Want to save a leg?
It’s gonna cost you an arm!
Want to save an arm?

constantly confessing sins
      never knowing forgiveness
like a man with a book
      but unable to read
or a fool hoarding gold
      and dying from hunger

enslaved to the pride of life
       the measure of men
of winning and success
      compelled to boast
the works of one's arms
      flaunting wit, or foolishness

but oblivious to the exposure
      of their nakedness and vulgarity
of pain and confusion
      of faith in their strength and wit
of the Mark of Man
      on their arms and foreheads

believing by strength of will
      what is given and not by works
the soul betraying the flesh
      in double mindedness and hypocrisy
seduced by free will
      but enslaved to another's will

but the further apart,
      the more fervent
to execute the command
      to impose commands
on their neighbours
       when the only command is love

by the measure they measure
      they are measured
for they have become
      the enemy they condemned
and judgement is just
      for evil judges evil

I wish
her scars were on my heart
and not on her arms.

Dear Mr. Carl Sandburg,

Once, you wrote:

"The lucid and endless wrinkles"
Draw in, lapse and withdraw.
Wavelets crumble and white spent bubbles
Wash on the floor of the beach."

Having observed often, the exact phenomenon you reference
in the words above, the undulating action upon a sand white beach, patient waiting the greetings of the all-day wavelets, which reminded you, which reminded me, of the lucid and endless wrinkles sea worn upon our faces, it is my happy duty incumbent to inform your spirit, that we have yet in this the 21st century, to invent, a machine that does it better than you man, hu-man, connecting our aged faces to the timeless stroking of the Earth by the water that sustains life.

Yours truly,

Mr. Smoke Scribe

A fire abloom
Deep within my heart
Even a match
Couldn't start the flare
You blaze so brightly
Without having to burn
Away from the field of roses
In my arms
You don't see how much you mean
With or without
A blazing mark

My hand writes when it is sleepy,
Though my pin prickled pal pays me no tithe,
The static sound feel of my arm,
Removes itself from me,
Granting formerly unprecedented agency,
Between my brain and my limb,
With me left the unhappy spectator

I'll wait for the day
When I have you
In my arms and
Hear my favorite song
In your chest again.