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

The cadre of gawking onlookers
Catch a glimpse of the latest casualty
“She was so promising with such stoicism”
Her loss is our gain

Their expectations had no bounds
The opportunities were hollow promises
Their duplicity complete and final
She got her pink slip at 5

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

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

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

Love
Bewitched, tender
Yearning, thirsting, feeling
I fear my heart will burst
Ephemeral

I am free to sway from my precarious perch
Outstretch my wings of sullen words
And soak up the shadow light
Of another winter’s night

Morning is nigh and blanketed
By dawns lethargic cotton-bally sky
Melodic chirping and the droning on
Of another winter’s morning

The Sun’s warmth has yet to reach my hollow bones
Motionless and afraid
My indignation is not yet complete, reticent
Of another winter’s afternoon

And the light that once illuminated my soul
Has dimmed on this weary day and
I take flight as the red dusk promises the hope
Of another winter’s evening

I strove to cease its protracted motion
Rousing early and then to bed, gleaning thought
Consuming every earthly moment
Keeping every reminiscence in irksome detail

The passage of time is my enemy and savior
Yet I revel at nature and its indiscriminate design
And how the phases of the moon does not deter and
Times movement does not slow for the bees or the hummingbird

For the sands of the shore, time is eternal and uneventful
For the youth, time is measured by the day and year
For me, time is measured by the second, hour, day and year
For the Mayfly, time is a day

I cannot effect its movement or demeanor
Yet it affects mine
The unmovable wall
That desolate and weeping journey's end

It’s nearly half a month since the equinox
Drenched in the cold among the dead
Anticipatory of any color other than grey
The tree branches disfigured from winter
A lone squirrel zigzags to avoid the quiet killer
The pancake maker
The meandering bruin seeks to devour anything in its path
Leaving a wake of topsy-turvy blue wheeled bins
Spring is that alarm clock with the inviting snooze button
Where is the warmth that was promised?
Where is the rain that is dreaded?

New England’s ravenous ground is ready
For winters waiting cadavers
How long must they wait?
Spring is anticipated with its many preconceptions
It eases in and is hardly noticed
Warm days intermingle with the frigid
Until frost is an intolerable memory
Spring is manic depressive

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

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

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

I wake early on weekends to a ritual of writing and
drinking the life giving elixir. My temple is the abode
of the green mermaid, where she summons the weak
with her siren songs. It’s said that she has no soul.

This is where words are born in my mind and placed in
ambiguous order; meanings known only to my soul until
the rational mind unscrambles the mess. It’s hard to be
profound with the loud world music in the background.

Trouble brews when the temple is filling to capacity. They
want my table. They don’t know I’m trying to weave a
fabric of words that will change their understanding of (place
question mark here). I am lost without my muse.

A change of venue is in order. I’ve lost my purpose and
words. My teeth are stained and my mind is no longer malleable.
I’m invisible to the passion that once inhibited my soul. I’m cast
in an ocean of blackness where the green mermaid reigns.

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

What I see, I do not love
Imperfections thrive with limitless combinations
How can one view their reflection and fall in love?
It is my eyes that I see first
And I wonder what he’s thinking
Like the Sacred Heart of Jesus painting in my grandmother’s bedroom
I turn my head left and right
And his eyes follow me but this one is in judgment
I find imperfections in his face too
*** for tat
I know that I won’t share the same fate as Narcissus
I can turn away because I know his deficiencies and failures
So, he reminds me everyday
In that other world
In reverse
My twin reflection

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

Bend and twisted beyond recognition but hardly broken
A resilient soul that weathers the eastern storms
You are the seeker of inspirational thought
Finding pieces discarded by the hopeless and helpless
A discoverer of minuscule wisdom, you make it yours
And you share its obscure meaning and summon the light
For many years, the numerous have seen you a far off
Like perched eagles, they seek the opportunistic ****
As they strive to entangle and captivate your soul
You will suffer with the endless disappointments
One day, you prefer death to the infinite fight
And when all is lost, you find the passage that will
Lift you from hell into heaven and restart the cycle

A place - innocuous from the outside
Where resides, pestilence and ambiguity
A maze of vacillation where names are forgotten
In this place, the harbinger of unrequited dreams dwell

He is the maker of disillusion but also a friend
He never wishes to escape; I bind him with the disingenuous power of righteousness
When he is set loose, it’s with malice and slaughter
Vulgarity is his weapon, which he uses indiscriminately

As quickly as he is summoned and let loose
He returns to his domicile, weary
I fear this demon more than death
The relationships that it has overwhelmed
Too many to mention; too few remembered

Control is never mastered where flawed reasoning endures
Society asks to cage our demons
Confine it and marginalize its power
How can I when it’s who I am?

