Renegades
Passing days
Falling apart
In harmony
A catalytic
Cacophony
Of ugly words
And her
Disastrous
Poetry

there is nothing romantic about being lost
the danger, the possibility
i could see it, the big sign but i can't get out
it goes round and round in a circle
and i cannot leave

if everything we say has been said
if everything we think has been thought
what is the point?
who cares?

the futility of the meaningless in the words
that have no depth

and i want to stop
but i keep searching

stopped crying over
the leaves; their footsteps echoing so far
that i can't hear it
everyday.

let them go, truly.
Nothing bitter left to commemorate
but now good times makes me smile,
faint.

wished them well
for they are good, still;

become ashen and risen
like a golden phoenix
into words

known that they would too,
just a different bird.

He’s hooked to tubes and monitors;
They speak to him hoping he will hear.
People test and probe reducing
Him to an experiment in a bizarre
Science fair where the best result is disability.

They cry for him, hope for him, pray for him
As the machines, hum, pump, and chime
To keep whatever he will be now alive.

I cannot see him there, but I remember
Days on football fields when we were young
Nights at dances with girls who teased us
In the clinches and sent us home alone.

He sold me my first car and we got old together
But not gracefully, not us.
We struggled against who we were
Trying to be who we thought we could become.
Failing and succeeding as we went;
Always friends who sometimes fought.


So much I remember as I lay here,
Safe until it’s my turn, and I wonder if he
Remembers who we were in that awful place where
They pray and hope to save what’s left
Of a good man’s life.

He sat at a table in a suit that didn’t fit.
His shirt was open, a tie stretched across the void.
His eyes were forward, scared
Hands on the table gripped together so they didn’t shake.

The eyes that looked at him were not friendly
Most focused on photographs in easels
Showing what had become of a girl who made a bad choice
Then came back and made it again and again until
The power to choose was no longer hers.

A woman in a black robe sat above him reading
Then raised her head to look down,
“Do you have anything to say?”

Now they all looked at him as he rose,
If their stares had power he would have been dust.
Behind him one poor woman wept
In a room pressurized by silence.

A man stood beside him, leaning away.
The monster swallowed once gathering his power
To twist their thoughts as he had the girl in the pictures.
He made himself weep then in a shaking voice said,
“I loved her to death.  She was my everything”.

But the woman in the robe was that day deaf.

The core of me holds the truth I have
Hidden so well I don’t really
Think about it anymore.

I am more concerned with the story of who I am
That I tell to anyone who will listen.
I don’t think I’m a liar because
Everyone is hiding something
For some good reason
That no one else needs to know.

But the hidden truth leaks out
No matter how we twist the story around it.
It comes to us in dreams and,
When the voice beneath our reason shouts
Louder than our doubts and denials,
We hear it demanding to be free.

Some of us us comply
Releasing our truth carefully between
Crooked marks on pages others read.
Carefully I said, in tentative bits
Hoping for acceptance
We fear will never come.

And yet we write
Because we are helpless to hide
The truth that cannot be denied.
Thank God.