remembering my mother
i still take off my shoes
just inside the front door

my feet are squishy
from splashing in the rain

i leave gleaming footprints
across the pine floor
trying not to slip and slid

but I just can't seem
to transit quite right

empty is the space
just inside my front door
so full of quiet

asking please for thunder
to appease the rains remorse

I sit on my step and offer you wine,
 And ask where you are going and why?
You answer: "I am discontent yet resolute,
  That I will find rest at the foot of my shadow.
Please allow me to leave, and ask no more questions”.
  As I watch white clouds pass without end.

Where before me,
have my ages then gone?
And where behind me,
Are the coming new birth?
I think of sunlight and earth,
They lost without limit,
without end, without mirth.
In silence I sit alone,
As my tears fall down.
Adding water and salt,
To sunlight and earth.

Could you know, I ponder,
While my love grows unendurable
As I pace around this place,
Crying softly, yet aloud?
Like the first winds of autumn
Winging lonely across the sky.
Could you know how long
Those memories still remain?

On the red rim of the rose,
A thin frost glistens,
Cold in my bedroom,
A bare bulb flickers.
Deeper grows my longing,
Part the curtains with wavering sigh,
To gaze upon the moon,
Single as the frosted rose,
Now cold outside my room.
Above I see the velvet sky,
Below I see the people scenes,
Of an ever-flowing tide,
Bitter between them drifts my sorrow,
Shall I dream at my dusty window?
Dare I admire the frosted rose?
For tomorrow the frost is gone.

What dank dark alley
have you abandoned this night,
crazy yowling trash can cat
to include to me in your song?
why beneath my open window
do you disturb my peaceful sleep?

Not through Spring’s eternal moon
Nor at lighted front of store,
Do you sing your crazy love-sick song,
With lonely yowls forlorn
Do you know I wonder
Where go sleeping souls to slumber?

Be gone your piercing lonely tune
Before I screech my angry song
Before I chuck my shoes at you,
Before you bring the dawn.
Begone, lonely trash can cat,
Allow my dreams reborn,

Show yourself
you darkest of name-callers
Who shouts such vile words
From shadows ink thick with deceit
Have your lies forsaken the light?
Your vulgarity the best you can do?
Retreat from the cover of night
Draw not another laborious breath
In secrete you call out in longing
For the sweetest respite of a song

The climbing vine,
With leaves and tendrils entwined,
Around my unused garden *****,
Such a beautiful sight they made.
Of that wooden handle worn smooth,
By my grasping fingers that grooved,
Lend me your beauty oh climbing vine,
For the garden of my soul to be soothed.

I see your shady greens,
Your emerald gates of earth,
Your vines entwined in pillars of time,
Lush green leaves conceding rebirth.
Your beauties grace in shades sublime,
And I so surprised to be standing there,
In those most glorious greens of you.

A Cloudy Prologue:
  
Do you remember?
When once you were but shadow and mist?
Shadow and mist you say?
“But no”, cries the cloud!
I have always been part of the light.


A Drifting Epilogue:

After a stormy night without clouds,
I rose like a dog to a sound
To the memories of my days yet to come
Yawning large in the mid-morning sun

I yawned like loves loss battered
Drawn in with music un-remembered
Or perhaps a wise old tree awoken
In young fields of silence and sleep

I mused however so briefly
on loves quiet definition of beauty
But could not talk a semblance of reason
Into the weather the clouds or the season

I asked loud for the clouds to stay quiet
Yet release their heaviness required
Raining syllables with color and laughter
As I ran wild in the glistening streets

Because clouds do not intimidate,
Only do they imitate.
Imitations meant only for one.

On alien shores,
   all waves do end.
Their dying breath,
   astounds me.

Black snails are drawn
to my vines of green
Sliding so silent
where my vegetables gleam
Slow yet steady,
from my distant dark streams
Running beyond the carrots and peas.
Sliming my spinach
The bottoms unseen
Black snails eat voracious
Till bare earth they leave
Destroying all growth
In my garden of dreams.

Well, so long and thank you
for consenting to this visit
by the mortal life of a forlorn man
traveling outcast with only
his barely beating heart.
Is an abject heart you understand?
Bright red frailty now bled clear,
within to let you peer,
At a stained and ***** past-life

Still, may we converse a while?
Let us live within this day,
exchange a few words, shall we say.
Share some wine, taste some tears.
If only for you to hear,
my lightly murmured pleas.
My heart would then be slightly healed,
Because fondly then could I say
Yes, truly was I here.

Oh mean man with silver hair,
Once well I did know you,
Walked long with you
in the hard heat of the day,
Learning well of the wickedest ways.

Oh mean creature with silver hair,
Your face like a gnarly old tree,
Green moss upon your shoulder,
Hard pale eyes reflecting
A much meaner image back at me.

