I have a memory of those days
In Maine, with crashing coastal waves

When reading was a future right
Mom read, “Blueberries for Sal” at night

And that huge nameless tree in the field
At dark, a dinosaur concealed

Walking a stray black cat with a string
That ran up a tree and could not cling

Mom had to climb that tree, pregnant
And retrieve the remains and remnants

I remember those days, quite well
And the fake Christmas tree smell

The revolving multi colored light
That lit our fake tree until Twelfth night

In Maine there is snow, whiter than white
And memories that induce me to recite

I hear you coming with every crack of the knees
The air of your reproach stifles my breathing
And still, you are ten years past
Your ghostly presence has not abated
For I am small and inconsequential in your memorial
A toadstool among the Sequoias
I see an incomplete light through the canopy
In this dim and musty forest
Where fern and Lady Slipper does not comfort
This will be my shame
Content and complacent with this situation
Afraid to cast off his manifestations
This will be my downfall
Death isn't the end
Memories doth prevail

You say you've loved with all your heart
Dug down deep and pulled out a plumb

Reached levels of ecstasy with numbing toes
Except the ones that went to market

And still, there is hurt in your eyes
That can never be repaired by Botox

With every action, there is a reaction
But Newton’s Third Law does not apply here

Your soul speaks the language of the Universe
But lacks explanation in the vernacular

And when love is dead and gone
All is not lost, the sunrise is but an hour away

Rise up placid moon,
Through narrow bands of fiery cotton *****
From indigo to cobalt blue sky
Your motion, docile and free
And that sliver of silver light
Your cycles are said to guide the uninitiated
When you are full, they burst
For you are the light of the underworld
Full to new, new to full, and everything in between
Your shadow hides a secret as does mine
But yours is easier to reveal
There will come a day when earth shall release its bond
And you will be free from earthly influence
Just as death will discharge this soul
To meander from our earthly bodies
Free from the confluence that is body and soul

Vainly I stand before you
Waiting for an utterance
Any word of understanding
But these are days of famine

The honeysuckle flow of verse,
And kindness has abandoned
No words can repair this ruin
Too late, too late, to wait

My memory of you will fade
Yours of me shall never be
And thus is another chapter
Of broken dreams and lost love

Death and its mournful tidings
Obituaries and eulogies, read
Black ties and black veils, all in rows
Surround this shell and the open earth
The cold, damp wind sashays through and through
Memories, half a century old are lost and forgotten
A flight of geese overhead, perform a last flyover
Victory in death
Vestiges of family, say farewell and Godspeed
Tomorrow brings colder and damper weather

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

From whence you came, oh specter bright
Allured by sin, this troubled night
The haze of which, its solemn mask
Brings a fate, A fearful task

Upon life’s meager soul I pray
Replace my aura, black to grey
For though I lack an inner light
Allow the grey to seek the white

My poet’s soul I hear it said
Has only words of doom and dread
This be not true, I take to task
If love is all, you needn’t ask

I have all that's required for a loner’s life
One set and nothing more
A heart that’s given and received not
One soul, true to its way
On path’s that show no bearing
Passions without servitude
And still with desperate moments
I cling to my loneliness in the company of strangers
With great joy, if you can call it that.
I marvel at the quietness of the autumn night
Whose passing I will mourn
As mist gives way to snow and snow gives way to grief
Will there be no one to share my wonder?
This is what they call the hermit soul

Arise from autumn meadow
The days last thought
Of you who chose a path
Not measured or guided but sign less
And yet, you walk with purpose
Resting in unfamiliar territories
Aware of the incongruities of your route
And still, you had the vision
Earlier years were fraught with ambiguities
And muddy trails made for slippery ramblings
And then, you wrote a poem
Your heart found its medium; and soul, its pen
You write with depth in a shallow sea
How magnificent life is, when our path is clear
And the autumn meadow allows for one more thought

A windswept chill cuts to the bone
Wave and whirlwind play upon each other
With determined gait, I walk to Author’s Ridge
Syncopated volleys of half frozen drops
Released from the heavens
For are we not in the company of the enlightened
Resting peacefully; Alcott, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau
I take breaths of frigid Concord air
And fill my lungs with hopes of inspiration
But fallow is my spirit
And then,
Trickling drops of frozen rain, finds a path down my naked neck
And there is planted a seed
And a poem
At Author’s Ridge

The vastness of the summer field
Has lost its innocence to autumn yield
From whence the green has turned to brown
A once joyous day returns a frown
But with spring’s planting, revived and healed

