I don’t want to be angry,
I want to run into your arms and tell you all the details of my day.

I don’t want to be lonely,
I want to feel you hold me close and promise me we’ll make it there someway.

But rage hurts less than sadness,
And loneliness I know,
So I’ll continue moving on
The only way I know
And scream your name into my pillow
Just to let you go.

- p. winter

I heard the night singing
and dancing in the wet streets,
the cold wind that blows into melodies,
the star and the moon with its dim light,
the best show that not everyone knows about,
and I'm sitting in silence,
and a lit cigarette in the right hand,
and a poem,
and the end of this year.

Rumi urged jumping into the boiling sea of passion
and grief would run from you.
I have been in that sea.
Swimming in those waters
caught up in the currents
keeping my head above water
there was no time for grief.

Now, still, there is passion
but more like a vat of rich soup
about to boil.

The tentacles of loss
reach out to wrap themselves
about my wrists and ankles.
Age, a slow moving barge,
moves up on me
but my arms and legs splash,
and determined,
I inhale a rich tide of inspiration
from courageous friends.
I breathe love
in poems, whispers and music
and battle the sinking.