I sit in the winter air
On the worn metal park bench
Where we watched the wind blow the last leaves across the grass
But there's no life now nestled amongst the pack of lonely trees
Like hunger driven carnivores they huddle
A dying breed

I sit in the winter air
A long sleeve shirt and my black athletic shorts
You always hated how I dressed.
I could be another runner, but I sit and feel my legs and back slowly go numb where the metal hugs my skin
The bench is always cold,
Few rays of sun break through the tree limbs

I sit in the winter air
Could I move, stand up, walk?
But I came to be cold, to shiver and breathe deep the poison that stings my lungs
I came to forget warmth and soft smiles
The heat of another so close that it is as if we are one body
Until then, wrap me in the arms of the frozen

I sleep with the window open
The air, now chilled with autumn, rushes in to sap away my resolve
Waking me from troubled sleep
Covered with only the thin blue cotton sheet from my college days
Comforting, though it’s hard to gauge when last the warmth of another supplanted the foothill of blankets amassed beside me
The loneliness of night:
When only cars pass below
Sounding like freight trains as they clamor over the slab of steel prostrate on the ground
Protecting the suspensions from the pockmarked face of asphalt
Each a brutish chime filling my apartment
The stark vulgarity lashing out
A garbled cry, anguished and dejected
Dragging from my subconscious
Memories of a different time
Now free
Jostling for position and attention, as though I am the jester king
Holding ghostly court
Clad in the stark regalia of bitterness years in the making
Pour me a glass of that vintage and to what shall we all toast?

I am the generation of the now
One liners and snippets of motivational text
The rocket fuel to propel minds into the unknown
With direction serving as an irrelevant afterthought;
Charge full on into the unknown with passion and guns blazing
The formula of operations:
Speak loudly and carry a big stick
=
Scream over and bludgeon opposing views.
Flash and pizzazz the filling substitutes for longevity and wisdom
Trumpet yourself and everyone will take notice
--a catchy jingle and an outrageous stunt
What can be better than being a ***** to advertising?
I want the world, I want it now
Better yet make it yesterday, last week, last year
Nothing will satisfy but everything with a little more on top.
Generation flash has the answers
Printed on neon t-shirts selling for twenty five bucks
Did you get yours yet?

It's quiet in the afternoons now
The stifled laughter from the other side of the wall
Has died down as the morning shift
Worn from the day,
Has resorted to finalising any lingering task,
Or, more likely, staring blankly at a computer screen counting away life
Before joining the funnel out the revolving door.
This was the time when if things weren't busy
(And face it, things never are THAT busy)
I would walk across the hall to have a quick conversation
Usually about nothing in particular
As we both pretended to not know the pretense
And little jokes took on life
To pass the time before 5:15.
But now the hallway is untraveled
The empty desk tomb
Where before secret laughter was born
Only serves as a lingering reminder,
A jagged edge fang
Embedding deep into my mind
Tearing out memories with intentioned pain
Each time I cast my gaze
And see the ghost of you.

What has really changed from every yesterday
With a paper and a title
Suddenly an opinion becomes “expert”
Every word equated to truth
Hours and days and years culminating
Unto a single moment--
But how different from the moments before
When I awakening into the blackness of dawn
Staring out into the depths
And left to wonder if dawn knows it is fleeting

Is any day unlike its’ brother
Does one snapshot of time factor so deeply  
Such that what once was, now refined
Emerges from crucible a new creation?
And I, another actor
A character awaiting the cue to enter stage right
With bright lights shining down
Blurring out the faces of a nameless congregation
Yet buried within the blindness of the flame
The future of another sits within the shadows
Unknowingly relaxed, simply biding time
Waiting for a treatment, a cure, a friend?
And we the equipped
Wade forward,
Cautious of the future, true to past;
Living the present.

theres a penny on the ground
face down so I cant read the date
but it has been outside my apartment door
for a week and no one has picked it up
and put it in a pocket
to sit and fall out again in the washer
or dryer.
give a penny. take a penny. maybe that’s where it belongs
a tiny cup sitting in some dreary 7/11
but there is always a ****** nickel in those jars.
Outcast.
who needs a penny
chances are if your short the cashier will spot you
so why bend over and pick it up
a quarter sure, a dime maybe, a nickel…
but nobody, nobody gives a toss about a penny.
at least its shiny
until it rains and I have mud on my shoes
then it’ll blend into the warped floor boards
and dingy, frayed carpet
that should have been replaced years ago
so maybe my landlord could use that penny
or he’ll just increase the rent

