Time ruins our eyes
for each other,
while the moon burns
down the nights around us,
as if attracted to our madness
and spellbound by the dark
- ness that surrounds us,
yet here we remain, apart
and together, alone in a home
for the stone-cold heartless.

Looking back at the years
through the fog,
sorting the memories
that are real
from the phantoms
that long
for the castle and the throne
that have fallen.

I recall
her lost smile

like a sketch
I draw from my memory

and those days in the rain
laughing, drops

hitting the creek
slow as a dream

until a shadow
fell across the mirror

brushing her hair
in a dark room

like a honeycomb
of sad bees

and double entendres
two lifetimes ago.

deleted for contest submission

Here at the end
of the continent
everyday the same
sea and sky elemental
endless blue planes
interrupted only
by a wayward bird
a flash of white
like a gull
lost out in the null
as September wanes
into Autumn's moon
breaking like a spell
casting my shadow
like a sundial
measuring my footprints
away and alone
on these wind(s)wept
bare lonely dunes.

Tonight the fog settles
on the water reflecting

a dark mood, and the moon
is genuflecting to the blues

resting one knee on the cold
silent sea taking off his hat

as if to say *May I rise now
and take my leave and leave

you be, for tomorrow will
surely be a brighter day?

For the last few years
I've lived by the water
and when I come home
from work I grab a bottle
to pour something from
and shut my eyes
to sip it or something
like that I look like
I'm dozing off but not
really because I'm a star
you think is a moon
that is moving like
the water I live on
sitting up in my bed
ashamed of the books
left in outlines and
shadows in the shade
where I draw a breath
all thirsty for the unread.

Last night I rode
that dark train
through the hollows
of my childhood
on the black wings
of a swallow fleeting
beneath the eaves
of long ago evenings
where bone moths
were breathing
their last breaths
while dead children
slept well up the hill.

I want her to rise up again
like when she lifted her blue
skirt looking at how brown
I am taking off my shirt
and there are somethings
you learn if you were born
on a farm where I watched
her shadow in the middle
of the night overlooking mine
in the dark where we hid
from the light listening
to the wind, that sad poet
of the unknown pulling back
the dead eyes of those singing
sweet songs in the long night.