I promised you those many seasons ago
that I would not give up my vigil.
Tall and statuesque, like some ancient marble
crafted to protect the gateway to your temple,
I gaze into the distant future awaiting your coming.

My heart leaping at every trick of the eye
cracks the surface of this decrepit tomb
and fissures spread from the stone core;
remnants of my soul seep into the chill winter air.

In impatient agony I writhe and shake.
My efforts, seemingly futile at first,
soon send slivers of shale plummeting to the earth below.
There they rest dissipating to dust; a symbol of what is to be.

Wailing like a man in a madhouse;
my screams find no sympathy.
The voice that once sounded for you,
triumphant in return, gives way to ache.

Where is my lord now?
Why will he not witness my dying spirit?

Catty, that’s what they call me
“Meow” nah that’s not right.
“Rawr” almost there,
gotta’ be king of my pride.
“Roar!” that’s better, catty…
Yea I can live with that.

Yes; it fits so seamlessly in my mouth,
like an old winter coat, it has contoured to its self
to every intricate curve and crater.

I feel it grinding each tooth to near decay.
I can taste it on every bud; bitter and sweet at once.
It is friendlier to my lips then any lover of recall.

Am I going to get out of bed today? Will I go to work?
Will i eat? Will I ever talk to YOU again?
Will l live once more? Will I fight this oppression?

Yes, a thousand times yes,
because that is who I am;
I am a yes man!

Blip, blip, blip… It taunts me,
blip, blip, blip… appearing, disappearing.
That little bar, right where my last words left off.
Like a schoolyard bully he mocks me.

I cook, I clean, I pace, I surf, I do everything,
but still he taunts me. Blip, blip, blip…
Like a mad man I prattle on to thin Air,
I ask her, what would you write?
As always I get the silent treatment.

I scream in my own head, “oh words where are you!”
Torch in hand I search the pitch black catacombs;
still I find only a void air won’t inhabit.

I walk down the street to the city creek
and flip each stone; looking for syllables.
Like crawdads they swiftly scurry, side swimming
my hands as I vainly grasp at clumps of mud and water.
I make my way from the creek back down the long road.

By the time I’m home autumn has come,
each tree’s leaves wear a different color;
red for imagery, brown for alliteration,
orange for allegory, purple for metaphor.

Like a letter lost in the mail
Air’s answer finally arrives.
The leaves fall all around me!
With god like haste I rake them up
and swim in a pile vast as the ocean.

Let’s see you blip now!!!

I start with my fingers,
then my toes;
carefully tabulating each mistake.
Soon I move to my eye lashes;
plucking them out one by one.

Each hair on my body must go too.
Laying them down I organize them,
friends I hurt in one pile,
enemies I made in another.
The head hair reeks of vanity!
Things I did wrong is the most vast,
taking up half my desk alone.

This leaves only the floor
on which to place my *****.
There go the girls I once loved.


Bit by bit I fall apart.
Attempting to shed every mistake
I remove my skin and of course,
because it rhymes,
I lose my sin.

Next my muscles must go;
never used them anyhow.
The fat slides off with it.
As a chill sets in I think of
all the meals and gluttony I’ll miss.

I take them all to curb hastily
hoping beat the morning man.
He’s always so sneaky, thus I watch to be sure.
There he is and there they go.

Little more than bone and brain
I sit and contemplate.
It’s all gone now; the whole of my past.
“Free at last, free at last!”
Or so I thought…

I lost myself with my mistakes.
Without anything to correct
I’ve become all wrong…