Solitude I wear
      like a second skin
my biggest weakness
       my greatest strength
   wading through 
quiet and tired 
    in seclusion
 as dawn draws
    her arms around me 
cold       and damp
    like the sea
           with no oil
for my lamp
       to light my way
through another
      dark    and lonely
November day.

I wish we would write more.
Physical letters, I mean,
To show who we care for,
Instead of expressing ourselves by machine.
Because there's something about
Ink on a page,
And painstakingly writing it out
But... that's so rare in this age.

Are we truly connected
If you only ever tell me through text?
I suppose it's expected
but it leaves me perplexed
How can it be true?
If it's just pixels on a screen
Words with no value,
On the face of a machine.

Don't you detest
Our online obsession,
Conversations compressed
And a loss of connection

Here they come now!

Giggling up the sidewalk
On their way to my front door!

Masses of costumed gremlins
Tumbling, Pushing, Squirming, screaming bundles of fun.

On their way to my front door.

Sticky faces, Painted faces, Horrid Hairy masks that hide happy faces,
Upturned faces

Grinning ear to ear in anticipation of some goody
Tossed into each sack

On their way to my front door!

Some nights
the moon throws its light
like an old man
who can't hold his liquor in
and spits blood in the morning

Someone ought to kick some sense
into me, if they did I'd hum
like the body of a fiddle

I propose we all strip down
and take a swim with my friends
the dragonflies, but no one will listen
to what I have to say when I throw my voice
like an empty bottle deep in the forest

When I think of all the dark
and swift things of my rivers,
I wonder why time the old boot -
legger hides his maps and goes
on traveling the low roads

Alone I can tell you there is so much
beside the point of the thorn of the rose
and why the moon is with me always
whenever i choose to go it alone

I drink from that blue jar of time
and breathe the breath of sweet infants

Believe you me the dead shepherd
we sent up the river in a faraway land
in a time so long ago still holds us
all by the holes in his hands

You can see the dark clouds up ahead,
my cloisters I am always walking through them
with you children of the lost dreams,
and with you fifty-something snow-headed men

We have just collided with our lost sons
on the high road of morning, we are rising
dust like the dirt on our children's graves
saying nothing to our brothers the stones.

I was never the type
of child that obeyed
much  of anything;
not even the many
times  I was told
not to stare into
the evening sun
when I felt
alone.

Poets are..
Forgetful. But they remember everything. They forget appointments,and what time dinner is.But they remember what you wore,and how you smelled…
On that first date.
They remember every story you've ever told them- like ever. But forget what you just said.
They don't remember to water the plants,or to take out the trash. But they don't forget how to make you laugh.
Poets are forgetful.
Because...they are busy remembering the important things. Like how to love someone with all their heart.

Randy McPeek