My fingers are fluttering, and I am slipping the needle out of possession.
It has run away from my touch.
My mind waves goodbye, pursued with a guilty feeling of jealousy.
Clink
Clink
Clink
within the sensual folds of the old sheep’s skin.
Its new existence.
The bubbles of wool smoothed.
Smoothed from the stench of **** and blood
and bruised with vibrant colours.
Finally.
I can travel in which the needle did so.
Reaching into the intense warmth of the powerless skein.
I slip my hands.
I don't want to leave the irritable sensation
which tends to my wounds.
Wounds of a victim
inflicted by the violence of the cold.
My breath is as vivid as the colours I grace my hands with.
I hope to never find my needle.
She must stay.
Stay so I may stay warm and safe within the sheep’s forgotten skin.

Frost laces the earth —
a quiet diamond veil,
whispers of smoke rise,
spilling through the breath of trees.

Snow, soft as forgotten dreams,
drifts over stones, over roots,
its silence pressing close,
like a hand on the chest of night.

The wind, thin and sharp,
skims the hollow of the hills,
pulling shadows into its folds,
sewing the moon into the bones of the sky.

Bare branches stretch,
clawing toward a distant sun,
their fingers white and brittle,
writing cold prayers in the dark air.

Below, a river sleeps —
its pulse muted,
veiled under ice,
the valley cradles it in a long, slow sigh.

In the pause between seasons,
we linger —
half-light and half-shadow,
breathing the fragile quiet of winter,
waiting for what is to come.

~
If She is Spring & I a Tree
Skeletal, in Winter's grip
My Tears have long since fallen
Like Leaves that Time forgot
No more to fall, no more to weep
But come, oh come, with gentle Hand
& touch me, as the ripples stir
In some unfathomable Sea
That I may bloom & fall again
To weep & shed anew.

~~
Come my love & touch me
Let me bloom thrive into verdant green
So I can shed my leaves & cry again for thee.

~

It's cold outside
I'm all alone
The wind is blowing hard out to sea
Is it warm outside
I want to know
Looking up to the sky I see a Christmas tree

Before you said goodbye
Did you think I'd be the last to know
I'm going on a trip without a course
Is there something that I'll run into
On my own

Your dark brown eyes
They could see it all
The pain inside that nearly made me fall
The dark brown leaves
In the fall of life
Winter days are slowly moving on

Before we say our last goodbye
Don't you think that we should let our love go
I'm going on a trip without a course
Is there something that you're running from
On your own

The wind is blowing hard out to sea
Before we say our last goodbye
Don't you think that we should let our love go
I'm going on a trip without a course
Is there something that you're running from

When daylight settles onto the back window. Right through the little crack, it tears itself apart into an array of color, splayed all over the hardwood floor. Outside is nice and lovely, winter grabbed its coat last week and signed off on the year. I haven't gone outside yet, I'm afraid that if I do, I may never want to come back in. What if the sensation of a new spring grips around my feet, pulling me toward the soil. What if we accidentally let ourselves fall so far into a new ground, that we begin to root and grow. I stay sitting at the table right beside my thoughts. Someone said something about change once, but my throat tickles every time I try to re-introduce myself. All this to say, I'm not afraid of the spring or what it might bring, or how sweet its fruit. I don't want to open the door, because I worry winter's still standing on the other side. Before I knew it, it would say, "I think I forgot something" and settle back in with us. A fresh sheet of snow clouds would blanket the daylight, and all its colors would fade. I shake off the chill. I guess I'll stay here, and look from inside out.

Someday summer comes again,
Someday the sun does away with cold winds.
Winter doesn't last forever,
Winter will leave us soon.
I know we're at it's end,
I can see the light linger longer.
Winter will come to a close,
Winter snows have ceased their blow.
Someday the warm rays will melt the ice,
Someday stars will glow in a warm evening again.