You taught me to be silver and mean,
As cold waters frosted
by the mid-winters moon,
Stripped naked now of all kindness,
Turned away from such pitying views

I am desperate for her passion
Desperate to squeeze
the night between us
Desperate to feel forbidden

She was a veiled moon born
on the pain of my lonesome sigh
Hiding careful her hurt behind

I am desperate for her passion
Desperate for the taste
of her many smooth things
Desperate to feel forbidden

Oh daylight star burning bright red
My shadow stands mute on the mountain
Please whisper my secrete name
Over distant lands I have seen

Will solitude never tire of silence,
And thereby long to sing?
Hearing not of the winds of June,
Means not that they have lost their tune.

Never did I know how subtle,
Was the secret success of silence,
Till thunderous showers ravaged my valleys,
Shattering my stillness to fragments.

Silent mirrors of night-stained waters,
Where do you keep your secret tomorrows?
Floating on petals of glistening calmness.
Then drifting away in shrouded sorrows

The sounds of her sighs
Slid voluptuously
Long into my wakening nights
She made me a lover,
Of common things,
She made me a lover, of light.

Winter rain means little to summer,
Falling as it does in December.
But the cool wind of the years end,
Leaves spring grieving for winters relief,
Weeping as the chilly rain,
Then turns into its frozen lover.

Beauty is a late soaking rain,
on a long dead garden.

Beauty is a sunny face,
On a sad cloudy day.

Beauty is a feather,
Floating lazy in the sky.

Beauty is knowledge
Of times uncomfortable,

Beauty is surreal.

Life’s currents have cast me out,
Indiscretion now holds sway,
Over my dissolute tower.
My body,
lies naked upon the stone,
Immoral, unreachable,
Alone.

Like a wispy breath,
The seeker within me,
Has gone forth,
To claim my identity.
I will not weep,
Stripped free of morality,
As I am.

In distant times one might see her,
walking restless lonely streets,
compassion trailing in her breeze,
A simply being of light, she fought,
against the enemies of love and loss.
Unlike a ghost or a wandering wraith,
Her eyes were not a such solemn lakes,
but lifted her love, her life, her fate.

Blue eyes teasing skies above,
till nights unknown enigma begun,
My friend, my love, my poet, my dove,
If not reading, writing or crying tonight,
Above my laptops blueish light,
Should her silken breath then kiss my ear,
my death may then be solid and real,
as her ghost of life might then become.

Something tossed on a chair
makes you mentally linger
the scent of her hair
Her woman’s whisper
her musical laughter
Now crosses your absence
So the days pass by
As you strain to listen
For her beckoning voice
In the darkening distance.

I am loving,
a wonderfully **** you,
intense in a sudden sense
where shades are drawn,
against a coming eclipse,
Sharply showing at noon.

The light streams thin,
Hungry for your face,
In a hurry to trace,
Its soft outline upon you,
A revelation in its image,
An unveiling anew.

I find too much ecstasy,
In the curve of your sun,
Too much left untasted,
Sudden salt on my tongue,
Eyes dim unable to focus,
Shadows dance, elated,

I am much too narrow,
In the coming darkness,
Breath drawn in, a scent of you,
Skin merged, as umbra’s do
My being sensed, soon it knew
I had then just willingly
Been eclipsed by you.

Dreaming doubters of unheard words,
A wind in the trees has startled the birds,
And insects cower from cold in the grass,
But the barflies at least have beer,
And nothing to fear till the midnights past.

People on the screen
Are murdering one another
while I remain just the same
Maybe even a little bored
unaware my minds eye
Now bleeds blood red

Piece by piece
I know despair in the form of love
I know to wander as a homeless dove
before the horizon ever has its fill

In the wind I still believe
To preserve our story
in the whispered breeze
I believe in the warming sun
soft on a silken head
in naked love in times of peace

Sleepless without ease,
I see I will not be,
Next to your lilied body.
You were neither,
my master, nor my muse,
But only a longed-for delirium,
dismissed but loose in my memory.
Distant yet never so close,
sleepless I walk your sinking earth,
lying down only to hear your mirth,
And feel your hard ticking of time.
I urge you, set fire to the rage,
Collect the ashes of your pain,
And go,
Then allow me to sleep here alone.

Poetry - may you be a lilted word,
May you be that unspoken quest,
in which all may wander in awe.
Let words with wings of bird,
Power of love, and grace of deer,
Be the inspiration of my message,
so that some may treasure,
the unheard cheer of all voices
through my silent words thus written.

I guess you could have called it poetic how by the age of 16 I had no recollection of what happiness tasted like on my tongue, but yet new well the taste of sorrow. Some might say it was poetic and tragically beautiful.
It was not poetic, nor was it beautiful, but it was tragic. It was so very, very sad, and that sadness has only expanded now that I’ve grown to see others seek glory in sorrow.
The sorrow of another is never glorious, never something to seek, unless to alleviate the source. Sorrow is not strength. It is a lump of hot iron in your chest that burns you from the inside out, and it is sour and harsh and repulsive to taste.
And yet still I have no right to think that the sorrow of another is anything other than tragic, or any less so than my own. Though it is human, it is not nature, your sorrow is your own, and belongs to no other.
Sorrow is like an abandoned building, empty and lifeless, resigned to a fate it does not know.
People never seem to pay much attention to abandoned buildings though,
until they become one.