I relate to the bottom more than the top
the underside, the ***** and brushed aside,
A pencil broken under a writers heavy hand
as he schemes a way to **** his favorite
character.

I never saw eye to eye with the top.
They move in unfamiliar patterns,
talking in gibberish and doing
the tap dance of jesters.

I relate to the stick man
the half hearted attempt to cure
what we are sick with, or of.
Half shaded in,
eyes different shapes,
A toothless smile on my face.

A scribble of hair, a crooked nose
in a 2D rendition of my own design
drawn on a piece of paper
crumbled up and tossed in the trash.

Always in the night
you’ll see the lights flashing
through the window in my room.

Home alone on a summer night,
hunched over my desk
or pacing around in circles.
Lost in imagined worlds so grey
grasping at straws of fleeting thought
half of which are left unsaid,
forgotten and unreal.

I thought of something once
and I let it slip away
So I’ve scribed my words ever since.
My phone lights and rings but I flip it over,
Ive had it muted since I was a boy.

Alone alone alone
baby I’m talking to myself again.
I can’t even feel myself again,
the picture sways and shakes
slowly rotating right in front of my eyes.

On empty days I have empty eyes
and I never catch the words they say.
Who are you?
What is this?
Could you please describe the form you saw
In the form of flowing mist?

Don’t call me, I’m sleep walking.
Don’t text me I won’t reply.
I’m laying sprawled with my back to the dirt
trying to pick my place among the stars
a place where I can recline into eternity,
my own place to pace through the heavens.

My eyes furrow and my brush stops
As I take a deeper look at the woman posed
across the room.
She stands there, silent and austere,
eyes lost in thought and staring out the window, her naked form illuminated
by the gray light of storming day.

I rub my chin and drink her in with my eyes,
Attempting to capture her shimmering
form and flowing aura,
the water droplets from the rain outside
shadow and race down her body.
Her striking power as bolts of flashing
lightning reflecting in her eyes slowly
blinking eyes.
I see the tragedy of the diminishing hour
as our time together always becomes shorter.

She exudes the feeling rocks feel
when caught in a narrowing stream.
The clear water flows over the stone,
shining it clean with a cleansing touch,
rubbing off the dirt and showing the beauty
even in-between dull shades of gray.

-lightning flash-

She glows like a Star in a deep December night
When all hope is lost, except to follow that light.
How could I capture, how could I mold
her magnificent form into but a splotch of paint?

Squashing and cutting, limiting her vastness
to the confines, a prison, of this canvas.
She glances over because she noticed I stopped,
And gives me a concerned look
to which I reply with my best attempt
at a reassuring smile.

Her concern fades softly away,
replaced with a smile and a kiss
blown my way, floating smoothly
through the air, which I eagerly catch
and hold to my chest.

She looks back out the window, her coy smile fading to chiseled granite once again.
I am stuck alone, rubbing my chin and thinking in circles, once again.

I keep a pocket watch,
meticulously polished
and
insistently checked,
in my left breast pocket.

There it lives
on it ticks,
the soft clicks a reminder
of its continuous ticking
lasting far past the heart
that beats just below.

Toxically clean,
a faint scent of acetone drifts
on the wind as I walk pass,
head down and in a hurry.

I retreat quietly, gripping
the watch I rub in circles,
counter clockwise and
in compulsion,
an absent minded fidget
that helps panicked time pass,
it’s melodic clicks a
centering metronome.

A glimmer breaks through the clouds,
A single beam of white light drifts
through the skylight above
As I lay with back to carpet,
watching the fan lazily rotate.

The fan wobbles and creaks,
it’s paint chipped and weary.
Chains dangle below, rattling
And the blades blur in rotation.

I do not blame the ones of before
for seeing a single hopeful beam of light
and dropping to their knees in prayer,
tears dripping down in the face of
a savior, any savior.

The layers behind eyes flitting with
joy, eyes that dart about, drinking in the scene
to that of unseeing blank, wide mouthed
as if in awe of the world above,
stuck in their ways for eternity.

