Picking the patterns in frost-bitten lanterns
Where the light leans to bide each lost-souled phantom
Does the naked eye see
the illuminated rings of Saturn?
Slipping past airplanes, you're fodder-ridden, head-down
Where the sound of darkness echoes like bitter, angry bantam
Does each ice-cold stone of Saturn
deserve to be in its ring?
This is when you find your wing, half-broken, in a sling
Hairline fracture, ****, that stings
This is when you ask yourself, "What does this mean?"
     End.

Searching on the fire escape
Desert sands
Rooibos flake
Standing on the dune of fate
Raga bands
Oasis lake
Rolling red the wind to shape
Palm leaf fans
Wise-eyed snake
Quenching cactus, satiate
Unknown lands
Hot breaths to take

Softly spoken, send me surges of
Electric energies to emit endless echoes
Silently stirring so to sing, it urges
Encapsulating that so elemental
Superseding the strife with serene sayings
Ending the edges of errant easels
Saving the straying to stay in stance
Embrace to emanate an eternal enigma

A peddler strolls by and opens his jacket so
Fringed and de-hemmed by years of practice
Each pocket a carrier for emotions held captive
Yet the rise in his voice shows a seller proactive
His face reflected the age of sweet old
To pick and choose, each product seems bold
A timepiece to shimmer with lost-alloy gold
Or perhaps a locket with photographs sold
"To hope is to dream; do not fear or capitulate"
He states so methodically yet his words calmly resonate
"All my items are free, but to you, they are fate,"
To finally feel that they one day will sate

Train tracks lead to predetermined places
Different directions, different faces
Exist to the right, exit left
Fluttering in one's peripheral, leaving traces
Daylight passed, nights so moonlight bereft
Of cloud cover to be cloven, the unconcerned brace
In the sky above what is known as home
Wherefore, each break shepherds individuals
As still as a garden gnome
Stoic as a preserved throne
Phlegmatic as a slowly melting icicle
In a cave that no one knows about
Exist to the right, life is what is left
Learning and yearning for that so disconcerting
Yet the biggest and most impactful
Inspiration
To live, not only to exist

The wonders of the world
Fringing train track paths

Cities of concrete gold
Buses with lingering laughs

Conductors wave to asphalt old
Birds flutter in stone-cold baths

Colors become slightly more bold
As windows sweep the street light past

river poets meandering
through stacks of golden hay
water rolling over jagged rocks
as night turns to day
pen to paper, written later
reeks of means to hesitate
ocean writers flicking lighters
humming through to meditate
when your chest is getting tighter
smoke through cigarette haze

Like a lion's roar
Like a bird that soars
Like an antique store

You are so much more

Like cityscape skylines
Like a lake with ice so fine
Like a bench to outrun time

You somehow plague my mind

But I don't care for the cure

Here we are again
Humming songs
That we don’t understand
Everything in the world
In the universe
In the palms of our hands
Technologically advanced
Hop-skip-happy-dance
An industrial trance
To have seen the land
The world
The universe
Before our haphazardly
Set up idiosyncrasies
When the earth had nothing
But herself to please
What was it like?

Sometimes, it's best to be still
Quiet like the remorse of an impulsive statement
Quiet as your dreams, daydreams
To be still, like life
Quiet like the silence of mental strife
Your own mind, to feel once again
It's not tangible like the heaviness of a room
Filled with grief
What you've been told versus what you think
Sometimes isn't even comparable
Whispers of enlightenment dance around your feet
The difference between what you've been told
And what you think

The journey of opening minds to dreams
Watching life hallowed by superficial means
Instead, peace is to follow gentle streams
Harking sounds so delicate, as moonlight beams
Strive not to conduct life with expectations, as if it were a train
Following a path so perfectly laid
Using an umbrella instead of trusting the rain
Using natural existence as reason for bane
Do not fear the storms, as they have existed for far longer than we
Revere instead the intensity and power we see
The serenity of tree-form tranquility
Sometimes, the luster of nature brings one to their knees

Ice blue, fluorite lights
Brisk and windy Autumn nights
Trees silhouetted against beautiful sights
Lights reaching fantastic UFO heights
A shiver away from icicle, frozen
Buoys float on water in space wide open
Life letting leave on those things broken
Water lapping shores like lava molten
Whispers in rocks surrounding each path
Knowing tales of days-passed and aftermath
A spindly tree feathered with its repeated bath
Moonlight washing away all that's wrath
Not trading here for a million or two gold
You could offer a mansion with no sign of sold
Each passing boat of enlivening cold
Remembers stories of today that were never told