Refrain oh urgings of wanderlust past
My sails have lost the wind, on teetered mast
The hearty bellows of a nor’easter gale
Has caused my depth to weep and wail
And fear the evil my spirit amassed

I am a farmer’s soul; born to seed and harvest
A reaper of words, and mortal darkness
I seek from all around, and all within
And dream of a life that might have been
Where love past is all but heartless

Encapsulated in time,
Refusing to release me from its clutches
Only to relive all my imperfections
Over and over and over again
Time is a perplexing thing
Moving forward and still,
We are trapped in the moment
It ravages the beautiful
And turns us to dust
To quote from a wise old sage,
Is to speak the obvious
For we are all a wise old sage

Catch the dying truth
That moves a thousand miles a second
To seize what is, or what should be
Concealed from view where all can scrutinize
You see the sky; I see the stars
You feel the earth; I feel the pain
How can you explain the Universe?
Is there no draft that can penetrate your mind?
Closed to apostasy
Open to dogma
And still you insist that we are new
That Intelligent design is tried and true

And the dying truth is that I too, am fearful
Of what lies beyond the silence of the mind

The dark season of cold, pallid vastness
Has not broken the tenacity
Of the first snow fall
Heralding the purity of the colorless
And the aroma of burning pine

This opaque mood I am in
Rejoices for the dark season
Yellow and brown ochre highlights
Burnt umber trees of plasticine
Molded by the hands of nature

In my mind, I am alone in this one-way reality
And yet, I delight for the dark season
If I could share this sensation, I would not
For it’s the prelude to a poem
About a cold and distant soul

The heart, mired in the thick black sauce
Beats less for love but rapid with deceit
A craggy instrument that lacks the elegance,
Of the newborn

Awakened each day to seek new meat
To ****** upon and ensnare
Her waking and ending thoughts
Seek to tarnish the golden rule

Mrs. Ess, you are a sight to sea, and see, and si
The hair on the hairless, rise to heaven
While those of us in your presence
Seek a shadow to hide and peek not

In the morning, I gather my thoughts of yesterday
Like the foraging chipmunk, collecting acorns
And stuffing them miserly in my jowls
The past is sustenance for a somnolent soul

As age condemns my faculties
I pull, from my once copious jowl
A jewel of sorts
A garnet set in fool’s gold

My memory is manufactured
Assembled and disassembled
No longer what was or is or will be
But was and is and never has been

I confine my thoughts to winter
Where barren fields and sterile trees
Offer less to recollect
And empty my jaws of these useless reminiscences

When I close my eyes and look into the darkness
I see the reverse image of swirling time
Glimpses of you, but you are not there
Like Schrödinger's cat, you are alive and dead
But all it takes is a potion
And my eyes will remain closed for eternity
The ease of which, has its own damnation
For this life still coddles and excites
And allows me to weep and moan
When I close my eyes and see you in the darkness

Winter has come
Allegro non molto haunts my thoughts
And instantly, I am back to that day
Nebulous clouds of soft misty rain
Gently saturating my resolve
It has been a fortnight of misery
So I take pause as,
Adiago-Presto plays on
And the vanguard of my thoughts
Runs the amorphous path I deem vital
Through the briar of thistle,
I struggle
As Presto dissolves
And another sun, sets

I was raised among the autumn leaves
Subjugated to the seasons    
And the mirth of the wind
Transfixed by the passing moon
That sad old man
Who claims to be wise, yet utters nothing
More guidance I have found from the lonely Lilac
And the vole; and the sympathetic rain
Than I have received from Luna
For I am lonely and fear that soon
I too will be the aggregate
Of time and erosion

If I were Love
Or the rain
Or that prickly feeling
Or the pain
I would be
Above all
And below
A wretch
If I were Love
Or the dirt
Or the dust
Made up of rust
I would be
Love

I raise my fist to yesterday
It is beholden to no man
And yet the brief passage of time
Has annulled my mournfulness
I remember our thoughts of death
Each of us, claiming mortality first
And again, I am immortal yet another day
And you, a monument to the ages

This I made from discarded words
A rewashing of once fertile derivatives
They made her bustle when recited
Her face, red with passion and lips unrestrained

And now, this newness I have not felt since her
I fear this one will discover my deceit
My lack of originality
Verses meant for another

But once old is new again
And these words have found fresh life
But when I find my soul again
Then will it bring forth new fruit

Captive of the heart
You are a willing prisoner
You fain the life, a poet's soul
And bristle when love, like writer's block
Amplifies the anguish
And is joyful of your impotence
Above all, time is not a comfort
It ticks down louder and slower
Until time stops and stills it's beat

