To exhale
Compresses the chest
And in its place
Some chilblains,
Disgust for its being,
An annihilation
A ferocious hunger for itself,
Like the ouroboros
In every breath
Tempted by a life
For the moment gone.
To inhale
Invites it back,
A dispassionate process, no less.
The life thus stolen away
Impotent to the next breath
That I must exhale.
On this breath there comes a fear
A longing or
The urge
To lift my hands to my throat
And keep the life in my lungs
To quit exhaling
And never feel that way again.

An icy January
And the birds have gone.
One used to sit on a branch
And sing my mornings in.
I miss him
Like I miss my smile,
Four years, their absence
And this January has gone on a while.
Shredded flocks
By a shredding breeze
Have moved him, the bird
To places where he’s better suited.
I still need him
I want him here,
His wings cut swathes from the high grey clouds
And pluck me from
The icy January
Down here, resting in a hole in the ground.
I want to fly with him, the bird
I want to be taken from here
Every fleeing bird is an encroaching fear
That this January with become February
And perhaps another year.
If not some escape,
Then I hope he lands outside my window
And sings my mornings in
For I miss him
Like I miss my smile,
Five years, his absence
Wondering where he’s been
And when
And if
He’ll ever come again.

We’re all friends
By miracle, so soon
Comrades by the break of dawn
And strangers by noon,
As sure as the seasons
And predictable like rain
You can watch it with certainty
As a waxing moon wanes.
And when they’re gone
Entreaties refused to deign
--Like you’re an ugly growth
Or some fungal pain—
Then acknowledge a scale tipped
And gifts, given and got
The fair trade or
Reciprocation that it is not.
And how sad, and self-prophesied
The nature of ‘friend’
It teaches us that what begins
Is surely bound to end.

A crack up the wall
And the house is broken
A cloud in the sky
And the world is grey
And my faults are many
Even if they’re bridged
Even if they’re far gone
Cracks don’t go away.
Maybe all the bad things
We millennials possess
Is a gritty reminder
Of what’s in the rest.
The human condition can’t be that strong
Perhaps Gen. Y,
Just got it all wrong,
And we’re not new victims
In this generational war
We just bear darker versions
Of our parents’ sores.
But we’re young and stupid
We just don’t get it
It’s suppression versus reality
And we’re getting all the ****.
If we were laid brick
In a nice, big wall
The bricks, true, before us
Made us nice and tall
But when we look down
We only see cracks
Big cracks in the wall.

Hills ablaze
In the western sky
Smoke, it coils
Through the atmosphere
Leaving the eastern half
Charred and black
Of what the twilight could not sear.
It burns with ardor,
That western hill
The trees are tongues
And burning still
With kindling sun
Departing there.
The western coals
Can only stare
Coming hence, a blackenedness
Whose colors echo
Back and forth
From ebon South
To eerie North
There it seeks
To call it: “mine”
From black to purple
Blue—yellow
From there an angry Clementine
For sunk beneath
The faint embers
Did go indignance of the red.
The last to go
A calming blue
It leaves so peaceful
A daylight dead.

The question is
Where to begin?
Why, with honest heart
And boldly sin!
And sin I must
Against myself
Pinning the inkwell
A bespoken purpose
--The poetic confession
Since speech commands silence
And advances regression.
My courage it falters
And guts turn all queer
Neither could reckon
With our distances near
And confessing this outright
Is just plain absurd,
I hope I have made
My cowardice clear.
True, this is petty
And prideful at best
Poem’s the proper vehicle lest
My weakness runs wild
As ornery thoughts
And binds up my tongue
And stomach in knots.
But onward! I bore you!
My pen spitting gibb'rish
Thinking sense and writing none  
I’m too far to turn back
And the day is yet won!
But can I be blamed
For nerves all on end
When the single string in every thought
Goes day’s beginning to its end
And all around and back again?
This whole semester
I’ve felt a fool
Beside this mind of eloquence
Of enervating sensation
Like, I, a simple candle
And auroras’ collocation
On the clearest luminescent night
With incensing breeze blown left and right,
Coupled with creative flair
And womanly chic, short, brown hair
I’m distracted, diverted stupidly
A boy's been made
Of the man in me.
I’m a mustard seed among
Religious men,
And profanation blossoms
Brought to transcendent, if divine heights
My words reaching an Elysian place
Touching new Heavens
With (excuse the pun) Grace.
Please don’t hold daft obligation
That you must reciprocate
The sentiments, here, laid before you
And mushiness innate
But the purpose is here
Not to woo
Nay, to salve this tiny,
Yet consumptive flu
So for stoic, normal me
This is something radically new.
So excuse the upheaval
And heavily borne load
It’s just perseverance
Through pessimistic mode,
I know this is weighty
And clichéd and trite
But I've been made weary
(And that’s creepy a mite)
Through countless embattled days
And resultant restless nights
With no intention to do so.
I hope this has struck you
Not perturbed or amused
Because right now I’m trembling
Sclerotic and bruised
And will follow, oh follow
This to its end;
To see this message
Read in your hands.
But until then, condemned
To sleep sad and wake gaily
To think only one thought
And think that thought daily
And thought is of you
Of you,
–.

A flurry descends
Upon this town
Like a snow globe
Shaken up and down.
Given time
It does settle
Disappearing on
Glass and metal.
And when it stops
Then starts again
Squalls abreast
All down the glen
The clouds will tumble
And grey the dome
--Above the sky
--Above this home,
The winds, they sway
The wire of phones
The sun that shines
Once was not shone
While snow once more
Flung to the air
Where it lingers and tarries there
Then to rest on house and stone
To claim the earth that was its own
My fingers retract from the window pane
To watch it start
Then stop again.