Caught in your thicket of embellished verse
Trite but resolute
Efforts to crack the indestructible  

Here you say:
Willowy white Lily-of-the-Valley
Softly flowing waves of ecstasy
Delights a recessed heart
And resurrects the willful soul

I say:
No one knows the heart of one
Cast onward towards the billowy grey
Destined to revive
My vain attempts at life

A memory not your own is a lie with legs
A story perpetrated by the soul
For its own amusement
It thrashes like a fish on a line
Seeking to breathe life with every gulp
And as time continues on its incessant journey
This memory finds a home
In the permanence of a weak mind
It becomes your truth
And the lie loses its legs

On a meandering road, many years ago
Our destination unknown
We came upon an ancient and majestic oak
Its branches, bare of clothing;
Autumn’s demand of an offering to the soil
We stopped and did not venture forward
Observing only from a distance
Knowing that if we walked among its greatness
We would not see the fullness of its truth
You sketched it
I sat in awe of it
Years have passed and she is but a memory
The tree no longer stands except for the lifeless remnant,
And your sketch
A cruel beheading
I live knowing that it's greatness,
Rooted below the earth
Is a soul larger in death than in life

Life has provided me with circles
Infinite paths that lead to endless crossroads
A maze of possibilities etched in clay
And defined by a tormented soul
I am one that has fallen into hell
Sometimes I wake to music
A familiar tune that echoes from childhood
When rainbows were good omens
And the night passed unimpeded
Now I pray for that endless sleep
Where the night is infinite
And the soul is nullified

Remember, my fair weather friend
When all that mattered was coffee in the morning
I don’t laugh when you call it your drug of choice
Coffee in the morning is serious business

A staring contest that I always win
An hour of small talk then we get to the meat
You cry and I sigh
We drift to a place where hollow feelings reside

Docile thoughts evolve into ravenous beasts
Why, you ask?
Answers raise more questions
Never ending questions

The sun is reaching its zenith
We are descending
I want to step carefully down this hill
You choose to go down in summersaults.

We clash with unabashed ferocity
One of us; me, unaware
That a third is present
A flower, blossoming will wither
When watered with resentment
O’ little girl, sunflower
You stand in an empty field
The luminous rays of the morning sun
Comforts you until the gale of your fathers fury
Runs its course

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 seek a harvest of hope and bliss
You reap what you sow, it is said
But sow as you may, hope and bliss requires
A willful soul and mindful heart where
Malicious spirits abound
Making the ground fallow and unworkable
A vermin called dogmatism and self-righteousness
Seek to emasculate a once fertile land
How do we reverse this pestilence?
I say hope should not despair
Our union with the universe
Guides our way
Our reward is bliss

Replicate
Castigate
Litigate

You tell lies
Then we vote
Still you win

We’re sullen
Ripped apart
Suspended

Tacit rage
Complacent
Acceptance

You take more than what you're due
Replacing joy with tears
Compelled to a destiny you thought was yours
Will you ever get it right?
He is a lonely, ****** soul
Delegating his passion from one to another
A back office Romeo
Roll it over and accept your penalties
Replace the tears with self-determination
Toss it all away
Cast it in the fire
Lob it in his face

Slow and deliberate are the days
Everything new and elastic and hopeful,
I told myself - to remember these insights
Save them for the middle years and reminisce
Use them but don’t abuse
The memories will serve me well
But are forgotten the next moment
As the smell of fresh cut grass distracts me
An opportunity lost will be found in due time
I say to my youthful self
But now past fifty
All is but a vacant dream or shadowy memory
As I struggle to remember the smell of fresh cut grass
This has been a long, cold winter
And spring feels like years away

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

Forever alone
But never lonely
The cairn points the way
A tattered trail
In intemperate weather I endeavor
The gale winds of ignorance causes me to pause
And take account of my story
The path to oblivion has its detours
I walk it alone, confident that the end is near

Standing afar, watching your face
A wince. A sneer. A despondent stare
I could write a book, a thousand pages
For a thousand faces

Imprisoned by your own enigma
You define your life with simple words
Whose meaning escapes even you?
You are complicated

Words were all we had
So long ago
Echoes of the destitute heart
The ramblings of an arrogant poet

You thought of me as the prophet
Foretelling a future that would never be
You discovered the truth and left
Leaving me to wander the desert

A parched soul
Hungering for the tangible
In an intangible world
Will this journey last another forty years?

Every morning at the same time
Get up and do your business
Business can be business or a combination of one and two
It involves paperwork and need not be in triplets
Try not to push too hard, lest you become: Stressed
Smell the coffee brewing as it lingers like gym sweat
Read the rags as they’re piled high. You really need to discard the old.
Did you remember to wash your hands and disavow
The pipes clang and rattle as the tap is closed
It reminds you of the 2009 Earthquakes that brought utter destruction to your life
Furloughs, pay cuts, layoffs, and lost dreams
How times have changed in seven short years
Every morning at the same time
Same **** different days

You are a loathsome creature
In death, you elicit sympathy

Your mental illness is your scapegoat
How could you **** so many?