A forceful pace, it's not a race,
When reading just for pleasure;
Your book is due, you never knew,
More time is what you treasure;

See the people watcher
Still as a mantis
Endless ambient sounds, unidentifiable
Does not prevent his gaze
He studies her eyes; her smile
And undresses her mind
The watcher finds himself
Transfigured
Her thoughts are not easily uncovered
A coffin, sealed; undefiled
The watcher will only find him,
Looking out as he looks in

Love has many types and tones
Depths and heights, unfathomable
And some, infinitesimal
Love is confused and lonely
One sided and disproportionate
It knows hate not
It does not masquerade
Love is pure as the morning sun
Subject to natural law
Rich or poor
Happy or depressed
Life or death

The cornstalks vanished overnight
Shaven fields once flowing, green and gold
Like Dad’s evening whisker stubble
Ghost limbs of the cornfield

Flocks of nomadic Ravens
Feast on the invisible
And scowl with those empty black eyes
Impervious to man’s judgment

And I think,

There is nothing as beautiful
Than the first snow on a barren field
Shadows playing with the evening light
And dance among the vacant mounds

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

A full moon
Swathing white light
The illuminating ethereal fire
Rests upon and rest beneath
Amidst a midnight forest
Where silence calms the restless trees
The unearthly glow has a story to tell
For those whose manifestation is brought in question
Accept the light that is a reflection of the day
Drink its wisdom and immerse in its wonder
For tomorrow is another day
And as the heart grows dim, the moon’s phase wanes

My burden in life
Is abundant and eternal
An open gangrenous wound
Hidden in full view
A pathetic soul

The plethora of medicines have ***** the mind
And replaced it with a thick tar
That makes cognition, onerous
I care for nothing
Feel nothing—am nothing

A means to an end
Has me captivated
Fixated on the task
Relief is at hand
But I lack the strength and courage

A mood as dark as a winters midnight
Haltingly adrift, she is rudderless
Bound to a coastal route
As she nears the quay, she cries out
But emits no sound
As strong currents
Guide her soul
To deeper depths
And perils
Where light has no importance
A salient angle away and afar
She collapses in upon herself, like the Black Hole
Black does not describe its murkiness
She is lost to humanity

A cast shadow, my other self
Speaks not in flowery meter
But waits time immortal
In the darkness of a conscious mind

In spite of myself
Itself
Yourself
Drawn on every word I utter

Anticipating a near, full, or half truth
The night has no faith in reality
But a certainty that light is a millennia away
And that shadow rules twilight

In the coastal forest at Odiorne Point
Paths meander under and over
Bramble so odious as to create an impenetrable wall
And distant sound of swell and surge
My nose recoils from the endless spoor of sea
Where upon a rustling of leaves drew my attention
To the vain wanderings of a scant grey squirrel
If I were a meager rodent of the furry tail persuasion
I would have purpose, direction, and courage against the iron horse
However, I am just a man of no resolve, course, or valor
Therein lies the rub
And coastal jaunts should never be made by depressed men

Why does a heart break?
And why must it always happen to me?
You must suppose that I am not true to myself
How can I be genuine if I do not know myself?

The judgment I place on me is more hurtful than yours
I spare no cruelty in the mirror of life
I am unrelenting in the retrospect
I live in fear of me, myself, and I

Copious paths mine heart must travel
Through briar patch unrelenting
No threat of gale or fiend unseen
Shall rest upon the blood moon’s shadow

My soul has cast from its sullen shell
Molting triviality and unearthly urge
A meaningless existence
Screeches, Release Me!

A silenced mind is my greatest desire
Free from all the revulsion that surrounds me
Your pity has no place in my heart
If you must cast a stone, then send it my way

I am tired of the summer
With the assumption that warmth is good
Green is better
And a sunny day is the Cat’s Meow

Here is my assumption.
Summer kills when
Angry throngs riot and loot
When one of theirs is brutally murdered by The Man

When the funny man hangs himself
And makes me want to do the same
When intolerant zealots demand -- Convert!
Or else die

When your legislator takes the summer off
Before completing their job
And when monsters
Take an innocent young life out of lust or convenience

It could be that summer really is a murderer
On the other hand, I may take it too seriously
I await autumn and its cool breezes
And less news

The Soul, my eternal interloper
Disciple of numerous incarnations
And admirer of the disembodied spirit
Cast from me, my dear

What are you good for?
For I truly do not understand your counsel
My Albatross in life
Shadowy in death

I wait for a glimpse of your light
How do I draw the curtains to
Enlightenment
How many more manifestations?