I, before your hands found me, would fly
Past murky, flaxen winds and uncloaked, brittle trees
While ticking, tocking years marched by.

How could the earth behind the bleeding sun so simply sigh
At prideless princes, careless bees and frightened, frigid fleas?
I learned before that I, without your hands, should always fly.

Speak and thread the eye of quickly and softly luring lies.
Until I play in clouds of light, gently, sweetly, please
Forestall those ticking years that slip so easily by.

Wearily I pull worn reins, thinned and tattered, below the tie
Then pray for whispered secrets and rolling, trusting, fearless seas.
I wait, but still without your hands, I learn that I may fly.

Without much left within me but a withered, ragged cry
I’ll offer up the edgeless, vast and countless shuffling sea.
We’ll watch and share those ticking years that go so quickly by.

The smell of autumn rainfall, filled with dew and golden skies,
We lay beneath and count the scars the swindling jet planes leave.
Unlocked and healed, without your hands, I know that I can fly,
But pray that ticking, tocking years go slowly, slowly by.

If I could bite the stars I would.
I'd stick out my tongue, blinding you for just a moment as the dust would slide off, right out of my mouth.
I can see it now: you wipe your eyes, crows feet
Gripping the rounds of my affection again.
Your laughter would fill the sky, the air so thick I wouldn't breathe. You'd be standing, gazing and not noticing that for a minute, the earth had lost a quiver of its light.

Without a shielded case surround his head
The revving world would never say what’s said.
How sweet he lives beneath a clouded lie
But laughs and writes and shuts his mother’s eye.
In blackened caves and cracking creeks he’ll speak
Of God and all that shares a curious peek.
A creased lovely nose points to dragons, toads
A day he’ll know as he plugs in sharp codes.
Almond eyes search for a will to mean
Peach doors compose the thoughts and glittery sheen
Of winter. A waxing sled moves, becomes
The symbol of his wild broods, his beckoned drums.
Dear brother, know that spirits may be guides
Toward murdered praises that the earth betides.
What will he have in place of past sorrow
A heartache of untouched grace thumping through
He’ll leave beside the road curved up above
Whispered dirt and moonlit walks, cloaked to shove
The speech buried around his head, uncased
The memoir of his name, once known, erased.

My mind is littered with prayers written on
Creamed paper, bound with nimble, bronzed fingers.
The prayers are written to no one in particular.
One starts: You and I grew under the same angry sun.
We eventually learned all that could be done was to bathe in the harsh rays and kiss the fizzling pools of summer.
I watch birds escape sharp whips of winter
Finally understanding urgency by way of survival.
You're no exception.
As they scan the sky in the spotted sun
I wonder why you aren't amongst them, searching for the answers you asked me for.
Your mind is sheltered by thorns, is scarlet like the rose, yearning to know what lay hidden between the sheets of petals, blanketed by the whispers of searching crows.

Fair is the sunshine that weaves rays
on the loom of callused, weary feet.

All before she surrenders to
gusts of winter winds, tucked carelessly behind
shadows of turned leaves.

The people, withered and tired, have ceased their
incessant questions of her too frequent departures
and mirrored arrivals.

When will she accept her invitation to stay and
melt the dead into the earth?

The softened pads of warmly, tightened skin
Closed over chords and venting stings of sound
No speech is raised above the fields of home
She only squeaks and hopes a sign will show
A ***** beg within her towards the goal
To free the words that make her become one.
An inch of time climbs up upon her back
She wrinkles puffs of laughter, irons frights.
Remembering memories all around her grow
Without a tingle of her thickened skin.
The sun did move along the trees that day.
The sea now waves beneath her blackened feet.
The world now pulses up and down her spine
And fly and fly again and wander nigh.
The trunk, her brain is hollow without guide.
She’s lost the end and given up her pride.

Within you there’s a place that makes you free
Drink through a straw, for life is there to be.
Now you, the moon can slip beneath the sand,
Without a fear to lose this sacred game.

The skies, with heavy clouds and smoky soft-filled light,
Morph into days that furnish this reality, defined
By slightest laughs that bounce between a mother and a night.
Young kids may never find a closed place or a door declined.
I find myself along the curvatures that shift the heavens up in ration
Of the crunched leaves, sought by guards who wonderously fear.
People, tall, (and puzzled most) ask questions, without all hesitation
I bit my lip so hard the other day and metal filled my mouth
Reminding me to never to smile harshly underneath
Before I never could quite feel
Content. I did this time in case the blood was lodged between my teeth.
I ripped the seams of four long strips on across a banana peel
This time, I heard a thick voice, say, “no and don’t you go.”
Now and then, I wait and listen, smile and soon it shows.