The rage you felt
Turned outward towards the innocent

So many awash with the blood
Adam, high priest of perdition

You are not alone in your complicity
Did the NRA whisper sweet nothings in your ear?

Your father wishes you were never born
You’re your father’s scapegoat

You have uncovered a putrefied wound
That we are unwilling to heal

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

They walk in lockstep
Ignorant of the words they repeat
The excess of your covetousness
Sickens me to no end

I had respect once
Only pity and disgust abounds
Once a leader of men
Now a disciple of intolerance

You wished I was never born
And yet I was
It was not for your edification
But mine

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

Reverberations from prior years
Appear and disappear then appear again
Long lost tirades find their way back to life
To wound once more with vigor and ferocity

Grammar is your shield and without it; a wasteland
Without that perfect period or comma or semi-colon
It confuses the unspoiled linear thinker
Out comes their sword to slay

I have grown tired of kittens, slayings, and Trump
Rest the fingers and close the lid
There will be a savory morsel in the morning to LIKE
Stop measuring your life by the friend count

Facebook is another reality
That stalks the innocent
And convinces the sluggish of its lies
It must be true if it’s on the Internet

And so begins a Sunday morning
The radiant yellow orb making pathways
Through the clustered oaks and pines
And shadowy amorphous forms race
From field to field and far beyond
Avian hordes arrive as if by magic
To populate and preen
This is a cathedral built by no man
Where only the utterance of wind
And light of equality
Express a greater truth
Than that found in a shuttered building
Where minds are closed and unfamiliar
And formality is lifted among them like a golden calf

How is it that I am floundering on a raging sea?
With waters as smooth as the limbs of Daphne
The only occupant tossed to-and-fro
The others, still as corpse

I have placed myself in such peril
Trusting in my own sly counsel
Navigating a path, pointless and interminable
A fool with an appetite for defeat

Am I to believe the barn swallow,
And build a home of mud instead of dreams?
Tangible, instead of that which is without form
I choose the dream and its glorious deception

The heart beats on its own accord
I am free to control its cadence
But love is its only ruler
My despotic master

Try, as I will
My hardened heart resists not
Love’s melodious voice
My despotic mistress

She reaches in my chest
And resuscitates the blackened cinder
I thought you lifeless
My despotic love

What callow and dead words have you written?
Your sword is but a nub; a shadow of the weight it once held.
Deftly attuned to the foray of maladjusted thoughts
That seeks an ending but can stop at nothing
At one time, feelings were sharp and new and uncontaminated
Yet further on it is shaved down
An inner core as black as the raven’s eye
And when the nub has lost its reason to yield
Will it be retained for posterity?
Like the memories of the freshly dead
Your written words will decay into oblivion
Until a new soul is shaved sharp
Forever willing and ready and equivocal

I have trodden many a creature under foot
A few, unbeknownst
The bug has an intolerably short life span
And shorter yet, under foot
Do I traipse out of spite or cruel wonder?
No, it is just my disregard and shortsightedness
For I have been trampled upon,
From creatures smaller than me
They stir upon me, feelings of a bug
A distant rumbling of thunder
As I count the seconds after seeing the flash
There is a heavy weight upon me
Imagine what is stirred in a bug

Beneath the willows lion mane
A place to hide from earthly ruse
My cherished memory of younger years
Under the sacred umbrella cloak  
Shimmering tentacles move about
As the wind brushes gently and the sunlight gallantly
Filters the afternoon illuminations
I am in the belly of a jellyfish
Swimming deftly in a sea of dandelions
Tomorrow marks her demise
Another memory left to its devises

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

It charms the blackness in my heart
Wading through the depths of the despair
Emerging for air then plunges deeper
It seeks out the weaknesses then clings like a cancer
Squeezing and squeezing
Rests then squeezes again
I’m convinced of my faults as I’m cross examined every minute
Because time is measured in pounds here
Autumn gives way to cooler winds but this
This is a season of endless clamminess and emotion
I’m reminded to bury this thing that I’ve created
It’s a construct of my making, as if I’m a God
And if I were God, I would end this reality and blanket it in blackness
Like my heart

Her panting
Wheezing

Eyes, a second lid of Vaseline
Mouth gaping open

As if to scream out but
Nothing

Take your turn to clasp
For the last time

A last exhale
White as clean linen

Rise above persuasive fear
And tempt that, which is fleeting
You; Amiable and true
Have a voice, strong with fluent motion
Attest to your bold inheritance,
And seek a greener meadow
Pure and of sound understanding
And brave through life and solemn respite
Your crucial test is a lifespan of challenges
So gather your reaping’s and halt your desire,
To look back on the past and venture ever forward
Where light emanates and darkness has no grip