A catamaran whooshes past
Epilogued by the propeller with which it steers
Marking each and every ripple
Without hesitation, without fear
I'll take the next wave

Drowning out through seeping acrylic
Unconventional canvas on a rickety easel
Not even possessing the power to paint
The broken wing of a broken swan
Despite her weakened frailty
She paints
Using her beak, using her feet
The swan finds it consoling to know
That the littlest, infinitesimal purposes
Are purposes
None the same

Walk, the coals beneath my feet
Searing at my skin
Why is this pain not felt?
Thick skin? Loss of nerves?
A blast through the wall of reality
Draws unto the leering smile
I'm grinning as I'm pulled under
My body is on fire
Why is this pain not felt?
Thick skin?

The Yorkshire Rose, elegantly perched on the bridge
This was not London, or the palace
nor Manchester, where Mancurians are free
nor Blackpool, where the beach swallows
Glasses, towels, mussels clinging to rocks
The Yorkshire rose, drawn upon the bridge
Bullet trains, leading distances
Almost unfathomable in this very spot
Harrogate, bath water
Spilling onto the street in natural sulphuric geysers
Burning
The Yorkshire Rose, fleeting in memory
In ghosts of the abbey nearby

I have been witness to many things
You must fear not what cold winter brings
You are young, but the reason this bird sings
To you, sapling, this bird clings
Let go of your evergreen hesitations
Your leaves will fall in wondrous presentations
Followed by gazes of beautiful validation
Your stems a sign of majestic acclimatization
While your trunk grows larger and far more in tune
Your leaves will broaden to as large as the moon
To each passing insect and all birds here soon
Your pits to catch water as a natural spoon
You see, young sapling, you are a delight
Do not see winter as a source for fright
Each tree in this forest has seen the same plight
But all have continued their journey for light

November's crisp wind
Yielding the long ignored lust
For wonder, wanderlust
Be it transparent; paths no longer followed
The earth revered
Pivoting
An axis of existence
Absent of life; who, therefore
Capitulates to bitter blue?
A lack of dreaming
A lake of practicality
Energy; thoughts unraveling at the seams
When crystal is clear, as they are forming
Paths; a hasty consternation for life
To be pursued
Lived - not to only exist
And to lust, as November air brings this forth
Wander - a path to wonder

Through the wandering spectrum
Of cerulean dragonfly eyes
You fly without hesitation
Observing the vast and marvelous world
As if it were your own
As if it were your cut-out template,
With an admirable sense of wonder
And the fervent desire
Not only to know
But to contemplate
The luminescence of a fluttering firefly
How the brittle mechanisms of life
Apply
Through crystal-clear dragonfly wings
You carry your mind

Her thoughts so weary and bitter tasting
Forevermore to feel tired and wasted
Aging dreams and makeup nights
Feet so high she hits the lights
Falling for the guile of each street salesman
He opens his jacket; "Each is a haven,"
Claims of lightposts, illumination of the dark
She's falling asleep on a bench in the park
Urbanization of hardy measures
Have tempted her to indulgent pleasures
Whiskey whiffs of fallen kings
Street lights showing off the obscene
The days are gone of lasting serendipity
She's misplaced in what was once her own city

Balancing willows on the tip of the earth
The ground below eagerly catching their tears
Their dilapidated easel is poorly shaken
But they have not given into such inconceivable fears
A thinking man's dream of peace forsaken
Only to build in one hundred drawn-out years
The simplicity of man has thus been taken
As the willow weeps for that so cavalier
Where the grease of industrialization so nonchalantly flows
The willow in his beautiful stability knows
That when man's irreverent complexity grows
His drooping leaves to wilt like a rose

This is what I imagine it feels like
To be a tree, blossoming in Spring
Watching its fruits and flowers
Become vitality
This is what I imagine you feel like
To be an azure river, arduous journeys
Until you reach your delta, knowing soon
You will become, once again, part of your ocean
This is what I imagine it's like
To be the cloud, billowing as it gets darker
Knowing soon, it will be a part of its earth again
Natural cyclic routines
Bring more beauty than we can dream

Words carve feathered, crude,
Beautiful walkways
For each witty and farcical bon mot
Spoken as though your mind turned
For each cleansing reflection
Gazing through the pristine waters
For each sparkling moment
Of escaping what is the most sought-after mundanity
Words are windows
Fitting perfectly into the frames for which they were designed
Yet possessing the capability to open
To the ever-whooshing excitement
If words are an inspiration
Why am I left speechless