Standing accused
Only seven winters to my name
Moused by my fathers presence.
The very fear of it
Pressing the notion of gallows
Into the wooden casing
of our Iowa doorworks.

Challenging the gateway,
The neighborhood
John wayne gacey
Barely hiding his knives
Behind bruise cloaked eyes.
His corner man?
The no **** taking mother?

There were words
Little parental valkyrie fighting
In the air, encircling my head
With clashing shield and spear.
And finally the question.

Why did you do it?

All stared at the tiny
Self proclaimed savior of worms, snakes, and birds.

You see,

Bill was attempting to make an end.
The end of yet another small life.
And so when seeing bill peddling
Toward the beginnings of a robin
Upon surely what was that robins ending.
Seven winters brave flew across
The grand expanse of 7th st
Slamming into the animal antichrist,
Scooping up that prey,
And retreating to the stanktity*
That was our garage.

While that poured from my mind,
Like a voiceless demigod
Left to statue in the garden
Of inexperience.

Only this escaped,
A horse and cracked,
Solid stab at the truth.
"Because my heart told me to"
Behind the then untamed fiery youth
In my fathers eyes, the fury...
Was the golden pride
Only found
Singular ever
In that one
place.

Knowing
Intimately
Just how much
I can live without
And still feel
whole

We are connected You and I
like silver thread spanning memories.
Time wafts across those razor paths
In spiral waves of spiders planning.
With mundane approach we collide and stride
The ways of countless others.
Some we fix, and some go broke,
knocked about by alley cat whims.

Sometimes,
to open ones heart
we must first close our eyes.
Finally, we just might see
that our lives were never really about
the mirror, the pocket, the haircut, or the scales
but the starry breath that's given outwards
subtly illuminating the forgotten spaces
between the marks on the rule of life.
Counted simply in smiles, lost and lonely.
And who should stumble upon this
wisdom so battered and worn?
So old that the language it was first written in
has almost evaporated wholly,
bathed in the fires of what we have become.
Only the humble, the found,
the owl minded fool may tell.

There is a person that I once knew.
Like a masterpiece in a museum
She hung on the walls of a good mans heart.

But back behind
The steady red velvet ropes,
there was not the proper light,
And her smile became shadowed and blurred.

The curator noticed the change
and in an effort to free her
Started washing her canvas with spirits,
a bottle shaped like escape.

It started changing her hue
And it freightened me
I knew she would not be here much longer
And that freightened me more.

I knew I would miss the
Endless eon skies
When her eyes met mine.
But she had to go and
I was left Gemini of heart

I still remember to this day
The soaring cobalt towers,
The little soul echos,
The stardust whisps that wished
Someone could comprehend
The poems
in her endless eon skies.

I watched the moments of silver haired lifers.
In a garden of forgotten
and overgrown things.

I could not help but notice the rust of it,
the splinters of it
how thirsty it all was.
Like an old coat of paint
on an old field plow

He would bring her a queen's many flowers
in a wheelbarrow sarcastically too small
stopping and going like Morse code words
always looking three steps away
from 5 O'Clock lemonade
and a porch swing pipe.

But not that stubborn barrow.

It moved with him, supporting that beauty.
A brave thing, a tested thing, a balanced thing.

Through the days they slowly wore
a rut through that garden.
An arching scar left by an underfed tire
All for the smiles of passersby
and the twinkle in an old mothers eyes.

I felt the words on the wind just then
"I hope to find love like theirs one day"
I whispered back
"I hope to find love like that wheelbarrow"
...
one day.

It was a graveyard and overcast sky
and I sat with book and accordian in hand,
hearing the world with its screams
swallow up around me.
The people whom I had loved and lost,
Papa with his silver eyes
Mama her sharp tongue and tough love
Rudy whose hair the colour of lemons
and questioned why, the living and dead,
worlds apart, yet both did not have a choice.
I stood and screamed so that everything shook
the burning rubble and ash and dust
willing my words to bring it all back
but it did not come, and my breath rose in gasps.
Death had looked me in the eye and said,
“It’s not time yet.”
I would shut my eyes to the world
only decades later.
I will understand that there was hate and pain
there was sadness
but even more so, there was love and joy.
I will know that the people I loved had reason
to kiss goodbye
whether it was their own hurt
or saw it as a necessity,
but they were never truly gone from me
always somewhere nearby,
in the thick and thin
frail and worn
of times.
I would learn
to forgive Death that day.
I will understand that
and I will be hurt,
but I will be okay.

~

Not all deaths are sad.
Some, meant to ease their own pain,
Are called freedom.
While some,
Meant to ease the pain of others,
Are called love.

© BT