A little girl in handmade dress.
           Black shoes with  
White knee-high stockings.
                       Shy eyes framed
By and hiding behind
            Long  curly
            Blonde locks,
Waiting with me at
                   The bus stop
Each school morning.

Vulnerable  
             Protected from the harsh
Outside world.
               But nothing can completely
Shut out its
                             Cruel essence.

The outside
                       Can creep in or the
Inside holds dormant
                      Outside influence
Like the eggs of the proverbial tree
                      Lizard laid among the
Other eggs in a
Bird's nest  
             Remaining dormant to eventually
Hatch to feed on the newly born fowl.


Faith soothes the pain
                      Daily standing
On the sidelines
                     Of the pantomime
Of the mundane

As lush dense
Ivy reaches
                         For the sky but must
First slowly crawl
                              Over a cold
Gray wall of stone  
                               Reaching
For dreams and ideals
                          Once clearly seen
On the horizon of the
                      Unobscured  plains
Of childhood.
                    A bit harder at the myopic
Foothills of youth.  
                       Now harder than ever

At the jagged  
                  Snowcapped mountains of
Adulthood.


The curly locked
                             Little girl still lives
After all these years.  
                             Lives on to
                         Balance the weight
Of disappointments
                    Compressed by daily
Reminders of that

Once dormant inside
                       Influence unleashed
In the innermost
                      Sanctity of trust. Lives

In the security
                        Of ideals gradually
Becoming reality.

                       That place in the heart
That no one can touch  
                             That no one can
Invade.

Thank God that home is where the heart is!

                  --Daniel Irwin Tucker

                                   ¤¤¤

He is
My Azure Dreambird,
(The Sovereign of Songbirds)
That soars upon
Skies of Resonance.
His sapphire wings
Weightless by valor,
Hallowed every doubt
That
Cursed my shadow
Until credence reigned.

He is
The Musicality of my Soul,
That I climbed as
A stairway
Into
Gates of Aether
Upon
Porcelain keys
Of an impearled
Grand Piano.

His sound emittance
Ascended in frequency until
Pitch became subliminal
For height
ceased to be
Height,
And depth,
Ceased to be
Depth,
It was
Ineffable harmony
And resolution became effortless
With
The touch of his hand.

He is
The Wings of the Dawn,
A Sweeping Rapture
That raised
Me
Beyond the stratosphere
Until graced by
Untarnished embrace
Of the Baptistery of the Sun.

I burst
From Light’s Intemerate Womb,
Renewed and
Gazed upon Terraqueous Gaia
Then for once,
(Yes, for all eternity)
Succumbed to
Faith in the Transcendence
Of his tender affections.

Woe was existence
Before His lightwaves radiated
Within my heart,
For when I purged my pulse
Of that quaking rhythm
And
Hollow cries
Upon his ears,
He stood moved
And remained
Doughty in his devotion
To me.

In that moment
I fathomed his soul
Glistened
O, for he had not forsook me.

I bear a pilgrimage.
One sought to be
Heard,
Seen,
Felt,
Breathed,
And
Divined
By my
Once
Somnolent spirit
Been
Roused
By the incendiary thew of
His ardor.

My revenant soul
Hath emerged from
The Chrysalis of Time as
The Apotheosis of Astral Flame
(A Reverberation of the Cosmo-Plexus of Love)
That since
The Days of Time Immemorial
Guided by the
Whisper of the stars,
I now cleave
To that celestial susurrus:

To the solace buried beneath
The Soil of Afflicition
(For anguish was all I knew)
In repose
Yet yearning to be
Resurrected
In The Dream of Acquisition,
To for eternity behold
The timeless fervor
That doth layeth
In His heart

Your commitments and word
Are inks stained on cold skin
Taken without pain sacrificed,
Easily washed away in water:
Simple imitations...
That at its essence
Mock the sanctity and identity
of actual tattoos.

For each and every other,
There's something to be said.

There’s something to be said for –
The security guards
With coke nails.

There something to be said for –
The alcoholics
That moonlight as bartenders.

There’s something to be said for –
The huddled mother,
Cradled child and cusped copper.

There’s something to said for –
The recluse with word,
Broken atop a glass of wine.

For each and every other,
There’s something to be said,

But one knows not another word.

Only the orphaned
Crave family
Only the violated
Crave shelter
Only the insecure
Crave validation
Only the dying
Crave life
Only the the embattled
Crave peace

there is no sanctity
in the way you caress my face
although i always convince myself there is.
it's kind of like religion in that way:
all of the words
and thoughts
and actions
that created us
and linked us
are probably
fabricated lies.
and yet, i still look to you
as if you are a font of holy water
inside of a church,
as if your contents
were blessed
by some higher being.
i'm constantly getting drunk
hoping that maybe this wine
will turn into the blood of christ
or the blood of you
but it doesn't,
and i just get more drunk
and less whole.
it's a pity, really,
that i continue
to be so pious
and so faithful
to you, to god
when the only thing
the two of you really have in common
is you both love to let me down.