But I can hear your distant whisper
Join my legions,
And enjoy the camaraderie of kindred spirits

I tell you, I am but a solitary man
Capable of withstanding the allure
My rewards will come from enlightenment
Not from a whisper
But a whirlwind
Sudden and furious

I have cradled my gloom
And somehow nurtured its growth
Strong and unfettered
Like offspring that feeds on its parent
I fear that it will devour me
Nevertheless, it is my creation
Manufactured with ease
Yet I have created this monster and hundreds more
As I slay one, another slithers from the depths
Of my heart
Where good and bad is a *******
And life and death is equally coveted

There is a hole -- I dug
A thousand miles deep
And it's my only exit
Smooth, shorn walls guarantee my entrapment
A self-imposed exile
The light that once illuminated our love
Has grown dim, if not, extinguished
I sit contemplating my situation
And thus conclude that not even Atlas
Can support this burden on his shoulders
Darkness is now my only ally

When I was a child, my parents once said
If the sun is shining and the rain is falling
The Devil is kissing his wife
I pictured his wife as my kindergarten teacher
Mrs. Hill
That was when I could associate a name with a picture
She had a beehive style hairdo
Her hair was as tall as the Hollywood Hills
In those days when nature called during class,
You held up one finger or two
Now that I look back, did it really matter how many you held up?
Mrs. Hill didn’t respond to my hand gestures
The consequences were embarrassing
And to this day, when I see the sun is shining
And the rain is falling
I wonder if Mrs. Hill remembers
While she's kissing her husband

The chill of an autumn morning
A rising steam as the fallen leaves exhale
The lonesome trees have given up their glory
A carpet of red, yellow, orange, and brown

An overcast sky with no definition
Is but a blur
Movement indiscernible
There is wisdom in the sky, revealed to a few

The smoke of the day’s first fire ascends
Wafting its familiar fall fragrances
Brings warmth and comfort to the soul
And campsite memories of long ago

We pass the bleak and barren cornfield
Stippled with autumn’s harbingers
The Raven
They stare with the blackest of black eyes

Your words have hit their mark
Spun out of malice and malcontent
You take no prisoners
As you stroll the field of my defeat

I would have gladly parted in unison
As you call my bluff
And now, who is the bravest?
We both depart, half of what we were


Our shadows have no form
Amorphous and soulless
Buried in self-pity and loneliness
Will nothing arise from this destruction?

I gave birth to a thought today
A shiny little supposition
It wept about all the possibilities
Endless creativity
One concept after the other
My thoughts began to multiply
The kinetic energy of ideas colliding
The chemistry of the mind
Has created an epinephrine drip
Then I heard the voice of an angel
Say, “Daddy, this is my science project.”
And now the birth of a thought
Gave way to a Supermassive Black Hole