In his youth, his father’s words
Were like a steel sledge; beating down his spirit
A malleable soul, formed in his father’s image
Forged by the fires of maleficence
Now tempered steel
A two edged sword
A weapon created by words
There can be no happy ending to this story

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

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

A transformation in the wind
Not a gentle breeze that emancipates
A lion tooth's angelic mane of seed
But a monsoon that threatens a souls complacency

The cycle of life and death that exists in all
A passion that ebbs and flows
The gust descends and reveals its riddles
From death to life another phase begins

The resilient fathom and unravel the mystery
The frail are sightless, seeing only the gluttony of their ignorance
Resist the wave of ambiguity, which seek to batter and disfigure
Death is the path to rebirth where being is eternal

A footpath that offers joy and agony
Success and failure
Hope and despair
A trail of wonders and judgments

Rejoice in the pain of lost love
Revel with delight at doom and forebode
Ours is a journey of enlightenment
With plunders worthy of life

Time is not a capricious thing
It moves in one direction
A locomotive with momentum
As tangible as air or the vacuum of space

Don’t dare to control
Or change its route
Its destination is an unknown
But its presence is felt

Childhood will defy its endless course
The old will curse its surface effects
Time is a nemesis that considers not
A harbinger of death and is unabashed

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

Have you ever considered what the world would be like,
The day after you die?
For you, it has ended
For them, it goes on

On and on
The grass continues to grow, on and on
The sun still shines, on and on
Wars rage, on and on

Minute by minute
Family and friends grieve, minute by minute
The worried parent waits up late, minute by minute
Wars rage, minute by minute

Day by day
Family and friends live their lives, day by day
Hope for peace survives, day by day
But
War still rages, day by day

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

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

A summer not easily forgotten
A romance shared but ill-conceived
Lobster red legs and arms
Scars and pain,
Etched for twenty-six years
The sound of the fog horn on Cape Neddick,
Still resonates in my hollow depths
At night on the beach,
Do you remember what I said?
With the music of the waves, our opus number one
In the blackness,
It was as if we were standing in the middle of the universe
Stars bright and within reach
We are revolving around one another

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

Her entrance, like viscous molten lava;
Has that effect
Careless words torch a path that is easy to chart;
That can affect

Approach her from the east
Straight on
But at your risk
The lioness’s heart is not always numb

Her back is always turned to the gentle wind
Away from her peril
She will not shudder to your casual cry
Her indifference

I think my heart, a fallow one
A tool of perdition and an instrument of vanity
It beats slowly as if to stop; nothing can rouse it or disrupt its cadence
Not even love

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

A crimson pool where sorrow flounders,
Conveys a truth, which never counters.
To **** a child is a messy business,
A fit of rage, a sign of weakness.

From all life’s lessons, you haven't learned?
That life is precious and time hard earned.
A wake, a funeral, a mournful day,
There’s one less child to run and play.

That fallow soul that plants a seed,
Of life’s destruction, a wicked creed.
I say to you, who dare not talk,
Time is wasting, it’s eleven o’clock.

I am but a wanderer seeking refuge
Finding shelter in the arms of one cherished
But this sanctuary lacks congruency in my heart
Now, I acquiesce to hope and conviction

We mourn the loss of a child called love
With youthful enthusiasm it was encouraged
But if one loves the child more than the other
Love grows divisible and rebellious

The pain and anguish of the vanquished,
Need not to be in vain
All feel the sting of relinquishment
Soon, a fleeting memory

The soul intuits destiny’s detours
Like a mouse in a maze, we seek a prize
Worthy of the pursuit
But are we mindful of the past costs?

The sullen June rains
Clear as the sun breaks through and
Rises like a phoenix

The deep and ominous laughter I must endure
As you seize me with paralysis and terror
I am repulsed by your advances, you succubus    
I am held captive by the feeling of dread

I rejoice in the slightest movement
Escape is possible if I choose
If I awake from this netherworld
I must usher a new truth and job

A broken man
Sees the morning light
And crafts a dream
Soothing his broken soul

A broken dream
Sees the morning light
And crafts a man
Now two with broken souls

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?

