no heart can flutter all alone,
nor devils fly in space,
for all the travels of our minds,
are blazing with a trace

no farther dragon's head will fall
beyond the wing of night,
for someone somewhere knows
the light
and fills it with her song

before, before, those blessed words,
it's all the last of all,
for something burns me deep inside
with fire and glowing coal

forged in brilliant heat we sing,
left to die in fire
but no one knows the things we've seen
nor felt the dark desire

"forever and forever"
says the wingless watching eye
and tomorrow will be sooner
than the dying of today

death stretched out like nobody's business
lost in flickering light
dust to dust and ashes to ashes
before the falling of night

"don't go away" she said with a smile
"don't let the light die in me"
and she took me and melted each strand of desire
and left me empty of me

+
formless fury, bleeding pain
don't awake this dragon's bane

dragons and goblins
elves and men
stories that are woven from now
until then

guttering, sputtering
the howling of winds
everyone talks of that dream
the night bends

simplicity dwells in the
smallest of things
when shadow and silence
true finity brings

all up in the air
all fallen below
each whisper of heartache
is death without blow

the ravings of a madman can
sometimes come nearer to the truth
than the deepest philosophy.
for any hand that wields
a pen
is powerful in its own right.
and sometimes it is better to leave
our thoughts as they fall,
disordered and in chaos,
than to gather them together
pretending that they are wise.

They thought well of me.

memories, like ashes flung
across the web of time -
are half-burnt logs where dreams still
sputter;

and I bid them all goodbye

no one knows the sorrows,
nor the joys of light unseen,
when stirring through the ashes
of yesterday's dreams

farther than an ocean spread
the eagle eye has seen,
but never can the keenest
pierce that gray and ashy sheen

the past is gone - a mirror
of our present selves, I think -
the things we see there
gratify the darlings and the beasts
+
memory, like ashes flung
across the net of time -
are proof that life one time
was lived:
that fevered dream of mine

now dead                      

below the surface,
where the dust is soft and blows
in the gentle gentle breeze;
below the hardened crust of teardrops
raining down down
through the trees:

there the shifting ashes lie;
the happiness of dreams,
the lifting light of love's delight,
the lightning at the seams

and there I roam,
a lost forlorn,
a citizen of dreams
that long ago have burnt to ash
and scattered all my things
+
memory, like ashes flung,
across this web of mine,
with shadows in the corner comes
and wakes the dragon Time

each forward step                          
              a drop of fuel
                 each hour
a log of pine

and always always flickering
that fire we all call mine

till memories, like ashes flung,
across the wrinkled line,
fill up the span my steps have spun
and dry the noonday sun

+

and I stirred the fire to flame again
and thought of her no more