In this empty space I reach out my hand
to grasp the silken veil draped over our snow globe.
I run my fingers over its surface,
It babbles as a brook flows in between
my fingers.

Scenes constantly shift, disappear and reappear
on its surface and as I grasp the material
it crumples like an old picture crushed in disdain.
I inhale slowly, filling my lungs,
and yank the covering off
in one quick motion.

It collapses inward, being pulled towards my grasp.
The scene's decay, all fade to black one be one
and the material grows course and heavy,
piling on the ground and revealing
revealing
revealing

the deepest, most consuming black
a color so dark it seemed to absorb all light
devouring it and demanding more
and laughing all the while.

My breathing speeds
and I turn
stuck in the consuming black.

I've reached the end of my days!
Tomorrow has never come, and I know
it never will!
I sit and wait for the sun to set, night's
humid breeze caressing my cheek with
silk touch, leaving a trail of goosebumps
that send a shiver down my spine.
Tomorrow will never arrive,
it cannot be!

Waves of distortion as these red eyes
catch aching morning light, a glimmer cast
into his irises until they dry and burn,
his head drops to his hands and a sob escapes.

The sun it goes the sun it returns
the sun it goes the sun it returns
the sun it goes the sun it returns
the sun it goes the sun it returns
the sun it goes,
the sun it returns!

An energizing sunrise!
Those bittersweet sunsets!
Each set in the molds of different lives
to everyone their specific smile or iconic laugh,
the ones that see as each of them are forced to see
due to the differing circumstances surrounding
their inhabited reality!

Tomorrow has never been, you have no proof!
On and around we spin, ruler in hand to
measure the meaning of a higher powers
light shining upon us, translating its language of
forgotten past and harrowing future.

In the middle of that vacant space in your head,
a spear pointing directly inward,
towards the infinite space still finitely contained.
Right in the middle, on the highest hill
next to the white rapids river
I am building my fortress.

I spend years digging my moat, deep and wide,
laying bricks side by side climbing ever higher
closer and closer to the sky and
farther and farther from the Earth.
A lifetime design to protect
my last spec of shining light.

Oh I know tomorrow never comes,
it never ceases, cannot end,
the light it glares and we turn to meet,
but it retreats, pushing us back to our sheets.
Time to rise and the classic
"I'm so sorry guys but i really
must go to sleep, could you please
keep it down?
I have so much to do tomorrow
and I swear on God himself
I have no time to waste!"

I have no time to waste
I have no time to waste
I have no time to waste
I have no time to waste

A feather falls slowly, arching downward,
swaying from left to right,
curving from side to side.
I rock my head alongside, tracing its path
as it floats on air so light so soft.
To reach and catch and hold its white
texture in hand
or to watch solemnly as it drops to the
ground?

Hephaestus’ hammer meets the Iron Anvil!
A gripping fire, I cannot shed its flame
I long to be and be on from
flipping downhill and and tumbling on.

Gray light becomes brightened by
a hidden Sun, a translucent mist
veiling that winking smile.

These motion blurred images of mine,
this spinning room,
Lines hovering and wavering, shaking.

Time it passes like water it flows
to a repository or blown to mist?
The times I miss when times have swung
I’ve seen the zipping wasp,
It landed on me and stung
I saw it swell I saw it welt
And I watched it zip away.

Stuck, caught in the middle of
thought-crossed intersections
of the city during rush hour.

Headlights veer and blind,
horns shriek loudly and people yell
Shaking their fists from their windows.

This is all fine, livable,
if not for the times where the cars
do not narrowly miss,
Or a driver swerves, distracted and remiss and
the cars crash, collide, and clog
the roads, making me wince.
The solid impact and burning flash of pain,
my forehead hit squarely with a wrench.

