Forgive me if I chewed too fast,
And swallowed up all your niceties;
Crunching the pastoral love letters,
Stiffened with a backbone, of dried sobs,
And not fully tasting the briny salt of the tears.

It's just that I've been starved for so long
For some genuine emotion in another
That wasn't drying at the bottom of some jar,
Or trapped in dust on some faded bouquet,
Forgotten in the back of a seldom opened drawer.

And even if it had to be love, so be it-
Though sorrow often tastes nearly as sweet.

Is there a world in shadow
At the gate, where life has fled;
A place from where the birds have gone,
And nothing lives but dread?

Where shade holds all the secrets,
And the dreams are empty shells,
And the locks have skeleton keys,
Kept safely down in hell.

Where there are no second chances,
And the sunlight will not reach,
And the time is always midnight,
For the hour will not breach.

Is there a world in shadow,
Where the living cannot stay,
With opposing rules of nature
Where the shadow people play?

The man in the shroud appeared at my door
Impersonating Three-in-One persons
With his Two-D visage.
He said if I ironed him, a reversed negative image would appear
On the other side of him.

But I wanted to know,
Where are the wine stains from the Last Supper?
He replied that he'd changed clothing
Many times since that day.
The flora was exquisitely exact, he said-
Even the Calcium Carbonate signature of the cave was there.

I asked if it weren't all just a fake
And he asked me if we had the science yet to make even one?
And then he raised his arm
And called down one giga-bolt of the Infinite universal X-ray
With which he burned himself into my memory forever.

Time is short, Jesus said:
Before the **** crows thrice,
Eyes burning like ten thousand suns
Weeping at the wailing wall, stretching
Across a valley of broken sighs.

Time is short, how could we forget
The child we smothered, inside of us;
Dumbed him down with memorization,
With bus route schedules,
Black-booked itineraries.

Time is short, and full of woe
As the evil of the day triumphs again,
And our grief is always sufficient unto us:
It fills up the raging emptiness-
When it comes knocking on our door,
We no longer act surprised.

I miss you, and I'm afraid to ask
Where you've gone, where you've been,
How you are, and most of all, if you still are-

I fear the answer most, that doesn't come,
The reply that never arrives:
Bravery was never my forte.

But I wanted to say I miss you
And that I imagine you doing well-
Because that's the only vision I can withstand.

I wish I were the kind could shore up another,
Be their rock and guide, through stormy days.
Unfortunately, I am only that one who stays quietly faithful
In the inner heart, till the very end.

But I can't imagine there being an end to you
Or of that vision that you are the only container of
Ever met with, in my lifetime of knowing.

So I will only say, I wish you well, forever
Come what may, and hope that we will meet again-
Some other, better day.

Christmas opened childhood
Like heroes opened games,
And gifts were just the standard
For those with your same name.

Christmas ringed our childhood
Like hoodlums ring a fight,
And no one could believe it-
That Santa was a lie.

Christmas ended childhood,
That day we knew the truth:
We ****** our own eye’s knowledge
Of wisdom's sorry proofs.

So comes the end of another day,
Dig the grave and let it be:
Wish, wish the darkness all away.

Though there were things you wished to say,
Man is man, and men are free:
So comes the end of another day.

Unsaid the words, and left them lay;
Man is spineless, small and weak:
Wish, wish the darkness all away.

If once the world was good and gay,
The bold will rise and crush the meek:
So comes the end of another day.

The heart more bitter, to repay
The giver of the wound it seeks:
Wish, wish the darkness all away.

And so we take the longest way;
Just plug the heart, or let it leak,
So comes the end of another day:
Wish, wish the darkness all away.