I was gonna give up smoking
when that clock struck midnight.
Rash and unhindered.
But the smoke in my lungs
tastes just the way I remember
you and it echoes the promise
I made a year previously,
when the clock struck midnight
and I vowed to always be by your side.

The funny thing about memories
is that when you find an effective
tool to blot them out, say a bottle,
A bottle of whiskey, a bottle of Valiums
a bottle of white out, they adapt and
change like some Darwinian monster
come to fill your mind and heart
to the brim with ink like longing.

A Serotinous Pine there,
Where winter snows soak into thirsty soil but relentless summer sun bakes motionless
Every plant a tinder held close to conflagration,
in a season's Russian roulette of forest fire.
This pine seals precious seed away from every spring’s promise,
lest burning destroys every one.
Only searing heat during torched consumption triggers the last gentle act,
At the knife’s edge of apocalypse itself,
opening cones of seeds.
Fluttering down to new life on the other side of time.
Tiny bright green amid black ashes.

Swimming Penguins
Birds evolved to fly in ocean.
Wings to flippers, feet stepping clumsily from water.
Yet eggs must still nest, their babies still breathe.
Safety is the very precipice of existence, on bitter ice at 60 below,
Sheltering their young clustered from blistering winds,
fasting from sustenance,
While heaven’s glorious Aurora flame silently over their winter dreams.

So what then are we, on This Earth?
Cerebral Creatures, Storytelling Animals.
Minds created to sense spiritual constructs.
Living is the method of our creation,
Sheltering each other from inherited trials
With contrived joys and sufferings distracting each other
from the soul freezing fearful cold of the Empty Void
And consuming fire of electric chaos.
In the End, our sacrificing gift for our children
is God.