I streched the spring.
Then put it back.

Closed the reciever
With a click and a clack.

I charged the handle.
Then let it go.

I counted my rounds.
Twenty nine in the mag.
One in the hole.

She felt the same.
Cold and steady.

I felt no shame.
Cold and ready.

The air felt heavy.

But something was new.
Some mechanical remedy.

My magazine was full.
And I could face my enemy.

with a 2 lb. trigger pull.

I watched the crows scatter as the clouds rolled in by scores and composition, a roiling storm that rained in notes through the f-holes of my violin soul. Their wings had been torn in the shape of your music and their cries gave rise to your sinister metronome. Relentless were the pace of the tick and the tock, the lightning and the shock, and the crashing of thunder that shook the foundations of your empty concert halls. Their barren walls bled solitude in silence and yet your composer held firm to his composure, slicing venomously at the air with sword in hand. Coat tails whipping in the gales and still the music played. Diving on a broken wing through the dividing currents of your lyrics, the crows gave chase…and still the music played...

I sometimes play video games and I sometimes do yard work. I cook on occasion and on occasion it’s not bad. I get up, get showered, get dressed, and go to work. I spend time with my kid, my wife, and my friends in no particular order. I wash the cars on the weekend and cut the grass. I pay my bills on time and feed the cat if her bowl is empty. I have a fairly suburban life more or less. So what’s so special about me?

Everything!

Toll the bell tower and chime the hour of night
The touching hands that fingers laced embrace
Locked in a lovers hungry kiss undenied
Slake the thirst to sated lips
Unread hearts
To undying love
Burning cold as fire
Under a dancing moon
Among a chorus of clouds
Over a feast of flesh caressing...

Angel take your breath now and blast the trumpet's rage to tear at the walls. Red chord crumble the tone, abandoned sorrows and crashing stones, defeated army of no one marching no where alone. Cold sweat, pale skin, cold sins to atone, in the arms of grace, of flesh and bone, and a kiss that outlasts time healing time after time.

There's war on the TV
You watch it as a show
It's real though
So much more than you know
I hope you'll never know

I pray you'll never go
To follow where I've been
To march in sync with sin
Booted feet of monsters
****** hands of men
They're one and the same

Slap the magazine
Seat it in the well
"Click"
Chamber the round
Take aim

Loose the black dogs
Heat the steel barrel
The hand held beasts of war
Barking in their firery savagery

let fly their teeth
that they bite to break skin
Commanded to fire "FIRE!"
Lead filled air
Raining artillery
A deafening symphony

Tat Tat Tat
Falls the enemy
Tat Tat Tat
Falls my brothers
Tat Tat Tat
Falls your sons
Tat Tat Tat
Falls your fathers

And our souls
Falling farther
Stuff the memory down
Hiding it deep
Rocking in sleep
Nothing looks the same
Through tainted eyes
And nothing feels the same
Through tainted lives

No one sees these tears
This hate
This fear

And
No one hears

The soldier's cries.

I left my footprints on the sand piper shore, a lonely expanse of coast that stretched out for miles, and I, beguiled, took this path in search of healing. It was a journey that had a start, but its ending was based on mending and whether or not this would happen by my hands….or yours…..

I turned on the T.V. to watch the report on the weather, it made me think about myself, my life and my future. It made me ask if I should live in fear of things that haven’t come to pass. Or should I live my life for the moment, try to enjoy it with a laugh? You see, it’s impossible not to think about what may happen to us tomorrow, there may be a storm, or a flood, maybe even a death or some other sorrow. Maybe you’ll be lucky and it won’t be all that bad. You could find love, marry a wife, have kids and become a dad.  It’s all speculation of course, just like the man reporting the weather. We don’t know what will happen later, all we can do is try to live better. The future isn't set so no one knows what it will bring. I guess you could say life's cloudy…with a chance of anything.

Somewhere high up in the trees
Under a canvas of midnight and laughing stars
His music dreams on a moss covered bough

He is my friend and has always been
Known by everyone during the day
And by the setting sun he is forgotten

Huddled safely in that lofty place of his
Feathers ruffled against the subtle breeze
He waits for dawn in the rustling foliage

And when the sky is aflame
With the breath of a new day’s morning
He will sing again in those precious tones

And we, those of us who had forgotten
In that day will remember him
And in his songs
We will remember what it means to be alive.

Whisper archane to my thoughts
Wind of gales
To bend boughs of oaken wood

And there I stood
Patient among the grove

Alone

A prisoner to a world I can't call home
Driven by rage turned sour
In my Hour of solitude

Tomorrow's ghosts
Lust and live today

So fleeting in their time

*So magnificent...

I saw a white dove
Upon a white fence
I pondered upon this
And what it might have meant

While down below
Alone in the white snow
A white rabbit was born
Looking somewhat forlorn

I knew I saw them
I could have sworn
And more flakes fell
On the ground to adorn

It painted quite the picture
I must say I’m enthralled
But thinking about it now
Perhaps I saw nothing at all

I stumbled upon a wishing well while walking through the woods. It told me it’s fair warning and I nodded that I understood. It told me I could have three wishes but careful I must be, for what I really ask for must be something that I need. It told me I could ask for things I want for myself or others. It said I could be rich and famous, or give the best to my sons or daughters. To that I said “hey take it easy, I just want a drink of water.” I didn’t come here seeking things, so you really shouldn’t bother.  I’ve made my life with my two hands and it isn’t much but it’s mine. I have a small house and happy family and they are doing just fine. See some people have the lives they want and don’t need anything else, so give me some water as a good well should but keep your wishes to yourself.

Sometimes I feel that my life has been lived in stages. Each moment is as separate as dead birds kept in rusty cages. Scattered at the bottom where they fell to remain wasted and it’s all been written down to create a book, with blank pages. I have never seen behind your masks and may never see your true faces, but I know who you all are, you’re the same person from different places. We all want to believe we’re different, but regardless of our gender or our races, we have all endured the same; the strife, the struggle and the rages. Add the love and laughter and the scars collected over ages and still all that we’ll have left from this life is a book filled with empty pages.

This writer’s block is heavy; it sits on my chest and becomes my test for the taking, pressing my emotions to the point of breaking. Ever taking, ever testing a man’s will to take quill in hand and fight the parchment in a battle of pen strokes, curves and lines. This stalemate enemy in my shattered time holds the battle line and controls the destitute thoughts, controls the ideas I brought to bear. Tear them free from the grasp of this, my enemy, and scatter them lightly across the pages, creating symphonies without a sound in an arrangement of profound rages. They are rambles, rants and raves and nothing more, with no winner, no loser, and no settled score. There’s nothing to be won. Yet here I sit, nervously undone with uncertain hands that shake, for what came so easy to me was so easy to break. So thoughts may move in circles, to occupy the wandering mind for mercy’s sake, to shake the tree and make fall the fruit thought to be lost, thought to be beyond cost, that which was free under the skies. Because the ability to sing of heroes, of villains, of love and of lies was never mine to have, it belonged instead to my soul. A thing once made whole, once broken, that when stirred is outspoken, and bleeds across the lonely paper dolls to wander freely in the halls of lost dreams. Covered in the dust of forgotten themes that seemed brilliant once, though never shared by the trepid heart that wouldn’t dare, for some things are better left unsaid. Unread words of dread that seem to repeat over and over, coming back from the dead to seek their exposure. And I am somewhere in the middle of it all, somewhere lost in my mind and I am enthralled, I can only watch this opera to its final verse, lay my hands across the keys and give control to this curse, like a once proud ship tied to the docks, this is what it is to have writer’s block….