Wind, you, this oak grandfather clock;
That clicked and knocked in Nature’s wind;
That grew and leafed and once housed things
More and less than clockwork. I grew
Once in the sweet season scents,
Ignorant of axe-men and axe-wounds,
Who, sent on their rounds sent
Me to be wound. Slung to the
Round, conforming blade
That confined me to box. And yet
This age would be young were I but
Livelier wood. Hands
I may have, but my rings are now lost,
And my boughs and roots, once strong to climb,
And my new-leaf shoots, gone now for chimes
(Do they comfort your nights, my new-life screams?)
That are of a gold less precious than green.

My youth was the joy of wind’s breath on my branches –
Before your deep breaths in the chore of your winding.
Now we have purpose, but once I had meaning –
In whispering and twisting and creaking and leaning.

the streetlamps dim
to push sleep past the sidewalk
up through windows
into bedrooms,
like an ether
with a deep breath that never exhales

collapsing with the smog and the traffic
until asphalt footsteps are as loud
as the ringing in your ears

and four o'clock comes
from endless birdsongs
courting darkness
as if it were
light.

Flashlights flicker a thousand miles away.
Old men, wrinkled and sagging,
like memories, they fade.
Drop by drop they slip away.
Into the ether.

Clouds. Fog. Haze.

In dreams so clear, what alert dissipates.
The candle still burns down to bleeding wick
(On both ends, as ever it was.)
As voices cry out,
Soft as age or over ripe fruit.

But here, by now, and there, in the end, it all melts into one.
Time catches up.
Speed was never to blame.
(Though we all thought we could out run it.)

The bile bubbles venom.
Rage turns an ugly shade of green.

All the while, as it'll ever be;

A thousand miles away, children play.

darkness overtakes me
beating me down
until I am numb
feeling at peace with the silence of my emotions
i’ve just grown too tired to care
my thoughts stopped putting up a fight
realizing the battle is over
we both have lost

I am lost and falling
Crawling, a shadow
Sliding oil slick against the wall
defined
By another man’s
rising/waking/dying
sun.
Not knowing how I feel
About growing old alone.
Alone is where I started
And alone is where it ends.
Not sure if I like
The way
My heart keeps beating
To a different drum.
Always the unsure
Forever unknowing
On my knee’s
And going going going
Down then gone
A day will come
A time will turn
And fallen I won’t rise again.