The man in town
Killed himself today.
And I heard
The church burned down.
And still, many wars
Rage on in the east.
And someone, somewhere
Just lost a wife.
Or a husband.
Or son, or daughter.
And scientists agree,
The Earth is slowly dying.





And yet, my dear, I want you in my arms
As, for brief moments, we can escape this cold world.

I’m utterly lost
and there exists no compass or map to help me.
After all, no map or measurement
can encompass the longitude and latitude
of a broken soul.

And if there were a way-
though, I know there isn’t-
to delineate the uninhabited, inhospitable
wastelands of my being,
there would be no cartographer
capable or willing enough to meet the task.
Regardless, there would be no point in trying.

The shorelines of my soul are ever-receding,
slowly overcome by an ocean of troubles
bent on washing away all that grounds me.
I’m lost, submerged- another victim in the depths
of an ocean too deep to be explored.
Here and there, you’ll find a wreckage,
a sunken dream, rusted through.
The deeper you go, the darker it gets.

So, how am I to find myself,
when all’s succumb to the tides?
I’m searching for a shoreline which no longer exists.

I’m far from handy,
but from scraps of driftwood
I’ve fashioned a life
perhaps modestly endearing.

Warped and weathered,
the floorboards of my soul
are sturdy, though tired
as the hands which laid them.

The timber, rough and knotted,
groans under the weight of footsteps,
and, in its own language,
says more than I ever could in mine.

But I’m not one for words.