The bus is running late tonight,
I eagerly tap my foot and check my watch,
tapping its lens to make sure that
the arms are still ticking, roaming.

Lights flash bright down the street
and a smile leaps to my lips.
The lights hold steadfast,
coming coming!
I wave my hand and grab my bag!
It’s here it’s here!
I run to meet it
going going,
Where are the lights going?
Sped by in a flash
And then past, gone.

Throwing my hands in the air,
Exasperated and pacing
Ranting and raving
I walk back and forth, I
cursing my luck and the luck
of ones like I
stuck at this empty bus stop
having light tricks flashed
in their eyes.

Drifting thoughts perched upon silicone stilts,
flatteries passed and mutely wiped away.
Unreal life, my hand drags, moving through
the oil decorated canvas of this moment
That i’ve been painted subtly into.

Blurred lines of leaves reflecting glittering sun
I sit calmly and watch their dance,
jotting notes and thinking of
Shades from black to gray.
A clearing of the throat from behind,
A spell broken mid cast and incantation lost,
to the flowing ever-flowing wind.

A sighing, a release from the hopes of
happiness, exhaling the last remnants of
youths longing for gilded futures.
The stars shine the same, the leaves glitter
on, despite my need to observe.

The man sits on the bank
of the night cloaked lake,
with his feet in the water,
for the time being.

Bright moonlight illuminates his form but
his eyes trace the ripples
he leaves in the water.

Ancient words spoke in syllables unknown
vortex about me in forms of growing smoke.
Ghosts of times passed swirl about,
their eyes locked to mine and mouths wide,
tethered to me as a center point.

Life must be chosen once per day
but the reaper must only make one deft move.
The smoke continues to rise and tighten,
the spirits muted howls fade in and out,
and I cough.

I choke and cough as the smoke fills my lungs,
desperately trying to expel but I fall.
There I lay, wheezing and hacking,
A rejection, a fight, a resistance,
longing for the clean air that I
did not believe until it was gone.

My throat burns dry and bruised,
but the smoke does not stop its growth
and the chants grow louder still,
filling my mind and shaking my skull.

The smoke fills my lungs to capacity and
I call out but it comes as another cough
and another after, again and once more,
my eyes watering and hands gripping chest,
until at last I gasp one rattling inhale
and Fade to black.

Irony brought to its greatest extent,
the rain drops race down the window
to join the growing puddle.
Raised eyebrows and a voice layered in
smug confidence is shattered
by the hopes of whispered reassurances.

A reoccurrence, Yeats’ falcon flying
ever farther from its bellowing falconer,
whose advice was once heeded but
is defiantly unheard now.
Nietzsche’s ever repeating cycles,
the same lives lived 100 times,
past voices whispering script softly
into my calmly waiting ears.

Meager fears and joy draped in hollow blue,
the dance of body and mind with no metronome
to give a cue, no orchestra to hold its tune.
Clap clap, tap tap, and resounding boom.

I grasp the gilded knocker and gently rap,
respectable at first, for courtesy,
and then more assertive, social conduct leaving
and desperation filling as I bang on the door,
painfully aware of it’s glossy paint with each hit,
and then I am kicking the door, trying to break through,
pleas rasping out with each lunge,
Until I give up,
And slide slowly down the wall
and cradle my head into my hands.

Illusions dance before our eyes
for we see how we think to see,
soliciting our growing fantasy.
What appears to be to what is
becomes lost in amateur's translation.

A chameleon's shade cloaks green
when a predator's eye is on the prowl.
Shaped to our reality, we adapt to breathe,
we see what we need to see,
to continue growing our fantasy.

And at its peak,
The act is bought! The drama continues
and the script is dutifully rehearsed,
fooling even myself to think
That I could be Hamlet,
the coward prince,
and her my Ophelia but breathing,
from the words I am reading,
printed on a blank sheet of paper in
Times New Roman, font twelve.

On I walk, upon the evaporating cloud
of ever-passing Time.
I would how many tufts of life have gone awry
from my love of staring towards the sky?

On I walk, upon the Cotton Lane.
I think and thought on cloudy days gone,
Now that the Eve of blooming May has arrived.
Desperate steps in crunching snow
with one to pray that today is not our day.
Slipped time and again, on sliding slopes
and shivering mounts, the rocks beneath
leaving itching scabs and swollen bruises,
just as nectar seeps down the stem of a budding rose.

The hanging eyes I closed one final time,
and awoke to morn' of life reborn,
a Cardinal singing melodic tunes by my bedside.
But always spring arrives, my mind begins to ring:

What plights fill my mind, come summertime?
What paths to take,
How sweet to make and
when to sugar arm hold?
Do I truly remember the cold of my winter nights,
when i dump more ice into my Sprite?
Do I actually recall the bone-chattering winds
and sweeping gales at Autumns end,
When on the same breezes kites now fly?

Bar music rings into my ears
and the people dance joyously about.
Their bodies move and tap and fly and laugh,
to the band ferociously playing a snake-charmer's tune.
I stand to join and reach my hand for hand to grip
but the daydream ends and I awake to my room
my mind achingly awake before my body
has the time to stretch or to bloom.