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

Her tears, suspended from one cheek
Like liquid tassels
The other, immune
And dry as the dust bowl
There are two sides to every story
Yet this one is beyond two dimensions
Her explanations have layers upon layers
Like an ambiguous onion that begs to be undressed
And once exposed to the air, its bitterness once again
Provokes her tears
I do desire to ride down the rocky path
The one that steeply descends to the shore
Where anger will put to flight
And heap upon me, understanding
And a daughter's trust

Orphaned Souls falling like coal snowflakes
An overabundance in the heavens? Perhaps
I see them strung together to form wiggle-less worms
Eyeball floaters blocking ethereal visions
They bring phantom smells of lavender and patchouli
Then vanish as if aware of my presence
It’s but a dream

Today, one more was added to the soul heap as she left the body
Another bereaved soul
Why does this force me to breach my beliefs?
Am I not content to be a slave to my own ignorance?
It requires less work and I’m tired

Enlightenment requires a mind as vulnerable as the Universe
Free to fall from grace
And the confines of the caged soul
Each door that opens presents another that is locked
I fear I lack the strength to break open these barriers
But I so desire to catch the wafting souls drifting from dream to dream

I surely know you from another life or lifetime
There is something familiar about your circuitous smile
And the off centered eyes that needlessly roam the room
We share momentary glances as subdued as a whisper
Challenging each other for a longer glimpse
What a strange feeling in a nearly empty coffee shop
Sadly I remember
I remember your face
I remember your tears
I remember your hopes and fears
But I forget your name
That summer at Long Sands when I loved tennis
And you loved salt water taffy
We were thirteen, too young our parents said
Too young for love, but maybe in another forty years they joked
I remember the smell of the salt water taffy
I smell it now as the memories waft
Her name is on the tip of my tongue

The wind, calm as light penetrates the morning canvas
Not a sound, except for my defeated heart
That reverberates through my soul
The smell of the crimson red sky; cool sweet lilac and myrrh

Warns me of a tempestuous day
A heartfelt tiding of mediocrity
The greeting of your most irreverent facade
Has driven from me, any appreciation of a summer dawn

I have not the strength to summon a thought
Or a thought
Or a thought
Or a thought

Maybe a kind word
Will lift this veil
And allow me the strength
For a thought

Why must you wait for me
To rise above this endless fog
You wear the word martyr
like a bejeweled badge
Awaiting your ticket tape parade
I would gladly hide in my labyrinth
A careful construct of limitless emptiness
Illuminated by the new moon
I stumble through and through
Hoping for a quick exit over the cliff
But as usual, I’m sure footed

There is no room for you to wait
The fog is growing ever murkier
Although destitute of happiness
I can feel its presence forever in a memory
This is one thing that can be called hope
So there; some promising words to cling to
And know that I am not hopeless

Today, I search for meaning and enlightenment
A light from afar has illuminated a path
A path lightly trodden
Trodden with hopes and fears
Fearful of what lay ahead
Ahead of what is inevitable and righteous
Righteousness is a narrow road turning right nor left
I’m left with a sense of reverence
Revered in my search for enlightenment

I am a ship floundering in a raging sea
No sign of land to ground me
Your hateful words are like barnacles,
Attached to the timber that is my soul
Although my mast is made from the strongest wood
You attempt to smash it to pieces with your severe gaze
I have not seen a clear day nor night for weeks  
There is nothing to guide me
Nor Star nor sun nor kind word
I fear that one more gluttonous wave will capsize me
I am lost at sea

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

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

It was just a game
We played at night
Just before the dream world
Spell a word on our backs

When you drew an "I"
I said, “I love you”
You said, “Good guess”
My turn

I drew an "I"
You said, “I love you”
I said, “Good guess, but no”
I have to leave

That was twenty years ago
I still remember that
It’s a game I don’t play anymore
I would never get beyond “I”

I remember looking up at the tree tops
The wind blew and lifted the great leafy branches
Up and down
As if fanning Pharaoh in his magnificent palace
I can feel the prickly heat of that day
When I was five
You told me that she would not be coming back
I think that is when I first wanted to die