No fireworks without you, Star in my sky
Red lips wishing yours would draw nigh
White hot flame burns still with desire
To be lost in your blue eyes I’ll never tire
Striped shadows cast by bars unseen
No independence from this in-between
Wearing red white & blue, this 4th of July
While secretly wishing you’d reoccupy
realms of my body, king of my heart
this homeland beckons for you to impart
that freedom I felt so long ago
when you spoke softly what I still know,
I love you… & I love you too
I’ll remember you with my red, white and blue

Receding, returning to me
More space to wish I could be
Caressing your face, brushing the bristle
with fingers gentle, light as thistle
down. Circling your lips before we dip
In. This sin, beloved,
dreaming of love-
ing you.
I want to touch your face
Someday when this pain is erased.
Is that not in a future
rewritten? No
pain…

Do you remember how
I’d always catch you gazing?
However sly you tried to be
in sneaking glances from your softly hooded eyes
I somehow knew, would turn to look at you…
I still do… Know, I mean…
When you think of me with your cool blue eyes
gazing filled with tenderness and care.
Like tonight… I sensed your affection
& smiled across the miles in your direction.
Did you catch my twinkling grateful eyes?
Your kind thoughts… they really do make my day.

When I woke I thought of you,
Smiling; do you think of me, too,
Sunrise of my day?
As I packed their lunches
my mind perused your memory.
Driving kids to school I thought of you.
Explaining mortgages in simple words to a curious boy
I beamed again imagining you.
In a waiting room, later paying bills
Your story was my smile.
Hearing music, reading,
You joined me mentally,
repeatedly…

I hope you’re doing well.

When eating meals
images of you provided truer satisfaction.
Water drops cascading
Transported me back to your side.
I heard your calming voice in my waking dreams
I thought again and again of you.
How many times?
As many as the steps I walked today
As many as the breaths inhaled at night
That’s how many times You return.
That’s how many times I miss you
every day.

Machines of war
Wreckage of more
than cities in their wake
Mothers and daughters *****
Children scarred with horrors
Homes gone
Families broken
People broken
All for…
Why?
The devil doesn’t dwell
In hell
He commands from capitols
He judges generals
He wages war
He deals in destruction
On earth
On children huddling in holes
On women without rights or hope
On mothers and fathers who fight
For life
Can this devil be destroyed?

The universe conspires against me
Proclaiming with each futile wish of mine
“NO, you fool! IT SHALL NOT BE!”
In your deep wound feel the brine

Laughingly it thwarts my every effort, every hope
Capricious deities strike thunder from their skies
Wrong connections, caged pretensions,
pain! I cannot cope

Power lost, appointment cancelled
Their bolts of lightning pummel down
He commands, he’ll determine where I fly
So I fall wingless to the ground

Then for a final blow I’m questioned
“Do I really know of love?”
Should his earthquake break my shackles
To a more fearful dungeon I’ll be shoved

Many forms it takes:
Aching, stabbing, numbing, chronic,
dull crescendoing to piercing pang
I shift; it smites, no tonic
for the bone-deep bruise, the sharpened fang.

Mind & body too united
Too in tune to pain
Heart too unrequited
Meds & treatments all in vain

End-of-day: I’m wasted, broken, spent
Snake now coils, flicks its tongue
Injured python slithers to emotions’ scent
Constricts the soul, and I’m undone.