Sparkle sparkle shimmer and flash
the lines of light from leaves never cease
they glimmer and reflect and exude shades of
green I have never seen or could hope to recreate but

The sky the sky yes I see the sky
peeking it’s eye between those flashing leaves
the shades of blue from dawn to dusk
and dusk to dawn and black to blue I
lean back and watch the hues like a
tired father waking and reading his morning
edition but I’ve only seen days subtracted

I’ve never felt one return oh no
where do they go where do they go
I wake up I turn the page I sip my coffee
Where do they go where do they go

My head is stuck at the peaks of youthy rooftops
trapped in moving circles and daggers rotting brain.
I hover, gliding above the generated, empty plane, tracing the moving shadows below and tracking the nights that rain.

i was so careful but the lines oh the ever running lines they vibrate frantically, I cannot look away they dance back and forth between both crests of their prison, their XYZ axes gripping them trapping them within definite images between associations and contexts, between gleaming ascent and its tumbling recoil.

The ride hick-ups and pollutes the clouds
filling my scent and descent pulls at my stomach,
gravity yanks me back, pulling on my rope and
laughing all the while.

At first you fear it but then you are laughing and shouting
and throwing your arms in the air and having the wind rush
into your lungs and whip your hair it is so beautiful it is
unlawful it is unreal i cant be seeing this and it spirals and tumbles and shriekingly grinds to a halt, panting.

Floating days lifted in flight by birdsong,
waiting upon an evaporating cloud
of time and its passing, its trail leaving so soon.

How do I feel on a cloudy day?
Stinging eyes and stained regret,
things that in the Sun I do not fret
about or for.

A staring Sun's gaze burns so softly
upon a man walking the path
towards ever approaching melancholy.

Deep in the night he lays fast
asleep, his chest rising and falling
in long, steady breaths, his mouth wide
and eyes carelessly shut, unaware.

A light turns on and he groans awake,
disoriented at first, wiping his eyes
and mumbling incoherently about
something he thought he saw
deep in a dream already forgotten.

He gains bearing on his surrounds,
the white painted room lit by one
dangling fluorescent light, illuminating
the chips and the cracks in the walls.

He stirs, becoming agitated, his breaths
begin to rattle from his lungs.
He grasps around, patting hands
to concrete, a desperate search
for something solid to grip.

A resounding boom sounds above
and dust falls from the ceiling.
Specks fall into his eyes
and he curses,
eyes watering and blinded.

He wipes his eyes, clearing them
and takes one more look about,
searching in vain for anything
and lays down once more,
an acceptance.

The light turns off, and he drifts to
sleep once again, escaping.

I dreamed the dream of life
it’s glowing lights reflected off of
flowing streams, a magnifier ray
That blinds my sight.

I’ve walked through worlds imagined
filled with honey suckle and cutting thorns,
a vision I’d always seen tilted sideways,
blurred and hazy.

The sky shifts as the clouds continue on,
I stand planted here and study
their drifting motion, a steady crawl from
this day on to the next.

I dreamed the dream of life
and saw shadowed fingers gripping
a glossy door, opening it slowly, a dark
head slowly revealing itself around the corner,
eyes pointed down in shy approach.

A nightmare, a dream of thrashing discontent
a figure sits by the bedside, his legs crossed
scribbling thoughts on his notepad,
An unsure diagnosis and prediction
Of the yet to come and destined to pass.

I dreamed the dream of life
and I was shown collisions, barriers destroyed
by speeding bullets blurring with velocity and
crashing violently, exploding in a flash,
a strike that sends me reeling backwards
falling to the my hands and knees
coughing blood, it’s ruby drip puddling
on the ground below.

I dreamed the dream of life
And it was all I could ever do,
It was all I ever could see
a shimmering veil over eyes crinkled,
the smile withered by all of time
and time left to be.

Beep, beep, beep
A satellite circles but sleeps.
One eye always open,
It catches the lights on its sloping.

What is day but the rays?
What is night but fright?
Cold vacuum meets hull,
But the bite of frost has grown dull.

The satellite may be lonely,
But at least it knows why.
The Earth pulls it along,
As if string to kite, saying
“Please watch me, as I sing in delight.”

A bird’s song, the people clap and cheer,
Unknowingly seen by the seer.
A cruel joke, a sighing anecdote,
When all you can do is float.

