Checkered choices rise some nights,
play chess with all my frightful failings.
Queen's Pawn to Rook 5.
          Nail my footsteps
          to the concrete season.
          I'm losing pieces it seems.

I'm a sardonic grinner
     and under these eyebrows, it's nuclear winter.
Wending my way through the last
three years, I find no release valve.
The pressure will build and place
its long arm along my shoulder,
pull me far from my friends.
One.
                                         Two.
One.
                                         Two.
                   Step
                 by step
      by hammer blow step
a story is crafted, installed with a lock
          in a circular book.

Queen's Pawn to Ryman Street
                  1:45 a.m.
simmering skin over ice armored innards,
the freezing rain sends up my curses
                                               like steam
                                  clouding off of my shoulders
and into the skyline.

I've castled my way out of checkmate questions.
Not my move to make,
                     so I won't life a finger.
Queen's Pawn to front doorstep,
          then straight on to bed.

And in that moment,
she was gone.
She vanished like a wisp of smoke takes its leave from a candle:
retreating quickly and never looking back.
And suddenly,
it's as if it never existed at all,
but for the faint memory of its ghostly form.
Thus she departed.
She took her leave from this world to make room for
him.

Patterns float
obscured
by uncertain mists
recreating
a scene perceived
and painted
in washes of water colour
overlapping, merging
transfixed
fresh and timeless.

The shape
of routine activities
unpredictably change
or shatter
behind
the inexorable advance of time
as sequences
inevitably retreat
into a fading future
until the circle is complete.

November rolled down I-90
into this town
with the year's first snow and wind
                             I closed my mouth
into a fading highway line:
straight, short, horizontal
as the grey stains shade its white.

It's Wednesday night
          and the tunes inside my car
underline a quiet month
          strained through these bars

"What's the score?" say apartment walls
empty seats tied with unreturned phone calls
It stood that way last I took the tally
on shivering walks' shortcuts through alleys

                                  This is just another rut
                                  walked into these roads
                                  where my unabashed feet
                                  and my aching toes
can save my face some embarrassment
when the bent skies straighten out this cracking pavement

Just a little while later,
look back to the Sun,
gonna warm my face in the Winter dawn
and shake off these somber streetsalt thoughts
                                    caught
my friends on the rebound,
we'll remember now
                                    caught
my friends on the rebound,
we'll remember now

                                          I'll be fine again
                                          come February.
                                          Line my stupid fears up,
                                          shade their eyes.