I've got more scars than memories
but they heal just the same
I've walked too far without looking back
to find my way home again

In a simpler time
I watched a raging fire
As it swallowed every home
All except my own

With the passing years
New houses appeared
While mine began to fade
Crumble and decay

Today I returned
To the street that burned
One empty block lay bare
Where my home used to stand

I felt suddenly compelled
To rebuild what time had felled
A house of stone and clay
That time could not erase

I came home alone
To a house I didn’t know
I touched the wooden walls
The space felt cold and small
It smelled of childhood
And I thought of firewood

has it really been thirteen years
since we dreamed of the city surrounded by cornfields

19 was a different lens
hot august evenings staring at the stars
on the rockslide in the quarry by your father's house
where we drifted deeper into love and ardor

in the heat of an endless summer,
the unflinching drift towards new romance and dreams of
marriages and sacred vows and well,
where did it all lead us, and where are we now?

in interceding years came new flames and hurricanes
and always those roads turned back towards you, didn't they
i sat for you for your paintings and i fell more and more
in love with someone whose heart could never let me stay

now, what have we come to, and what have we learned?

32 a new lens with clearer eyes and
i surmise now that i knew not where that road would go
i kept the promise that i'd made, just in a different way
past the barns and the long highways i'd dreamed of with you

glacial, time continues on
and memories are fleeting but fond

has it really been thirteen years
since i knew the joy of you

Oh Dionysus.
How I miss you,
but your blood....gives me anxiety.
It makes people hate me, I can't stand to be
alone.

I can't say I don't miss dancing with you
But it's not much of a party with just the two of us.
No one else is willing to dance for long.

There was a time where you were,
my only friend
and you would smile and take me in your arms while
I sobbed and enjoyed the haze of your being.
I in turn, worshipped you. Even if research, candles and hymns, libations of your own blood and my perfume could hardly be enough.

It's all I have, my lord.

While I miss the roiling, twisting madness of your magnificence
I shouldn't be there.
I want to be, desperately
but I pick up a bottle and look at myself in disgust and shame.
It's not you, it's me.
This is far from a disillusionment of gods.
I will still dance, my lord, just perhaps not as closely as before.

I am white clouds
Immobile
Blue sky drifting
Apart from me cicadas buzz loudly
Bare back on hot cedar planks
Mindfulness in bloom
Ideas like dandelion seeds
Arise before floating beyond the roof line
I am time—
The lawnmover engine turns,
reality returns.

Poised to succeed
In all of your dreams
You have the support
And the means
Endured a painful trek
Metamorphosed from a disdainful wreck
But you’d rather be something else
Than a large paycheck
All the agonies
Pursued through wistful blasphemies
Have led to naught
But a sorrowful eucatastrophe
Because you have bills due
Things to live up to
It’s wishful thinking
Wanting to paint the skies blue.

cheers to all those blasted nights
when in reflected neon lights
your eyes so sadly glow
with lust
                for a future you will never know