This empty road leads on to the horizon
where the ground rises to meet the sky,
Becoming lost in his twinkling star-eyes,
secure within his encompassing embrace.
Or
The sky lays slowly into the Earth’s comforting
Arms and hills and scented colors of spring,
Burying his face, drowning in a lovers trance,
Nuzzling as close as possible,
But only allowed to truly touch
at the ever-shifting horizon
the end of human perception.

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.

The camp fire burns high and
Provisions carried from home are passed about.
Laughing faces of the unyet tested,
The over morale of an Emperors finest legion
Marching into Gaulic lands
With heads held high.

Spirits are soaring and blessings are passed,
And the fluttering thoughts of home are flower painted.
Perhaps I will be back before the July sun
Bakes my armored back,
Perhaps I will be back to attend to Love
And its reaping yield
Before a burning sun alters my heart.

If I wrote of Love and her soft caress,
would the crowds gather to bear witness?
If I spoke of her words and
the spells they cast on me,
would they gather to witness its gripping affect?

Oh, if they could only feel her love through my verse,
the whole world would gather round,
pushing and shoving, clawing to near front,
for just one glimpse of proof,
An Angel’s holy love.

The peeling of tangerine shell
Releases its soft citrus smell.

A dawning of Spring,
The tree’s pollen eye-dust spreads free.
White paint-stroke wind swirls and
sways through the plains,
the grass kindly greets in sighing retreat.

Blue skies softly shelter,
filling the days with their comforting hues.
Sparsely dotted roaming cotton clouds dance as
the yellow Sun yawns and spreads its rays,
rousing the slumbering bear from his winter den.

Sounds of the hen’s call awaken,
a signaling for paper to meet pen.
The heart swells and empties
just as the flower’s buds lazily fall open
at the bidding of the Sun’s young light.

An open world, the never ending wood,
A night river flows just beyond the bend,
full of salmon fighting upstream from the wrong end.
A tender letter penned but not sent.
A winged man smiles and whispers visions,
guiding my ascent.

Unfortunately, a penned letter is not always sent,
just as all the hopeful salmon do not
make it back to their springing den.
Some sneak by and continue their uphill fight
but others are clawed and left stuck within the
bear’s teeth, writhing in defeat.

So tired I have grown, of building castles
only to have them overrun by cresting waves.
So tired I have grown, of tasting water on my tongue
but spitting, complaining of its salty burn.
So today I take a dive,
for I've grown sick of the shoreline and
smelling life's salty scent only upon the wind.

So today I took a dive,
head first into that salty steep
and was pulled here by current arms
and pushed deeper by ocean nymph charms.

My body flung about,
counter currents tossing me in circles,
eyes itching red with not a second to blink
and my nostrils jammed full
of the salt that hinted my senses before.

On the brink of drowning,
vision fading from blue to black,
I am pushed to a surface
far from the shoreline from before.
A gasp for air and the seagulls call
beams of sunlight carefully fall
onto the white crests of traveling waves,
and upon my blinking eyes.
Here, on the bobbing wakes of erasing waves,
I begin my ocean days.  

I had become so tired of my earthly ways,
so tired of hating the cleansing dawns
hiding behind the ebbing tides.
So today I took a dive
and began my floating ocean days.

Searing memories of love gone past,
pillars of sand that buckle
at high tide's first crash.
The castle carefully crafted with ***** firmly
in hand, but the waves destroyed it,
my walls, my structure, my protection
and then ran, leaving trailing footprints
outlined in the sand of its receding wake.

Smoke filled dens of drifting ***** scent,
Imagined worlds dancing behind the eyes
of the laying men.
Heads fall back and pupils roll to face brow,
revealing a cloudy unseeing white.

What lies behind the eyes of laid men
that makes them respond to the sweet song of
lotus flower time and again?
Are they taken to that Mediterranean isle visited by
Odysseus in his journey, the idle isle where time lazily flows
and sunrise and sunset have no meaning at all?

