Faced with danger
Fear turns to anger.
Muscles bunch,
Blood pumps,
Awareness sharpens.
A state of coiled readiness prevails.
Energy is harnessed.
**** or be killed.
The stakes are high,
Life or death,
No prisoners taken.
….
Faced with danger
Fear turns to anger.
Attack on the heart,
Internal,
This wound bleeds malice.
The retort must match or better still surpass
In delivering pain.
But who the victor
In this exchange?
Both hurt,
No prisoners taken.
….
A fatal strike
Brings confidence
A sense of mastery
And status
A survivors glory.
But that which protects, can also poison.
Human spirit crushed,
The soul’s wounds fester,
Hidden, unhealed.
Dying yet living,
Anger has wrought fear instead.
….

Leave your intoxication.
Accept the few outbursts,
the many bouts of sadness.

Study how to prolong joy.
Keep it with you.
There are better things to forget.

Don't depend on the pen
for too long.
That is addictive self-reliance.

The guilty pleasures are fine,
so are the times when you consider
the deep, red bathing regime.

The way out can be appealing,
like the untainted skin of a late teen,
but they are better things.

'How can I sit here,'
you must wonder
'and repeat all of the things
that have placed me in this cage.'

If I cannot change that
then how am I ever
going to live by a word
I only ever said
between my teeth.

I did not trust it,
so it failed me.
Now I do,
it is failing me.
The world carries on.

Chopin plays on;
I no longer enjoy him there,
because now I need him.
Unlike Chopin
I am no longer needed.

It is incomprehensible:
in and amongst the longing
to reverse those mistakes
which drone like wasps in each ear;
both stings reaching deep in to my gut,

There is still you.

Back to the closet to await another year
The black lapel of my jacket
Sparkled with lost glitter
From a little girl's ball gown
A thousand stars in a night sky
I'll not brush them off
Just yet
So to remember tomorrow
Joy in the eyes of my little angel
And that I was a prince once

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new

Whose name you meditate --
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.