An unwanted presence is now tapping on the window. The sky has shifted in colour reflecting the imminent emergence of a dark and ancient being. I’ve not known it before but feels strangely familiar, I do know you but choose to ignore you. Your laughter is haunting. I cannot reason or bargain with you. You have a singular purpose governed only by pure instinct. I’m powerless to fight against something I cannot see. But you’ve always been there gently reminding me that one day we shall finally meet. Desperately trying to avoid you I lost my way and found myself aimlessly wondering a path surrounded in darkness and uncertainty. The sudden realisation that you’ve tricked me and instead of running from you I’ve been heading towards you. With each step the path behind me falls away, there is no going back. I am alone. I’ve come to the end of the road, I see you now.

Meet me at the ravine's drop
Feel my body covered in frost.
Find me at a mountain's top.
As you have earned my trust.

Heat me with that heart of yours.
Hope me with your words.
Cover me with planets' cores.
Fly me with the birds.

Drown me with your dreams.
Choke me with your hug.
Blind me with your beams.
And slowly become my drug.

For I have awaited your presence.
And hope I couldn't bear.
And now I enjoy the incense.
Of the mighty red flare.

He stands there with a passive regard.
The silence mirrors that of a graveyard.
In front of a lit door,
enters the wintry air.
Extends his arm, welcomingly unbarred.

You want perfection
While I hold your baggage
But can you hold mine
For just a second
Oh wait you can't
I see
Also do you want to
Remain blameless while
I hold all the stakes
Well that's fine too
Let me spoil you
Even with you
Sitting on my back
That's that true real love
I doubt there
Ever be a tipping point
As I carefully hold it in
With no spaces
To vent
As I smile

Supressed feelings, this is unimaginable pressure.
Roaming around with happiness, with the greatest treause,
Though I'm showing it slightly,
that never lets me get as loose.

Hiding it and hiding it, unintentionally and uncontrollably,
Creates the biggest void, and maybe leaves you wih some ruins of what you used to be.
It's hard living in a world where I'm not like I want to be...

I need some screws, a little help, to put myself back together,
And I have to be careful, to not make myself sadder.

I know, I know, somewhere under These layers I won't see a void,
But I'm going to be complete as I used To be.

Rain on me.
Wash away my doughts
And insecurities

She was that stranger..

A stranger to her eyes..

A stranger in her mind..

It hurt, it really hurt,

but with time she loved it.

She was a stranger..forever-changing.

Always born living and dying,

like a leaf on a breeze..

always on the flow..

swirling and dancing in a sundress.

Like the moon,

she will always fade and glow.

She will always rise and break,

silently like a wave on the water surface.

She will always be reborn, and transform..

like a black butterfly.

She is life and she is death..

She is a black butterfly.

The poem was inspired by a particular photo of the WT C, and after that by my first visit to the 9/11 Memorial.  On the day of 9/11, I was working about a diagonal mile away, and from our windows, we could see people jumping to their death.

Open sky annulled
to bordered lines of
uptown edges,
worldview momentarily
forcibly redefined by
memories of buildings and sadder days,
recollections of pillars of biblical smoke rising

A photograph
makes me look up,
and sit down historically,
need to catch a breath,
to rest mentally,
upon a storied small bridge's steps,
that I well recall,
a disappeared street stoop.
all were rubble then and once
upon that day.

Wear, tear, and older eyes distill perspective,
but the hardy heart is hardly stilled
by the recognizable gray upon
bon vivant gray reflective surfaces of
memories of buildings and sadder days

So today, on a reborn street,
I rest upon reconstituted speckled curbstone,
the city's lowered down ledges,
the city's lowered down-town boundaries,
constantly redrawn, but
nonetheless, always rebuilt from their own
regenerated stony compost,
and the NY passersby doesn't even notice
a man, head in hands,
silently weeping, thinking that:

We throw away so much we should have kept.
We keep so much we should have thrown away.

Lose keepsakes, but keep our mysterious sadnesses
locked away in compartments that open only to
benedictions uttered in ancient tongues.

Make your own list,
be your own curator,
catalogue visions of sophomoric triumphs,
museum mile pile
those early poetic drafts,
be unafraid of memories
raw and ungentrified,
overlaid, buried underneath
postmortem of dust-piles of senior critiques

Finally went downtown to see
where the blessed water falls
into catacomb pits that once
were the foundations
of buildings that ruled the cityscape,
downtown anchors
for a modern city that exists
only because it was built on
million year old granite bedrock

Stone monuments are stolid, discrete.
Memories are of grayed, frayed edge consistency.
Negatives resurrected that survive digitally,
all blend synthetically, layer upon layer,
essence distilled in a single,
black and white photograph
that serves to
disturb complacency,  
awaken stilled pain,
reflections suppressed,
are restored