I follow the fault lines
of your soul
Cracked , shaken , go ahead you are stirred
No need for apologies unless you are willing to listen to mine
I can patch your frame but I will never be able to repair the brain
It has been under too much strain
Still we can sit on our hands
Contemplating all the edges of nonsense
Laugh at all the pain we drag around in the barges of our past
Let us embrace around the  corners that cut sharper than suicide
Kintsugi my life with golden voice
As I hold your broken milk
of dispair
Put your fingers into the gaps and tears
Plug the dikes of my failures as you fight my fire with your waters . I don't care but I do as long as you do but don't care . Breathe the breath of my exhaust as I lick your lips of regret . It seems we are beyond repair .

I am the embers
In the fireplace of your heart
My fire has made you warm
In the eternal after glow you mark

Your surface is so smooth and worn
A delight to my finger's touch
I really come alive deep inside
When the rush becomes too much

In darkness we see so clear
As I caress the small of back
Liberated from our fears
There is no loving that we lack

By dawn the spooning's heat
is all that will remain
Let me be your chimney sweep
And we will burn again

We were two alone in loneliness
Worked together for several years
Always kept a professional distance
Made sure all was as appeared

Then one day the news arrived
She took it all so hard
Her always inmovable nature
Crumbled like a house made out of cards

I embraced her quaking body
As the tears and sobs did flow
Like a little child she turned into
With nowhere else to go

Holding her tight seemed so right
I could feel her letting go
Then the dam burst and discharged
Out the love did flow

Soon we were cheek to cheek
With nothing but tears between
When our lips did touch
I felt her heart redeemed

To the floor we soon did fall
And rolled , each in the others arms
Our lips were locked and cocked
It was impossible to disarm

With hands and fingers fumbling
Ripping off our clothes
We were soon nothing more than
Bare valleys with moist knolls

We made love until exhausted
Then she realized what she'd done
The passion fled replaced by shame
"can't put the bullet back in the gun"

We got dressed without a glance
"I have to run" was all she said
"Okay , I will see you later"
And out the door she fled

A set of verses finished,
assigned to paper  -
though read, now or later,
remain strangely incomplete  -
neglectful of some
important addendum.
   There is always
an undefined
element missing  -
as if the soul were not
properly emptied
onto the page  -
always an
elusive sun-ray
gleaming just outside the
poetic endeavor
that written words
can never fully capture.




- fr

I am but a stone
just skipping across a body of still.
I get a taste
yet never fully drenched.
Not until I lose all momentum
and mobility - I sink.

Submerge...

And then drown.

love leads you willingly
a slave to love.

love is a master
of love

love kneels
and washes your feet.

She was just a mystery
Seldom was she seen
She used to come and visit me
In my midnight summer's  dreams

I often think about him
Now so many years ago
He walks among the angels now
I pace down here below

I used to eat raw lemons
Put a little salt on top
Some now say "make lemonade
If bitter is all you've got"

I crossed the bridge of no retutn
A thousand times a week
By now you'd think I would have found
What it was I seek

So now it comes down to you
I know it does to me
After I burned all my bridges down
The aftermath set me free

Desolation
All the should-haves stacked like prison walls
Make it impossible to see the sky
What was big is now too small and
Cannot hold the folly on it’s way to bury us.
Crippled by the scorch, it won’t be possible
To rearrange ourselves out of this crisis.

Desperation
Incapable of letting go the few nice things
That beautified our former lives,
We know the tide is rising and we will sink
Beneath the weight of all the detritus we clutch,
Paying triple for the privilege of watching
As we drown in bad decisions and remorse.

Depression
Midnight tears that vanish in the arid air,
Stifled sobs that can’t repair the breach
Or heal the wounded vision of tomorrow
That inches ever closer, in the waking hours
Once designated as the time for sleep
Now put to dreary use as time for weeping.

Denigration
Too pale for the blazing sun but briefly,
We cower in the no less burning shade
And guard the meagre treasures of our lifetime,
Heaped in unmarked cartons in the corner
Where they wait for designation to the dump
Or hauled off piecemeal to a resale place

Denouement
We could have seen that this would happen
And lanced the hoarder’s boil before it broke.
It would have been so less expensive
In the pocketbook and in the soul
But here we sit at midnight crying
As catastrophe knocks on the door.
                                        ljm