If I whisper into the east wind
Will it find it's way to your ears
Is there enough quiet in the night
To hear my whisper

If the sun and moon appear as one
And night and day mingle and laugh together
Would the stars fall to earth to be seen
To know the company of men again

If the music fades into a clamour
With silence and uproar walking abreast
Can a thought and a dream still survive
In chaos can there still be order

Broken glass and lipstick stained butts,
The carpeting of youthful arrogance
Littered across the frozen and snow covered earth
Strewn upon the bleak tundra like a thousand effigies,
The guardians of the ‘treasured’ existence
That thrives within the natural man
Slowly choking life away.
And lungs struggle to catch even the faintest trace of stagnant air
Blue faced, frantic
With flayed arms
Clawing at the walls of conscience
In vain hope to be heard through the blinding haze.
And there, amongst those fettered to the vice of choice,
Stewing within the hopes of the next high
Is the freedom of bad choice.
For what more truly can tighten the shackle of slavery
Than the one who willfully discards
Until all that remains is nothing of the self,
One more piece of waste:
A tenant of the frozen mire
Crunched underfoot
And buried beneath the white

The news report on the radio mentioned something about sun
And all around, revelers, bob between waves of light
Shadows playing eternal catch up--
But somewhere along the way I missed the word
And clouds, swaying from the hidden winds, form sunglasses,
In shaded vision I walk
Dragging my heels, the many fingers that crunch and snap beneath the weight
Fallen from the silent giants that dot the roadside,
How reckless, absently rejecting the parts well-worn
The memories
Litter the concrete, a gravesite, a memorial to progress and growth
So much for holding onto the past.
I’ll take a branch and be on my way through the shade
And, smiling, whisper to nothing but the wind:
One day we all become twigs.

As weeks slip by
And moments fade from memory
When the final scent of another day
Is tossed away in the breeze
And nothing remembered remains in the conscious
But a shadow in the night sky
What is lost?
As the grains within the hourglass slink along
So many white, flakes of snow
The shade of a lifetime
Lasting for a season
And scattered within a blue, a black, a green grain
Intermixed.
Staining the bland with the pains and joys
A molding of a self, visualized amidst the banal stones,
That salt away the minutes and hours and years
Between the few worthy of mention.    
And when the lost and wasted time drips away
Does the filler of life amount to anything more
Than a tree falling in a lonely forest?

Floating peacefully in the wind
My exhaled breath the music to your ballet
Dancing to the movement of the invisible sounds,
Are you so abandoned that even the eye cannot see your beauty?
The shapes morphing, triangle to square to the ever jumbled system
Blissfully floating along as I wish I could be
Though hidden in the darkest corners
What peace your dance brings to the troubled mind;
The silver threads---beams of light that penetrate the ocean’s murky depths
Struggling to press downward until swallowed up by the hungry mouth of
silence: darkness a pain to the ear.

My cobweb, my friend, dance on in the wind
For as I watch every movement is a new creation,
If only I could emulate your magic,
Matching footsteps to the swaying
Lingering for just a moment; weightless,
Until again a new motion arises from the stillness
And I as well must follow in step.
Were peace of mind just a breeze away
And troubles present for but a fleeting instant
Then too could I be the forgotten cobweb
Free to dance to the clandestine tune,
Swinging gently, ever floating: a first leaf of the fall.
But I remain as just a watcher
Seeing a view into a secret not meant to surface,
And placid images unite with the silent zephyr
That I exhale
With every sigh.

