"Wisdom doesn't come easy,
So when someone tells you something you better listen.
Pay some attention to the wise men,
Even if they don't seem the wisest.
Listen here son,
Sometimes good men do bad things.
So they can protect the ones they love,
God is forgiving, he understands.
Sometimes you gotta get your hands *****,
To keep someone else's clean."

The mother slips into a drunken haze
as her daughter’s heart is hardened still.
She wishes for the former days,
before rejection claimed, “I never will.”

He tried his best to care for her
but to her he was but a splotch
or a stain on her sundress, unconcerned.
Picked flowers nearby, on his lips, “Forget me not.”

It is everywhere

Like time kissing the stream of my life
or the wedding night of a husband and wife
Like splitting one hair
or ruining my heart to get there.
Rejection is surrounding me. Everywhere.

Yet even closer somehow
is the warmth of an embrace, 
a protection from rejection. I feel it now.
I feel it in this secret space.

I was given at age thirty
Many vision
Many messages
Of the world to come
The first the pandemic
The war in Ukraine
And something much worse
I was also sent to tour hell
As I went through with
The protection of an arch angel
I see that gory scenes of just 3 circle and 9 sub circles
And a poison desert
For the worst of humans

I was just an ember in the wind,
Until your turned your heart into my hearth,
You coaxed the flames with kindling,
Turned one spark into a blaze,
And when the cold was creeping in
You kept the chill away,
I was just an ember in the wind,
Until you let me in.

In an old Scottish town I walk in well-worn streets
framed by tall houses of stone.
I study their faces that lean in to meet
me: In their presence I don’t feel alone.

The old houses have faces with many glass eyes.
What have those windows all seen?
They stand watch over us like dispassionate spies
with a vision that’s eerily keen.

What strange things that these walls could all tell
if their silent stones began to shout.
But they say nothing at all of the people who dwelt
all around them, within and without.

I came to trust these rock-ribbed friends
who give shelter and keep silent watch.
Reliably they forever our secrets defend
and are just there for us, a loyal lodge.

A dark clay raven hung at a windowpane
to ward off bright songbirds from glass.
It never spoke a word, nor did it feign
to know of a departed late lass.

I asked it my questions, expecting more
conversation than it had on offer,
but plainly it found me a tedious bore
for it stayed quiet. Not much of a talker.

The brief encounter left me po-faced
as I’d been led to expect more from him.
So I turned away, belying a trace
of disappointment weighing within.

Then I heard the wind, and nothing much else
except the song of birds who’d survived
thanks to the clay raven who hung by a belt
in front of a window to keep it disguised.

We were  like COMPADRES,
we've been TOGETHER SINCE BIRTH,
YOU WERE ALWAYS There for me,
you also knew MY WORTH.
You knew my EVERY THOUGHTS,
PET PEEVES and so MUCH MORE,
My (B.est F.riend F.orever),
is what I TRULY ADORE.
You were like (MY SHADOW),
OH WAIT!!!
That's what you are,
even when I WALKED DISTANCE AWAY,
YOU WERE NEVER, EVER TOO FAR!!!
When I felt COLD AND LONELY,
You were ALWAYS BY MY SIDE,
You STAYED RIGHT UP ON ME, and
You ALWAYS was MY GUIDE.
When I felt like I was ALL ALONE
the LONELINESS SEEMS to NEVER END,  
All I have to do is: LOOK OVER MY SHOULDER
and there she is:
MY SHADOWY FRIEND!!!


B.R.
Date: 8/31/2024