If I was bunk mate to Odysseus on his mission home
and our boat met sand on this secluded cove,
would I see it for what it was?
After tasting my first sweet lotus petal, offered
to me by beauty divine, could I resist a second kiss?

Would I have bravely boarded the ship away,
eyes hard and mind set on my destination,
or would I have planted feet firmly to sand
and wave as the brave ones sailed away to face
the ever abundant misery of reality?

Thoughts of my many lives reduced to subtle sighs,
Living breathing hues reduced to written lines.
Up the vines I carefully climb and am then dropped,
Falling slowly, hands gripping rope burns blazing hot
Resisting gravity’s insatiable allure.

Ground meets spine and my lungs collapse
Upon a bed of lichen my eyes bulge, and then relax.
Stars dance constellations behind eyelids and
Are engraved into the stone of memory,
The lichen becoming a decomposing cemetery.

A Midnight bell rings through the night cloaked village.
The high standing clock tower has surveyed the night,
and deemed it high time to sing its chime.

A procession of men in crosses cloaked
sway forward with eyes searching dirt.
A humming unison, softly painting pictures
of mankind's final days.

Their humming chorus carries slowly down the empty streets,
an approaching fog creeping through the alleys,
smelling of soft odor sage.

Ever building ***** chimes build,
Frantic hands introduce each note to next
All culminating to its bitter end,
an apex, each note cryingly rings at once
deep into the fearful fox's core.

Eyes daze, pseudo-malaise,
The soft lament of wasted days.
Whatever needs be done be done,
As long as none insist on clearing
My veiling haze.

Dim those lights, turn down the sounds
My mind becomes crowded,
Elbows bruising.

The further pushed from,
The deeper pushed in.
Raised voices and wagging fingers
Have no effect but a
Deeper shove to the depths.

Firm hands held haughtily between strangers
A meeting with the spirit lost
To the deep end of the well,
The cracks in bone show age

Have so many days passed
since those shining lights were to
iris pressed, or have I just
covered my eyes?

Every man speaks of time
and how fast it flies
but I believe that it
gets off a hard day of work,
barges in the door,
founds its spot on the couch
and then collapses
with a gentle sigh.

Crumpled paper damp with ink,
Immortal words washed away in the running stream.
The paper breathes longer than I,
whats behind longer still,
for the same worries I carry
are etched in the walls of Pharaoh's grave.

When the candle of life is by saliva-wet
fingers extinguished,
Sighs resound and glances cast at the
vacant seat my voice used to occupy.
The present man soon dances for the prying eye of
Retrospection.

A picture printed on the page in many days,
full of laughing smiles and vacant gaze of youth gone
blank,
The Retrospect looks closely, trailing fingers softly
over the black white rendition.
An all too human fear creeps to mind,
and he quickly turns the page.

The melancholy eyes of departing,
The lingering taste of love’s last kiss.
To the skies I've been sentenced and
In the soil you've been left, softly sprouting.

Oh, what I would do, to spread my roots
There next to you.
Our petals caress with love unstressed
And our leaves would collect the morning dew.

But I’ve been plucked,
Snatched in the claws of the bird!
Cast to flight, cursed to explore
A life without you that must be endured.

Upwards dragged but eyes cast down,
Drinking in the sights of her last frown.
The wind pulls me clean, and I see
The last of that morning's dew
Falling with a shimmering gleam.

Words of honey and liquor would flow,
At temples along the rolling hills,
they would grow and ripen and
be uttered at sacrificial flame
If I was born in the vein of Apollo.

Words would meet paper
with crackling energy loaded, ready to burst,
robust in power and accompanied by crashes of thunder
If I were bred of the mighty Zeus.

My speech could flow like lapping tide
and slam against the sterns of braving ships
If I carried within,
the flowing will of Poseidon.

Perfectly forged syllables struck on metals
passionately burning. Resounding clangs
and crashes from my shop would ring,
If the strength of Hephaestus guided
my hammer swing.