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

Ominous feelings
Grasp my heart as the phone rings
It’s the wrong number

What a man you were
Your knuckle, hard as rock
Knocking on my seven year old skull
Flash anger that came from nowhere
Did I remind you of someone you hated?
I remember, buckets of years ago
Now you, with “old timer’s”
Those days forgotten
Now, my time to disappear
By tomorrow, you would have disremembered me
But I remember, I still carry the lump

A desolate roadway, endless and meandering
Once well maintained, now splintering asphalt
Wrinkles of the aged silhouette
From the cracks; earthen mounds of despair,
Grow with each passing season
The overgrowth of malevolent verse,
Blanket a once fertile mind that traveled these roads
Undeterred and unfettered
Memories that are incoherent, comprised of fragments
Lost to time
The never-ending scavenger

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

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

There I stood, cobbled together of flesh and blood
Raptured only minutes earlier, now in despair
Words that take seconds to think and speak
Cause years of pain and destruction
Accept that I am not without blame
But why are words not meant,
And not easily retractable,
Incapable of evaporation
Like a broken man’s tears

Regret
Having carved eroding chasms
A million miles deep,
Deep in my thoughts
To grasp with flailing talons
What might have been.

Had I crafted eloquent words or
Shone a brief interest and
Not toppled that deceptive pedestal
There might have been
What might have been?
Regret

This stage of life
Does not allow for reiteration
Only regret
And with all that
We ponder
What might have been

As the story goes…
You descended from obscurity
A wind from nowhere
The shadow of the shadow

You made room for me,
The open slate
For the closed mind
I repent the night of the nor’easter

You awaken, screaming
Alone in a crowded room
Nothing would quench the thirst that night
You’re cold inside as the spirit fades

Conjuring your next escape
You seek a raft to ride the raging whitewater
Your existence requires nothing but faith
I'll throw you the mooring rope – Godspeed

At first, apathy, as one who wades through the gibberish
Then despair, as the wall grows taller and shadows of endless blackness
Stretching across a known landscape of misery
Built with mortar of ignorance and pride
Even you were amazed by its advance
By its ambience of nothingness
And how it is not persuaded by your rational mind
Not even your tapping finger is heard anymore
I’ve adorned it with webs of ivy-lies and pity-vines
And you have whitewashed yours
It takes a word and action to regain peace
Never to be spoken because of this impenetrable wall

Is a poem contrived, less a vision?
The sweet words that fall short
That has no joining to the soul
Is still a poem; orphaned and solitary

We force it out, the three stages of literary childbirth
Stillborn stanzas
Severe are the shrieks
How long must we grieve over the forgotten verses?

If I had but a wish
A reward greater than heaven
I would give
However, must you demand?

The Elephant ask that we leave them in peace
The seal asks us to lower the club
The trees ask for more time
But you ask for the world

The cold and weary ask for a blanket and a place to rest
The hungry ask for just a morsel
The abused ask for safe passage
You demand the world

I sit at my desk with unremarkable posture
Crooked back, crouched forward
Hands, shaped like lobster claws
Ready to pounce on the invisible prey
However, my quarry is a thought, not yet set to reveal itself
Scrambled thoughts of memories ferment
Oozing out and dropping to the floor
Trampled on
A phrase or two lifts and permeates through my fingers
A loud click of the keyboard, followed by another
A symphony of automatic gunfire
This is a war zone
A killing field
Then silence
Coffee at nine
Internet browsing for the rest of the morning

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

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

A song only heard at night
A fragrance that floods the mind with lost memories
A soul of obfuscation
Transcending the ways of man

Staring down the duplicity of happenstance
I crawl through a landscape, alien to the uninitiated.
In strict cadence to the night song
The smell of burnt sandalwood emasculates the soul

Afar off, you glimpse a shape that once meant something to you
An amorphous shadow
Do you give life to a memory?
Or Ashes to Ashes

There is an old trestle bridge
Soot black skin
She summons the half living with her
Siren’s song
A melody heard by the tormented
The rope, laced through the lattice
An intricate weave
Claims another
She lives, that others may die
Her reticent soul is a comfort to me

A soul exalts a given day
Rescinds it all, the next
Why are yearnings fast forsaken?
Displaced by yet another
I promise that by day’s end
My love  will not depart
Denying the callous cycle, its prize
Replaced by mirthful spirits and thoughts

A crack in my windshield lengthens. A radiance scatters
And bends as sunlight skates its narrow channel.
Tree shadows are a distraction, turning the fissure into a strobe.
A stone, the size of a pea, caused this.