Are you obligated
To retain
The verses you write,
Or do you systematically
Release
What no longer can survive
Unnamed,
As they mark the trail
Of their exit
With letters penned in
Judgment
That you no longer own,
Memory forming
An ancient speech pattern
Waiting silent and distant
For new words to create
An even newer anonymity
  —where truth may be found

(Villanova Pennsylvania: December, 2014)

I hide in the shadow
  of another’s fear
  so the voice may go away

And then left
  inside an orphan’s silence
  to recount every wordless day

To walk a path
  that another breaks
  under a dark forbidden sky

Crying those tears
  by another made
    —my pen bereft and dry

(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2015)

Refortifying myself…
I expected less and less
From you
My inner world unfolding
All window dressing cast aside
My spirit entrusted to
Those moments still to come
The truth now able to settle
And learn
My secret voice conscious of
What my curiosity and reflection
   —have yet to see

(Villanova Pennsylvania: September, 2016)

Another day with a voice
  —one more glimpse into forever

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

Another day with a voice
—one more glimpse into forever

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

Do you play inside the Corn Flakes,
  or are corn stalks more you game

Is that Hersey Bar the answer,
  or the cocoa or *******

Do you clerk for someone’s feelings,
  inspiration all be ******,

Your legacy an afterthought,
—of another’s contraband

(Grantham New Hampshire: February, 2017)

The string is broken,
  the past is lost

A road forgotten
  late winter’s frost

Memory clearing
  new thoughts to spin

All distance thawing
  —another Spring

(Court At K.O.P: February, 2016)

The string is broken,
  the past is lost

A road forgotten
—fresh winter’s frost

All memory erases,
new thoughts to spin

The distance thawing
—another Spring

(Court At KOP: February, 2016)

Delay success for as long
As you can
Living up to an image
Will only cloud your vision
Stealing what you can least
Afford to lose
Dragging you into the illusion
And myth
You have spent a lifetime
Railing against
Dragging you into the
Vicarious trap
Of another’s false and wasted
Dream

(Villanova Pennsylvania: September, 2016)

Walking around a
Mythical town
That doesn’t exist
Looking for what
I would never find
I trod those same streets
That I had been down
In my dreams before
The sky barren
Except for the sound
Of the exodus
Of wings
Hovering over people
All moving away
The backs of their heads
The only thing visible
As they marched off
Into the dark
With faces and eyes
Mortgaged…

    To pay for all the things
        that they would never do

    In debt to one last promise
        they will never keep

    The terms of their indecision
        written in the blood of repetition

     The movement of the hawk
         —another’s wind to blow

  (Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2015)

Walking around a
Mythical town
That doesn’t exist
Looking for what
I would never find
I trod those same streets
That I had been down
In my dreams before
The sky barren
Except for the sound
Of the exodus
Of wings
Hovering over people
All moving away
The backs of their heads
The only thing visible
As they marched off
Into the dark
With faces and eyes
Mortgaged….

    To pay for all the things
        that they would never do

    In debt to one last promise
        they will never keep

    The terms of their indecision
        written in the blood of repetition

     The movement of the hawk
        —another’s wind to blow

  (Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2015)

Your head’s in the sand,
  the canary at hand

The coward inside you,
  his kingdom commands

Mired in apathy,
  lost in denial

One last Armageddon
  —the price of your wile

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

Your head’s in the sand
  the canary at hand

The beggar inside you
  his kingdom commands

Mired in apathy
  lost in denial

One last Armageddon
  —the price of your wile

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

March
  brought me closer
  to the spoken word

March
  created thunder
  never before heard

March
  left forever its stamp
  and imprint

March
  so predacious
  April bleeding
     —in red ink

(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2015)

Are you the hero of your own
  dime novel

Are you the toy at the bottom
  of the ******* jacks box

Are you the name on the wall
  of the public bathroom

Are you the saline solution
  they use to detox

Are you that groove in the record
  that repeats over again

Are you a promise forgotten
  carried off by a friend

Are you a serial spectator
  whose ticket’s not punched

Are you a banquet disaster
  in search of your lunch

Is your mirrored reflection
  left empty and cold

Is the one option left you
  —forlorn but foretold

(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2018)

The soul is not
  by nature born

Or by the earth
  breastfed

It kneels before
  loves distant star

Whose light
  —its promise wed

(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2019)

Science…
  a handmaiden of knowledge

The upstairs maid
  in a mansion of discovery

Chauffeuring itself
  along roads it has built

A quantitative valet
  —in the closet of the unknown

(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2019)

Is randomness designed,
  can the dice roll more defined

Is entropy a map,
  less complex as time adapts

Can ignorance be renamed,
  as a home for knowledge gained

Can the circle then be squared
  —arcs and angles still to share

(Bryn Mawr Pennsylvania: May, 2019)