Do you ever look back on your old work
And cringe?
Do you see the flowery attempts at depth
And quickly brush the pages away?
Do you feel from reading it the purpose with which you wrote it,
Or are you overwhelmed with 'how silly is sounds'?
The whole point of poetry in sound,
But if we cannot convey our intent in the framework
Do we risk falling into pop poetry?
Or is the framework a cage?
Five beat, seven, five
Accented, Unaccented
A title?
Dear God, only so many can go unnamed
Without driving us mad.

Rip out the pages?
Burn them?
Catharsis for not just a moment,
But days
Weeks
Maybe months.
But not forever.
One day, we will wonder-
Images dance in flashes through our minds
That word we hear
That smell
The way the rain falls through the leaves
Or light glints off leather book covers-
And not remember.
It will flit around our minds
Teasing, torturing
But we will never catch it
Because we will never be who we were.

The Sun is burning the wrong color
A street lamp instead of a god
Intruding light
Newspaper shreds blow down the street
A wet Silence
The empty glare clings
A fog you can't see without

Scalding the Horizon
The Sun darkens with the blood of the Sky
Day's fatality on His hands
A ruddy end
Florid in its death throes
The gray creeps over
Until fading to the black of decay

The black of the womb
The gray of the Dawn
Pale thighs stained pink with Life
The golden infant crowns
Body still tinged with blood
Heaven lifts Her child
Trying to see His face
Only to lose and birth Him again

The silence of the lambs
Pulls the shepherd from the sheep
The brightness of the Sun
Pushes owls into sleep
The song of the nightingale
Awakens the dove
A child in the city
Deprived of trees' Love