Days and dawns have risen and fallen
My mood, like the New England weather
Has transformed in short time
Resembling the howling nor'easter
Each greeting, cold and methodical
And when I close my eyes
I can still hear your rapacious voice,
After these many years
Am I the dying abode that you inhabit?
The one, that gives you life with each thought
Be gone, you devilish succubus

Alone again in this sad place
I settle at a derelict corner table
Where the loathsome light descends
And caresses this disembodied soul
This is my perching place
Where the invented me seeks absolution
Alms filled with gratuitous niceties
That are later exhumed after discovery
Night after night
I enter this place
Slightly different from the prior
But still the same, and then:
I hear that hideous laughter as I turn my back
And make my way towards the door
A million miles away

She did not ire against the fading light
The mystery of death did not perplex
But comforted her enervated soul
As she acquiesced to fate
Her last words extolled the joys of life
And love
And the sunset

Too far I have traveled
Year after year
Mile after mile
But never leaving this town
Enslaved with ignorance
Segregated from the cultivated

What we hear
We don’t understand their plight
As we are more afraid of them than they of us
Thank God they are over there and not here
Their ***** little disease will ruin us more than religion
Thank God they are over there and not here
Some impenetrable God-Shield has protected us from the pestilence
We must guard against those who would bring them in our bubble

What I feel*
I understand their dilemma  
And love them
And want to hold them
And thank God, for they will find peace someday
I wish more would help and nurse them
If only I had the skill to care
And do more than pray

I wake at midnight to the shrieks
But silence is all I hear as I sit up
Where are the screams coming from?
My wife doesn’t hear them, she sleeps soundly
But I heard the tortured howls not from this earth
I am afraid to fall asleep
I am afraid that this is an omen
A precursor to death
Is this what souls hear before they die?
Or is it my soul that wakes me so wickedly
I ponder what the soul is
As I fall in a deep sleep
And again, I am ****** awake
But now, I know the source of this unearthly moan
I gently touch her shoulder and ask that she sleep on her side
The wail of a snore can rouse the immortal soul