But as portraits are painted and
are gone to wind,
Their light touch fleeting pass,
Remorse not felt but only desire
to express and to deliver,
to paint, drop off, and be gone.
My words dance with winged feet
and then exit in retreat, with a bow
and a dashing leap,
Disappearing down the street.

Caduceus snakes wrap about my pen
and whisper rhymes softly in my ear.
Rising laughs echo down the trail,
a man dashing to his next delivery.

Light feet dancing forward,
hand whirring from line to line
and his eyes posted firmly to
the nights sky,
The stars singing his Siren song.

The ravens catch wind of my secrets,
Hidden words veiled from light.
A ghost wandering through the yard,
A frantic hand scrambles for his pen.

Specter that drifts among all,
The sleep walker slouches with
The rest, but life had long lost
It’s interest.

Eyes of lemur, tilted to the side
As if to inquire the dark.
Inward voice and scattering wind
Dry leaves blown down the empty street.

Ghost man with his ghost hands
Greek warriors in their horse, invading Trojan Lands.
Thoughts reaching sky and the stars
Sending their replies, condolences.

A plane of faces turned upside down,
Somewhere along the trail to the Underworld.
The long corridor stretches indefinitely,
Torches spread sparsely along the walls.
The spiraling stairs push deeper on.

“Do not look back, he said
Do not looked back!” He thought.
Terror struck, for he remembered clearly
the lessons the hushed voice had taught.

A grief struck chord plucked from within,
As his sobs began to form.
“Oh, the fool I am!” He cried,
“Why could I have not held my gaze,
Held my vision steadfast
To the closing morning rays?”

As he reached the bottom,
He readied his lyre
And stuck strings in frenzy dire.
Rounding the corner to the banks of flowing Styx,
He saw the same creatures he once tricked.

Determined eyes and sure hands,
He struck the chords at the essence of man.
But this time the creatures lining the Styx,
Were not so surely bewitched.

They closed nearer, vicious growls upon their lips.
Back met stone, an exit long gone.
“The song had always worked,” cried the desperate man, words falling on unhearing ears.

Yes, his tune had always worked,
But not twice tonight.
To mortal love you have given your life,
For you cannot fool Pluto twice.

On sun-filled days with few clouds,
We pray for just one to pass and
Provide that sweet shade, offer
A reprieve from the sweltering heat.

But deep in those lonely nights,
With bone chattering chill and the darkness blinding,
We claw the skies, searching for the cutting
Beams of moonlight.

Blinding light with hands outstretched
A silhouette dances on the horizon.
It beckons me, with hinting grin etched lips,
To follow, so I grip her hand and on we fly.

Soft warmth caresses my skin as the light surrounds,
Harp song flows as smoothly as river sound.
Eyes turn and smiles break
Carving the faces of paint I've seen
In my visions of the Sistine.  

Those high walls stagger above me,
But the gates stand ajar.
The moat forded and oak doors entered
But no harp song drifts within these walls.

Cold stone meets feet as my
Hand bearer retreats.
A gaze cast back, met with doleful eyes
And a nod to enter on.

So on I cast my senses,
Until upon an ornate throne they rest.
Crafted in shimmer, white with golden hues,
Hand rests embedded with artisan jewels.

A throne worthy of Zeus,
Yet skies of lightning do not greet.
The seat sits vacant,
Webbed stones of an owner long gone.

In a fit I turn,
The light fading from those arching windows.
I reach out for the hand,
A clawing search for reassurance
But solitary I stand,
In this abandoned Palace of eternity
With a vacant throne so grand.

Single entities we are,
alone in our galleys
sailing solemnly along the vast expanse
of this glittering sea.

Our eyes meet along the waves,
but both are veiled,
caught within our ferries,
a barrier between.

But if my boat meet water
as does yours
are we not connected
with hands used as oars?

The crisp air pressed to the breast of that dewy morn',
A piercing of the skin by the rosiest of thorns.
Thorn to skin, blood to air,
A soft ebbing of life from its lair.

Venous roads and capillarous tunnels,
A captured path in which life is shuttled.
That ****** thorn that interrupts its flow,
Allows life to meet that soft morning's glow.