This is winter, this is night, small love --
A sort of black horsehair,
A rough, dumb country stuff
Steeled with the sheen
Of what green stars can make it to our gate.
I hold you on my arm.
It is very late.
The dull bells tongue the hour.
The mirror floats us at one candle power.

This is the fluid in which we meet each other,
This haloey radiance that seems to breathe
And lets our shadows wither
Only to blow
Them huge again, violent giants on the wall.
One match scratch makes you real.

At first the candle will not bloom at all --
It snuffs its bud
To almost nothing, to a dull blue dud.

I hold my breath until you creak to life,
Balled hedgehog,
Small and cross. The yellow knife
Grows tall. You clutch your bars.
My singing makes you roar.
I rock you like a boat
Across the Indian carpet, the cold floor,
While the brass man
Kneels, back bent, as best he can

Hefting his white pillar with the light
That keeps the sky at bay,
The sack of black! It is everywhere, tight, tight!
He is yours, the little brassy Atlas --
Poor heirloom, all you have,
At his heels a pile of five brass cannonballs,
No child, no wife.
Five *****! Five bright brass *****!
To juggle with, my love, when the sky falls.

Little voice
Angel eyes

Here today
Now I  cry

once again
twice begin

without loss
without win

Here today
Gone to hell

Absent speech
Cannot tell

Another time
Another place

Constant falling
Lose the race

Sea of time
Through the glass

No continue
nothing lasts

Endless midnight
Moonlight shine

Silent mist
Cross a line

Morning mist
Heaven calling

Emptiness
All forgotten

everyone, at one point,
has considered themselves
to be a waste of space.

but has one ever thought
this world to be the
waste of space?

all the time
spent in classrooms or
possibly even a tiny cubical
with the only person
in this whole world
who you just can't stand to be around.

all of the hours wasted
on pointless **** that could
have been used
exploring
writing
creating who you want to be.

so what are we in the end of it all?
nothing.

Come now, do what you will.
Kick me to the floor,
stomp on my head,
grind my face into the ground.
But still like dust, I’ll rise.

Tear me down with your sneering looks,
throw me to the ground with your snide remarks.
Laugh at me while I wince,
taunt me while I’m crumbled.
But still like dust, I’ll rise.

You cannot conquer me,
You cannot take all of me.
You cannot control my destiny.
Only I have that power.
For like dust, I will rise.

No matter what you do to me.
No matter what you say about me.
No matter what you try to do
to make me feel worthless.
In the end, like dust,

I. Will. Rise.

SURELY

Surely, bullets rend and wreck.
Ripping through reality,
Rendering innocence lost.
They silence playful voices,
Still small, active hands,
Before their young words or work
Can finish growing.
Words and work that might have had healing in them
For this old world.

Bullets tear through a family,
Leave them struggling to breathe.
Grief knocks the wind clean out.
Familiar words like “we” and “us”
Are fractured beyond recognition.
Little things like pajamas and backpacks,
Once common and constant,
Lie about tragically unused,
Becoming heartrending monuments to the innocent.


Surely, we can put a stop to this.
Can we find no way to shelter
These, our little ones, our future?
Those who invest such trust in us,
Who simply are where they are
Because we told them so.
Surely, we can find a way.

And whether or not we can determine or agree upon
Much about the nature
Of the flawed and lost who rain down this terror,
Can we not gather in and heal these hard broken
Before they wander to such realms of disconnect, delusion
That they cease to discern the sacredness of existence?
Surely, we can.

In such a wounded world as this,
So in need of shelter and security,
God protect the playful voices
And the small, active hands.
Watch over the innocent.
Help us.
Surely, we can do better.
Surely, we must.

I'm lost at sea
feelings flowing
Waves that cant leave
It's killing me
Your here but so far
These waves of feelings don't reach you
You are air and I am water
We can never be together
I'm sinking  
But you cant reach me
I am lost at sea