Under the glaring neon lights
That flicker and buzz almost inaudible over the background noise of distance and conversation
A guest in the home for the introvert
For an hour or two or six
And company enough within the adorned fragile vessels for even the most lonely
Comfort in idle gazes and nods of affirmation
Another escapist from responsibility


I wash my hands in the stale air and condensation
That paints the scratched glass with a worn face
Shadows and dreams swimming deep within the drug haze
And drowning smiles affixed to each frozen cube
Swirling and laughing, a joke hidden somewhere
And I sit and drink alone until the world drips away
Onto a faded brown coaster

I walk and the world stares
With cracked glass eyes, the thick green antique kind,
Or was it only yesterday
When my lips touched the chilled oceans
And with each foray into the depths
The emerald vessel, catching the light, splayed out across the walls
A projector of sorts
And with squinted gaze I watched as only the shadows dance
Characters in the same old movie playing out a scene from a day gone and forgotten
And under the magnified burn
How easy to sneak off
To wilt from from the heat, curl up
Await whatever tomorrow is selected
The broken jukebox with only one song to play
"And a rock feels no pain/ And an island never cries"

The moment before sleep
That instant when time is frozen
A slow motion picture playing out
Caricatures of the world alive in the shadows, swaying
Is it in reverse or forward?
Somewhere in my mind I can hear the sounds of places long forgotten
A whisper, quietly sings through the haze
And I strain to hear every word
The tones
Flowing around me, a cloud of warm air
Swaddling my dreams

Somewhere above me
Drifting through the thin ceiling
Of an anywhere apartment
a wailing sound
Calls through the open window
out into the night.
A saxophone mayhap
from a poorly recorded jazz medley,
it has not aged well stolen away in some humid attic
But captured and alive again, nonetheless.
And no doubt years have passed
since each musician drank and smoked himself to death
penny-less and fueled by memories;
Did they realize
Something of them remains
on a scratchy piece of plastic?
And as ghosts they play on through the wind
carrying me into the back row
of a smoke-laden speak easy
The instruments floating on a stage dimly lit
Phantom fingers and lungs propelling the melody
playing on, for the ten thousandth time
Exactly as the first.

What do you think of me now
"dear old friend"
Once you said all that is will pass
and what's left was never worth having
Do you think you were right?

I felt a twinge of sadness when I heard of your passing
And maybe it's true we are all shadows of what we could be
But did it matter when they came for you
The men with the big, strong hands
hardened by the labor we never had to do
Will they look down on you and I for mocking their achievements
As we sat drinking five dollar coffee getting fat on success
With fancy cars and house poisoned with possessions
The comforts of life: self expression in the highest order

Tell me my friend
In the end did it all stop
Time frozen in the instant between here and gone
are we all a puff of smoke off the **** of a smoldering cigarette
Flourishing only to be choked out by the fresh breeze

But Then again, if I knew would it make any difference?

I felt the burn of winter
Those invisible tongues that climb up from below
And suffocate with each exhaled cloud
Appearing for a flash
---a vapor of existence
Extinguished as it swirls in the frosting breeze
And with each, the bite of ice--sinking lustily into my lungs
Striking out a warmth
A cough and a gasp and the flame dies down to embers
And within the ashes I slumber on
Clinging to the last ounces of winter burn
I can walk and not grow weary
And frozen within await the thaw of spring

Once there was a threat of summer
And rain showers dared to live, hungry within the clouds
And dying, the raspy gasp from the blackened asphalt, coughing
Lightning, fireworks on a funeral pyre.
Childhood incarnations of paradise usurped by time, the thickened
aromas of a faded season. Portraits flavored in now, rewinding to birth:
Dusk, midday, the cool of morning.
Hair darkly swept,
Red radiance burning the blurs of grey, the chalk outlines in the skies.
Finally the eulogy, a Writing
In the air, speaking, perhaps,
But who knows?

I hear distant thunder, an echo of a heartbeat
Buried deep within the youthful breast of a forgotten lover
How quickly we push aside the nervous panic
The palpitations at the slightest touch
As words sweeten as each year flows onward
Until we all are poets in our own mind.  
I can feel the wind, pulling up the smothering humid air
A lustful Southern breath, faint with smell of azaleas and car exhaust
Somehow choking and teasing me with each breath
An addition.
Does love take sanctuary from such frail copies
Hiding in the shadows, waiting to step out into the light
As passions flash and spark, burning out underneath the mid afternoon swelter
Biding time for the cool of eve.
And still the storms approach
The laughter of the leaves fills the air,
The creaking bones of the branches, sinews straining
Reaching out in anticipation, anxious to capture the intimacy
And I am here
Waiting for the moment when cast upon the ground, a silhouette
Swallowing the world, and I am reborn