...and words still come to my fingertips as i undress you in spirit.

almost-friend, hold me tight and love me true / stare me down, see me as i am: disquieted, patinaed and accustomed to pockets / loose change, a worn copper penny; incoherent, the thrill and lurching sensation of gravity / blooming in my core as i die in my dreams; afraid, for all that word means / of the figs that lie waiting on the branches ahead / ample and pregnant with sweet-rot possibility;

we will labor, singing of light and covalence / until dusk is shorn of its gloomy nightgown / staving off the cold with what tea, what liquid light / the yielding sun could gift our wide eyes: / just ask, darling almost-friend / and i will provide, because…

you are a fawn, limber and knobby-kneed / and i am but a stranger waxing melancholy in stolen glances from afar / as you come into focus in my wood / drinking from my fountains and eating from my briars / leaving me to wonder, “how could i not love such a soul, astute and gentle as it is?” / and so i offer you food and drink because i have nothing else / you could be in want of;

but such things are not for me to behold / and i fear that you will molt your coat as seasons change / the down behind your ears yielding to antlers sprouting like milk teeth from gums / tendering tender for tenacious, grace for gruesome / that you will forget the hands that have proffered to you / sustenance and healing in your darkest hours / for to see others consume satisfies my hunger / to see others delight, my vicarious feast;

in my mind’s eye, you are unclothed and angelic / even with the ophidian basin of your back pressed flat against the tiles of a scalding shower / even with tears ravaging your honest face / here, the masquerade, the spectacle and circumstance, ends / because your rapture will betray your guilt / and we will summit new zeniths hand-in-hand / be baptized, enthralled in the fresh, algid, restless oceans we called forth from the far reaches of our globe / with nothing more than the labyrinth-etched palms of our hands / charting the great floods of yesterday / inking them into the annuls of a friendship (nothing more) for the ages;

celebrate holier mysteries in the anamnesis of that day / we rested upon sand fine as powder, crusted on our knees and elbows / as the ark of our covenant neaped and sprang with cyclical certainty / almost-friend, smile me but one more drowsy floodgate grin / rest your raven-crowned head upon my bare chest / laying in that tender way for eternity / and never again will i ask that wretched question of you: "are you with me?"

no, darling almost-friend: forget me not / because fair weather or poor, my love will remain / echoing truer far and far more sweet / than the oblivious whisper of a forest brook / or the stentorian thundering of an ocean reclaiming what once belonged to it / to know that i am cared for even a fraction of how i care for you is an honor/ and as but a stranger gazing from afar, i promise you this: i will far sooner take myself for granted than you / even should no tea remain to keep us warm, i will hold you till the storm passes / and forever will your name be engraved herein.

Joy is a little thing,
A warm luxury in the chill of winter's winds,
One sparkling treasure in the face of somber spring rains.
Happiness is a man,
Roaming the midnight city streets,
Tossing gold glitter all over the way as he skips along.
Pleasure, a soft blanket on your bed,
A perfectly placed pillow to rest your head,
A pencil that never runs out of pencil lead.
Everything is diamond when relief rears its head,
Assuring as the autumn breeze,
Pushing around stray sticks and leaves.

I never liked summer.

Not as a child.

Huddled by a fireplace,
no shirt and a short just a mere 5 year old,
Begging the flames to give me the warmth I crave.

I never liked summer.

Maybe it was the silence,
The empty walls,
The way life seemed to move on without me.

I never liked summer.

Winter had always been kinder,
Bringing people closer,
Wrapping me in a cold I understood,
and loved.

But then you said,
"Summer is my favorite season."
And winter lost its warmth.

The snow felt sharper,
The fire distant.
And summer— Summer became the heat of your voice,
The glow of your presence,
The warmth I never knew I needed.

what I once clung to as a dreamland,
fades away in the world of you.

With nothing but your words,
You rewrote my thoughts and bent my beliefs.

I felt every stubborn inch of myself crumble accept it's fate,
that even your lies become my truth,

and your beliefs are mine to carry

The world makes flights   white flakes of code
snow  like knowledge   alights on the ground
to become a muddy fusion