How can a season cycle in such juxtaposition? The feelings of grandeur sputter to an end, summer closes. The promise of beloved holidays sparks the last bit of life to flame. Huddling into coat collars and gloved pockets we challenge the winds to bite back. Orchards, hay bales, ghosts and goblins. I see my benevolent grandfather raking and re-raking mountains of dry leaves as my brother and I delight in the destruction -I miss him. The days become shorter, we draw closer, closer to someone. I recall so strongly a song by the Get Up Kids that takes me back to the days of trick or treat and homecoming queens. That was lifetimes ago. I’ve broken and healed so many times my heart must look like scar tissue. Jaded.  We use to say, “as long as there’s Christmas”. I think this year I’ll ask St. Nick to skip my house. This fireplace has been sealed with hard red brick and wet mortar. None of that matters, really. She needs me, needs me to be strong, to catch her, as if I am the one to fix it. I don’t know how-I never have. I’ve done this all before. This time, I  wish you’d catch me.

A  lead glass sieve. I can’t put my heart into a poem. Emptiness is not an emotion.

Standing alone in the shadow of the house, I wait while he plays, remembering to breath.

The air tonight smells with the bitter sweetness of decaying earth…warm.  Pensive wetness clings to the curling vapors, on the coat tails of rogue angels, drifting out into a darkness that beckons lost souls. Threadbare branches cut a deep shadow against a color-drained sky.

If I make it over that vine covered fence I could go on forever. Says the scarecrow, “go back to where you came from”.  And I’ll keep walking. Faded pieces of me dropping like stale breadcrumbs among the rotting apples.  If the Earth is round, I’ll follow the path you’ve laid, in cracked ruby slippers, down the verdigris brick road. Walk, until I’ve walked back to you.

All living creatures die alone. I don’t want to die alone.

Night One- 2:17 a.m

Night Two- 4:58 a.m

Night Three- 1:03 a.m

To sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream. Yes- there IS the rub. My anesthesia plays a foul trick….. an illusion of sleep-slipping, in and out of lucid nightmares. Trapped and tangled between cold and crumbling sheets-reaching, grasping like a blind man spun about in  dizzy circles. Banging on sealed doors- silent screams won’t help me now. Every time a child says, ‘I don’t believe in fairies,’ there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.  I do not dream of fairies, Peter. They’ve left me here with no way out.

Drink Me- black coffee, one sugar, from a styrofoam cup on any given Monday.

through the looking glass

a sunrise over a world upside-down, oceans apart. Shovel to fill a hole as the sun sets on a place called home.